Christmas Choas 2009

Christmas really wasn't all that chaotic. It just felt that way because for the first time for several years there were little kids at my parents house. My brother T.J. and his family decided to come up to Payson last minute. It made Christmas so exciting it was so fun to see there excited faces when they realized that Santa had found them at Grandma and Grandpa's house. It was a wonderful day spent with family.

Making Gingerbread houses on Christmas Eve

This is what the living room looked like after Santa arrived.

Playing with new toys.

Temple square at Christmas

Temple square is so pretty this time of year! I love it! Last night me and some friends went up to salt lake to see the lights. It was really foggy, well at least we liked to pretend that it was fog but i think it was really smog. I am going to refer to it as fog because then it looks pretty and not gross. :) The first picture was taken with the flash on so you can see all of the fog. The next two are with the flash off so that you can't see the fog as well but you can still tell. I love the one of the temple and the fog.

Tina, Me and Bryant
This Christmas season has been great. It has been and will be filled with many more family and friend traditions. It is also a great time of the year to reflect on the birth of Christ and all that He has done for each and every one of us. I find it hard to truly focus on the true meaning of Christmas with the parties, hoards of people everwhere you go , and everything else that distracts us during the holiday season. This trip up to temple square always serves as a good reminder and always, without fail, gets me in the Christmas spirit.

It's Christmastime!!!!

I love Christmastime and all the goodies that come with! Yesterday after church me and Emily decided to make a bunch of goodies to take to the boys across the hall and the boys upstairs. The plateful of goodies included: snicker brownies, Oreo balls. As well as sourdough, m&m, and sugar cookies. (The cookies were all left over from munch and mingle but don't tell the boys that)

Christmas Thoughts to live by...

"What will you and I give for Christmas this year? Let us in our lives give to our Lord and Savior the gift of gratitude by living His teachings and following in His footsteps. It was said of Him that He 'went about doing good.' As we do likewise, the Christmas spirit will be ours."--Thomas S. Monson

AND...

"This Christmas, mend a quarrel. Seek out a forgotten friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a letter. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in word and deed. Keep a promise. Forgo a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Apologize. Try to understand. Examine your demands on others. Think first of someone else. Be kind. Be gentle. Laugh a little more. Express your gratitude. Welcome a stranger. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love and then speak it again."-Howard W. Hunter.

Thankful

I know that I am a few days late on posting my Thanksgiving photos, but better late than never, right? There are so many things that I am grateful for this year. Here is a list of just a few.

My Family. I have such a great family, they are always there for me and I hope that they know that I am always there for them. I love and look up to each one of them so much. They make me want to be better. They are all so fun to be with, they make me laugh. I may not see them as often as i would like because we are so spread out, but I look forward to the times we are together.

My Friends. These are the people who entertain me. I hate being alone for long periods time so i love it when I can go out with friends. I also look up to, and have a desire to be better because of them. I love that we can pretty much be anywhere and doing anything and laugh and have a good time regardless of what is immediately around us. This may result in some funny looks at times which makes us laugh even the harder. I am so blessed to have such great friends in my life.

The Church. I am so grateful for my knowledge of the gospel. Without it I am sure I would be a mess. I am grateful for the Savior and for His sacrifices for me. I am grateful for the faith and hope that I have because of the gospel.

My Job. At times I might complain about having to go to work for 10 hours a day, but in all honesty I love my job. I love the kids that i work with and I feel so blessed to be able to work with them and hopefully help them progress in their ability to better live their lives. These kids are little angels and Iam blessed to have them in my daily life. They make me laugh and cry at the same time because they are so sweet and innocent and precious. I hope that in some wayI really am helping them.

I had a great Thanksgiving. I enjoyed spending time with my parents, grandma and my brother and his cute family. I also had the entire week off work so I got to spend a lot of time with my friends. It was a great week. Here are the pictures

Me, Avery and Sage playing with my camera. Avery stole my camera, I have some very interesting pictures. lol

A family tradition: gum drop turkeys

Hee Haws Corn Maze.

my singles ward went to Hee Haws corn maze a couple of weeks ago. Me and my room mates are pretty much able to have fun in any situation. And this corn maze wasn't any different. I mean honestly, why are corn mazes so fun? Walking around completly disoriented, not knowing where you are walking down the same path numerous times seems to only be considered fun around Halloween time. While at times it was frustrating out little group, Bonnie, Emily, Dale and I had a blast, singing songs and being scared to death by some guy in a gorilla costume.

After we made it out of the corn maze and were ready to head to our cars for home we found these fun swings that looked like horses. Dale took a bunch of pictures for us but I will only put on the really fun ones.

I am so glad to have such good room mates. Who enjoy being goofy and having fun with me, even though at time we may look like huge dorks. I love them!

I Love My Sisters!

I was looking through some pictures that were on my camera and computer today and I saw these pictures of me and my sisters. Aren't they both gorgeous? I am so glad that they are in my life and that they are always there for me. I think that it's time we get all the girls together in the family for a girls weekend.

Me and Kristie up Payson Canyon last fall

Linnea and I over the weekend.

Linnea, me and Kristie last yearAnother one of all us from this past summer

The Vegas

I love road trips! I want to go on another soon. But sadly, as of right now I do not have any planned. Hopefully that will change soon. Anyway, me and 3 friends went to vegas over a weekend to see the BYU UNLV football game. It was so much fun! We walked the strip, shopped, I may have gambled a couple times (penny slots). I can arugue the fact that is wasn't actually gambling by saying that the two dollars bills that I used weren't mine; and it was only the penny slots and i felt like it was more throwing money away than actually gambling. Needless to say i wasn't neccessarily impressed with the penny slots. For me the football game was the highlight of the trip. We had amazing tickets. We were 10 rows behind the BYU team on the 40 yard line. We were also in the middle of the UNLV fans. We automatically began the trash talk with them and they gave it right back to us. It got to the point that every time anything happended, good or bad for BYU, the older guys a couple of rows in front of us would turn around to see what our response would be. This was by far the funnest BYU game i have everbeen to. Here are pictures from the trip:

emily and I in front of the giant wheel of fortune.

Emily, me, stacy and sue at the game.

Maybe in Another 17 Years....

Last time I hiked Timp I was 10. I do not remember a lot about that hike except that I was tired and not very motivated to get to the top. My mom kept telling me lets just go to that tree, rock, bench etc and then we could stop. That is pretty much how it went until we were almost to the top. Once i saw the top i was motivated to keep going because i could see how close i really was. My brother T.J., who also has not hiked Timp thought that it would be fun to do over labor day weekend. so me, Kristie, Linnea, Caiden, Statyn and Spencer set off to do just that early saturday morning. Keep in mind that for the first two hours of hiking we got rained on. And anyone who knows me very well knows that my hair looks really awesome when it gets wet and i dont have anything to straighten it with.

The very beginning.

This was the only toilet on the whole trail....ewww gross and kinda funny

Yay we made it to the top!

This was was the view looking sown from the summit to the saddle. It was by far the hardest part of the hike.

We found this dog at the summit. We were able to get a hold of her owners and bring her back down the trail.

Some of my favorite sentence of the day are:

"It seemed easier when we kids."

"I dont think that it is really going to be worth it."

"Why do we consider this to be fun."

"Is this ever going to end."

Now that it has been a week since i hiked i can say that it was fun. I was really sore and could hardly walk the next day, and i still have blisters. It is such a long hike. I may never hike it again......or maybe i will in another 17 years.

ps see what i mean about awesome hair?

CALIFORNIA

OK, remember from my last post When I said that I am horrible taking pictures. Well sadly it stands true for this post too. I have officially set a new goal to better at taking pictures. Over the weekend me and two of my friends went to California. We got there at 2am Friday morning and left at 2pm Sunday afternoon. We played a ton and got very little sleep (I do not think we got more than 4 hours a night). But there was just so much to do. We went to Disneyland, it was only my second time ever being there so the Paul and Ryan, who have been there many times became my tour guides. We went on a lot of really fun rides, and ate lots of really good food. We were at Disneyland for 15 hours, after that we were all exhausted and ready for sleep.

Me and Paul on the tea cups.

We were at Disneyland for 15 hours, after that we were all exhausted and ready for sleep. We got back to house at 2:00 am only to get up Saturday morning and head to the wedge, which is a place known to have really big waves on Newport beach. The waves were HUGE. (The waves in the picture do not look nearly as big as they were ) There were probably 500 people standing on the beach on 5 people were crazy enough to try and surf these waves. The poor life guards looked so stressed out. We were only there for 45 minutes and we saw them rescue 2 or 3 of the surfers.

We then drove sown the beach to the U.S. Open of surfing where professional surfers were competing. We saw Kelly Slater (Who is apparently one of the best surfers) score perfect tens. It was so much fun to see the tricks these guys were doing in huge waves. After that we drove down to San Diego for a wedding reception, then back up to Hollywood for Fiddler on the Roof, which was an amazing play to watch. Once again we were out til 1 or two in the morning. Sunday got up and went to church, and then headed home.

Johnson family summer bash!

I decided that I am horrible at taking pictures. I do not know what happened, I used to be so good at it. I got ready to post this and realized i did not have very many pictures. Annyway, over the fourth of July my whole family got together in Payson for a family reunion. It was alot of fun to have everyone together again. I wish we could do it more often but we are so spread out it makes it hard. But when we do get together we have a lot fun. This time we went to Lagoon, fire works, swimming, paintball wars, and duels. Dad got the worst of the duels TJ shot him in the head just above his mask. (and somewhere else which I wont mention here). ouch!

We also took family pictures, which is always fun with a bunch of little kids. Amazingly several of them turned out, with everybody looking.

My Poor Car!

I went and saw the movie up tonight. It is a really cute movie. I advise you go and see it. Hopefully during it you wont recieve phone calls and texts from your room mate telling you to call her back asap. Yep, that is what happened to me. I did not notice that i had missed these calls until the movie was over, almost an hour after my room mate Bonnie had last tried to reach me. I got a hold of her and she told me that the tree in our front yard had split and that part of it was on top of the trunk of my car. We hurried home and this is what we found:

back view. good thing my lights are reflecting otherwise you wouldnt be able to see it.

Clint was nice enough to help me survey the damge and get the branch off my car once we got back to my house. Then he tried to break the branch off but that didnt work!

When I first heard that a tree had fallen on my car, i had envisioned it to be much worse than this. Luckily there was no structural damage. It does look like there are several scratches on the roof, trunk and side of my car. It is hard to tell though because it is so dark. I am anxious for morning to come so i can really survey the damage and figure out what to do about it. I am just so glad that it wasnt any worse.

Carnival fun

The other night me and some friends walked over to Zupas for dinner. On the way over we noticed that there was a carnival going on in the Alertsons parking lot. So we decided to stop by on they way home and have some fun. Random...

Yellowstone

One of my friends families has an amazing cabin about 20 minutes outside the West gates of Yellowstone. Last weekend me, clint and bryant took a little road trip up there. We had so much fun, even though we did get snowed and rained on pretty much the whole time

Real guick, here is what we did:

Thursday we left Provo around 7 at night we piled all of our stuff into my car and we were off. We pulled into Island Park, Idaho at 12 am. then we went for a walk down to the river. that was probably the only clear night we had while we were there. we then went back to the cabin and went to bed.

Friday we all slept in, when we woke up we realized we did not have any food for breakfast so we went to the store and bought us some basics; cereal and milk for five dollars each, eggs, cheese bread, etc. We went on a walk around the cabin down to the river, we also shot pellet guns and the boys jumped off of the bridge into the river. There were mosquito's everywhere, I have never seen so many in whole life!then it started to rain so we hung out in the cabin and played games. That night we drove up to West Yellowstone for dinner where we ate the most delicious buffalo burger and pulled pork sandwiches. Saturday we woke up early and drove into the park. we saw so many Buffalo, and lots of elk. We also saw two bears, but they we so far away we had to use a telescope to see them. it was still cool though, they were playing with each other I just wish they had been a little closer to get a good picture.

We went on a hike down to this river.

Then we drove around some more, and Bryant caught Clint sleeping, which he got in trouble for because he was supposed to be watching for bears. (I was watching the left, he was supposed to watching the right and Bryant was driving). We stopped at a place known as the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. This was so pretty the picture does not do it justice. It was amazing.

We then went back to West Yellowstone where we ate dinner, and then back to the cabin where we watched movies because once again it had started to rain and later turned into snow. I fell asleep at the beginning of the second movie which to anyone who has ever watched movies with me should not be surprised about. However, Bryant was determined to keep me awake. He kept getting in my face and waking me up. I am pretty sure in my sleep deprived state i threatened to "punch him in the face". At the point Clint realized that i must have been really tired to be threatening bodily harm to someone. So he came to mine and Bryants rescue and told Bryant to leave me alone. After that I slept great. Thanks Clint for saving me from regret!

Sunday we woke up early and drove into the park again, we went down to Old Faithful, which wasn't very faithul and was about 10 minutes late going off and then the to Yellowstone lake. Then back to the cabin because once again it had started to rain.

Monday we were all exhausted from too many late nights and too little sleep, so we slept in and then woke up cleaned the cabin and headed back to Provo.

We goofed off a lot, shared lots of laughs over stupid things that were said and done. We put 1,075 mile on my car. (It only had 775 miles on it when we left for the trip). and spent over 21 hours in the car. We had a blast and I want to go back.