Friends!

Yesterday we had Tyce and Rylee over to play all day.  Kelsey's flight from Utah got cancelled the night before, so Alex drove the kids up to stay with us while he went to work.  It was a very busy but fun day!

We played trains.

And decorated the door for Valentines Day.

Read some books with Scout.

And looked like the sweetest little diva!

Barrett woke up this morning asking if they were coming to play again today.  He loved having kids to play with all day long!

Scrapbook

This is more or less, Barrett's "scrapbook" and I need to add some of his latest and greatest accomplishments to it.
I'll try to post some videos or pictures, but I don't know how many I have of these things.

Here's some of the fun things he's been doing lately.  He learns things so quickly, it is seriously incredible.  

He has learned all the letters of the alphabet and knows each one of their sounds.  Everywhere we go, he's pointing out letters and numbers that he sees.  Since learning his letters, these spoons have become his favorite!  My friend Kacey made them for him and they're wearing out so I thought I better get a picture.  He calls the Barrett spoon, "TTT" and the other one is the Johnson spoon.  He is learning to spell his name with these.

He loves singing songs.  He sings (mostly by himself) Ring Around the Rosies, the Alphabet Song, The Wheels on the Bus, Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam, Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree, Jingle Bells, Old McDonald, and... I know there's more that I can't remember right now.  He also hums and makes up his own songs and they're my favorite!

He can count to 20. Sort of, he usually gets to 13 and then skips to 19 and 20.  He can do all of them, but often doesn't.

He loves to type.

He has learned to negotiate with me.  If I say he needs to have 10 more bites, he'll say he wants 7 or 5 (or whatever).  Or if I tell him he has 2 more minutes in the tub, he'll tell me he wants to stay in for 11.  I'm amazed that he understands the value of numbers.  

He's really good at finding things that match.  

He generally speaks in full sentences and uses hilarious words like ridiculous.  I can understand what he's saying most of the time, but other people can't always comprehend.

When I tell him not to do something, he'll often say "sorry mom," "it's fine," or "it's okay" and do it anyways.  We've got to work on that but I have to admit I do find it hilarious most of the time.

He's super attached to me right now and won't let Neil do anything for him.

He definitely has his share of "2 year old" moments.  It seems to be getting better most days, but I'm not sure if we're just getting more used to it now or if it's actually decreasing...

He started saying "I love you" about a month ago!  Not that he couldn't say it before, he just wouldn't!

He thinks I am the Starbucks mermaid and every time we pass a Starbucks, he says, "Mommy's picture!"

He says muh-cause instead of because.
He calls a lamb a lamp, because even though he knows what a lamp is, he gets sheep and lamb crossed.
He calls a piggy back ride, pig horse.  Actually, he calls ME pig horse when I'm giving him a piggy back ride.
He's always telling me and Neil good job for things and also "be careful".  He also compliments our clothes often, "Cute/cool shirt, Dad."

We taught him how to play hide and seek last week.

We have so much fun together and I'm extremely grateful to have him here with me to explore Denver while Neil's at work everyday!

I could only get 1 video on because it made the post too big I guess.  Or it could be that the internet here is really crappy.  

Sold!

The first house we ever bought is no longer ours. We bought it in 2007 and lived in it for over 5 years.  For most of the last 2 years, it's been totally empty while we've moved around with Neil's job.

On one hand, we're happy to be rid of it, but it's still a little sad as well.  On to bigger and better things...eventually.

Be Impressed!

So yesterday was our 9 year anniversary! I'm completely shocked by that!  I usually don't post pictures of us when we got married because we were just chubby little children!  I seriously can't believe we were so young!

We actually celebrated our anniversary apart this year. Neil had to fly to Utah last minute to go close on our house (more on that soon), so it was just me and Bear having an anniversary party.

It was a high of about 5° yesterday, so we cuddled up by the fire. Today was just as cold, it was -12 when we went to the gym this morning!

I tried to do a timer picture of us and I obviously didn't have the camera in the right place.  I wish this one would've turned out!

Maybe Neil and I will get to celebrate another time!  If not, there's always next year!

Go Broncos!

It has been really fun to be here in Denver during the last month when Denver won the AFC championship and got ready to go to the Super Bowl!  (Side note, we had tickets to that awesome championship game but we didn't have a babysitter so we had to give the tickets back to Neil's work.  We are still kicking ourselves for not making it work somehow!)  Anyways, there's just been a really fun energy here with all the diehard Broncos fans.  We were living in Toronto when the Maple Leafs were in the playoffs too and that was really fun as well, it just gets you into it a lot more I think.

We had our own little Johnson family Super Bowl party yesterday and even thought the game was not very fun to watch, we had a good time together.  

We didn't have any Broncos gear to wear because we don't care that much, but Bear wore his football sweatshirt and I wore a navy sweater (I know you can't tell it's blue) and painted my nails Bronco orange. 

We had some good food too.  We had pizza, pigs in a blanket, chips and guacamole, and Shirley Temples.  YUM.  I had to go pick up the pizza during the game because they weren't delivering and the streets were pretty much empty!

Neil threw Barrett up in the air for our halftime entertainment.

Some Stuff

Bear and I went to a story time at the library the other day.  I've got to make sure we go to more of those because it is so close to our house.   He even got to make a cute little tiger puppet (not pictured).

He got a darling valentine in the mail from Pops and Lala that day too.

I know these are dumb pictures but I thought it was funny so I took them anyways.  We were eating our Lucky Charms the other day (don't worry, he has to eat a bowl of Mini Wheats before he can have his Lucky Charms), and he eats all his marshes (that's what he calls them) first but doesn't usually eat the crappy pieces unless he wants more marshes.  I eat all the crappy pieces first, saving the best for last! mmmmmm...

We went out to feed the ducks the other day and found out they were totally scary ducks!  As soon as we threw a couple pieces of bread into the water, they started swarming us and I was sure they were going to bite us!  I was pushing them back with my feet (also known as gently kicking) and trying to pick up Bear so they wouldn't get him!  He wasn't scared but I was totally panicking!

Since I was afraid, I told Bear we had to go inside and wait for Dad to come home.  Those ducks followed us all the way back to our front door!  Greedy little creeps!

Luckily Daddy came home soon and Bear could go back out and finish feeding the ducks.  We tried throwing bread to the bunnies too but they didn't seem to want it.

I am becoming a self-proclaimed master at building train tracks (this is the only one I had a picture of).  He got a ton of Thomas trains and tracks for Christmas from my mom and sisters and has been having fun with them.

It has been snowing like crazy here the last few days.

Our neighbor built this awesome snowman and Bear really wanted to play with it!

I wouldn't let him play with theirs, so he decided to build his own.

And it was a masterpiece.

Sleepover!

Saturday night we went to Colorado Springs and had a sleepover with Kelsey and Alex!  They got a babysitter and we went out to eat at a place called Nosh.

Then we got takeout dessert from Marigold's and brought it home so we could eat it while we played dominos.  We stayed up til about 2:30 am and were all completely exhausted on Sunday!

Sunday morning, the kids woke up and watched some shows.

And just played with all their fun toys, Barrett didn't want to leave!

Meanwhile, Back In Utah...

While we were playing at the zoo and children's museum here in Denver, half of my family was down in St. George having a blast and running races.

My Dad and Sean did the 5k race.  It was Sean's first race.

Livvie did the 1 mile race and she won 3rd place and was the 1st girl!  She is so fast!  This is after the race, her shirt says, "Catch me if you can."

My dad won 2nd in his age group.

Here's all the participants from our family.  The triplets ran a half mile race.

I really wish I could've been there too!

Long Weekend (In a Good Way)

We had a really fun extended weekend.  On Friday, the 3 of us went swimming at the pool at our new gym.  We joined a humongous Lifetime Fitness here not too far from our house.  The building and equipment are super deluxe, but I'm not crazy about the classes/instructors or the daycare, so I don't know for sure how long we'll go to this gym...  

The pool is pretty fun though and Bear wanted to stay forever!

Saturday we drove to Colorado Springs to go to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo with Kelsey and Alex (they live in Co Springs).  On our way, we wanted to see the Seven Falls, but as you can see, it was closed :(

We found this crazy house with a million giant metal statues in it's yard though.

They were seriously huge and there were probably 10 of them!

Then we went to the zoo and it was so fun!  It was such nice weather but right after we got there, the sun went behind the mountain and we spent the rest of the time freezing.
The best part of the zoo was getting to pet and feed the giraffes!  Remember when we could do that at the Hogle Zoo?  I would've stayed and done that all day!

They even had a baby giraffe.  I don't think that's the baby behind us, but I'm not sure.

It was a really fun zoo with lots of things for kids to play on.

The animals were super active and fun to watch.  There were 2 zebras in this cage and they were running around like crazy and even kicking each other.  It was way fun to watch.  I don't think either of them got hurt.

Barrett wanted to be with Kelsey the whole time!

Lucky for us there were 4 or 5 enclosed areas that smelled awful but let us get warm for a few minutes.

This bear was all over the place!

We got to pet this snake.

This zoo worker was feeding the mountain lion and it was really neat to watch.  See the lion up on the door?

Bear climbing like the gorilla.

They had a baby gorilla too and he was amazingly adorable!  He was only 17 months old and was so playful and cute!  We got some darling video of him playing with his mommy.

We went out to eat after the zoo at Hacienda Colorado.  It was pretty good except it was so spicy my eyelids were sweating!!

On Monday, Kelsey and Alex drove up to us and we went to the Children's Museum.   Unfortunately it was so crowded that we didn't even get to see and do everything there!  We'll go back sometime when it's NOT a public holiday!!

They had a whole bubble room with tons of different bubble things like these enormous bubbles.

And you could even make a bubble around yourself.

Fishing.

He definitely loved these ball tracks.

All the balls in the whole ball room got sucked through tracks that took them all to a bucket up high. Every few minutes the bucket would dump over and spill all the balls out for the kids to get and play with again.

 Pretty fun.

After the museum, we ordered some pho and brought it back to our house to eat and hang out.  I thought this picture of us was funny.

The kids watched a bit of a movie in our bed.

This is just a picture I took of Barrett because he asked me to take his picture.  It's a good thing he likes pictures as much as I do!