Our Drama Queen

Jessica had individual state speech contest yesterday and did very well. She took her musical theater piece from Pirate Jenny and also performed a literary program that she wrote. In musical theater she got two I's and a II. In her literary program she got all I's which can qualify her for All-State competition. We will not find out until later this week if she gets to go to All-State or not. She really loves performing with all of the singing, dancing and acting. She definitely did not get her talent from me. Those of you who know me or grew up with me know I am so scared to get in front of people for anything. After seeing her perform I was just amazed and told my mother-in-law, " I'm not sure she is really my child." Just kidding! I am so thankful God blessed her with her talent.

I actually got a scrapbook page done today for her.

Very simple in style but I am trying to simplify things and focus on the journaling and the photos. The journaling reads:

Since you were a small child you always have enjoyed performing in front of people, whether it is in plays, singing or playing your trumpet. This year you are a junior and you talent has seemed to blossom. You seem so comfortable in front of people. Whether it be in the plays, musicals, or speech contests you are showing so much talent. You made it to the State level of competition in both the group and individual speech contest. Your individual literary program got all I’s at the State Competition and a chance at All State while your individual musical theater piece got two I’s and a II. At these contests you have made great friends and you enjoy visiting with others who have similar interests. You have definitely found your niche. We were not surprised at all when you told us this year that you wanted to major in music at college and maybe participate in theater.

In other news Kyle has started driver's ed. I will have another driver on the road soon!

10 Years Now

March 11, 2000

10 years ago today Kenton and I were married at The Little Brown Church in Nashua, Iowa.
It is hard to believe 10 years has passed. It is also hard to believe all that we have been through!

Another Busy Week

We have had another busy week and weekend. Yesterday Kyle went to his first FFA Contest in Corning. He looked so grown up all dressed up and wearing his FFA jacket. I wanted to get a picture but we were running late and Kenton had to take us into town to meet the bus being as we had snow again Friday. We left the van in town Friday night because we were not sure we could get it home. Anyway, Kyle did very well at contest and scored 3rd out of 26 in the competition he was in. He will now go on the the district competition here in a couple of weeks.
After getting the van back home, Jessica and I took off for Des Moines to go Prom dress shopping. It is quite a struggle for her being so tall. We went to Stacey's in Urbandale and found it to be quite an experience. It is a large building and they advertise to have over 5000 prom dresses. We had to take off our shoes before going back to the large room where all of the dresses are. They assign you a dressing room and a helper and you then start going through all of the dresses. They are grouped on large racks with the sizes at the end. The place was packed and I don't think I have ever seen so many girls shopping for prom dresses. After about an hour and a half and thanks to our helper, Alana, Jessica found the perfect dress. It was just what she had been looking for and good for Grandma Johnson it fit perfectly. It won't need any altering and it is actually long enough. It is strapless, turquoise in color with silver bead work on it. It is very full and poofy on bottom. She looks gorgeous in it. I had to be the one to take the heavy dresses off the hanger, help her get in and out of them and then put them back on the hangers.

By the end I was exhausted, and have a new respect for sales consultants who do that on a regular basis.

On the way,we stopped at the fabric store in Creston, Quilts and Other Notions, to get some more fabric for decorating the baby's room. I had gone with Kenton's mom a few weeks ago and we found some that I fell in love with. I am not really any good at sewing but love fabrics and all of the beautiful colors. I decided to go with a rust color and green. We are going to work some farm animals into the decor as well, after all he will be a little farm boy.

I am so lucky that Kenton's mom is such a great seamstress. She is making bedding and sheets for the crib out of these materials. Can't wait to show the finished project. Baby Johnson doesn't officially have a room yet but we are working on that and probably will still be working on it after he is born.

We are home the rest of the weekend and getting ready for another busy week. It is snowing outside again and we are suppose to expect another 5 inches today. I hope Spring comes soon!

A Favorite Book and How Important Our Friends Are

The kids and I all share a love for reading. It is not uncommon to find all three of us with our noses in a book on these cold winter nights. Kenton, not so much. He reads the occasional farm magazine but does not share that love for reading that the rest of us do. I recently read this book by Kelly Corrigan called The Middle Place. It was a wonderful read. It discusses the author's struggle with breast cancer, and finding herself in that "Middle Place" where many of us are at. We are parents trying to care for our children, yet still someone's child needing our parents. I have to admit I am still a Daddy's girl so I could totally understand where the author was coming from. The book also includes this exert that Kelly reads on this You Tube video:

(I will warn you it can make you cry as it talks about our friendships and connections with other women.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_4qwVLqt9Q

I did a mini scrapbook a while back on the importance of the women, (friends and family), in my life. It was based on the album and products we received in a Rusty Pickle class I took a few years back at a Creating Keepsakes Convention. It is still one of my favorites.

We have had another busy weekend at our house. Yesterday was my birthday, the kids and I spent the day shopping for some clothes they needed for upcoming events. Kenton was busy working outside. Today he is stiff and sore. I think he aggravated a back problem he already had. I got to spend a little time scrapbooking, Kyle spent the afternoon ice fishing again, and Jessica continues to work on her individual speech material for contest. We are headed out for a 4 -H meeting now.

Update

I know it has been about a month since I last updated our blog but times are really busy. January was a a busy month for us. I participated in the health fair that the hospital sponsored in Maryville. Brenda Neff, Joshua Allee and I had a table with information about organ donation.
Since Kyle's transplant I have wanted to get involved with promoting organ donation awareness.
There was a good turnout and we were asked some common questions that we were glad to get the answers out there. Brenda and I have become friends not only through the common bond of organ donation, (her family lost their little girl, Abrielle, in a tragic car accident and they donated her organs) but also through our shared hobby of scrapbooking. Joshua and I work together at St. Francis as he is our hospital chaplain as well as a long time adopted part of our family.

I am now 23 weeks pregnant with Baby Boy Johnson and we are trying to get our home ready for the new little guy as well as pick him out a name. It has been quite a family involved deal and lots of fun to see what names the kids have come up with. We are still undecided. I am feeling good, just very tired. Probably another reason I haven't blogged much lately.

Kyle is doing wonderfully! He had his yearly cardiac catheter in the first part of January. The results were amazing. This time they checked his coronary arteries due to the fact that transplant patient have a tendency to develop coronary artery disease. Kyle's looked great and the doctor even told us, "actually, it looks like a heart of an athlete!" I almost cried. I never dreamed I would ever hear that said about my son's heart! What a miracle! We continue to monitor his anti-rejection medication levels. The doctors in St. Louis want him a little on the high end as he is so at risk for rejection, esp. with the rejection he had early on.

Also in the early part of January we received an amazing and emotional letter from Kyle's donor's family. I hope to post about it soon. It was a beautiful letter and her story is remarkable. I can't wait to tell you all about her.

Kyle has been busy watching football, basketball and ice fishing with Kenton. Sunday Kenton's brother-in-law, Kenny, brought up his ice fishing hut and they fished on our pond. I walked down to check it out but was having camera trouble so this is the only picture I got. If you like fresh fish, the ones caught this time of year are so much better than in the summer. They taste so much better, because of the cleaner water I guess. They do not taste so "fishy".

Kenton has been busy pushing and blading snow-what a crazy winter this has been! We are all craving green grass and sunshine. Spring can not get here soon enough. We started having baby calves this week. The first one was born on Superbowl Sunday and yet another one today. Caring for them in this weather keeps Kenton busy also.

Jessica has been busy with school and speech contests. She just got finished participating in large group speech contest at State. She was part of Musical Theater and Improv. Both of her teams made it to the state level where the competition was tough. They scored well there also.
We were not allowed to take video or pictures, I so wished I could have. She is amazingly talented with her singing and acting! Her solo part in Musical Theater included part of the song,
I dreamed a dream, the song that Susan Boyle sings. It brought tears to my eyes. She is working hard now getting ready for individual speech contest. She is considering a major of music in college. I guess I should have known that even when she was little and she and her Gramps would ride around in the truck checking cows both trying to out sing the other!

Sorry for such a long time between post and such a long one this time. I hope to post on a more regular bases again.

New Word for a New Year

When I was younger I always loved to make New Years Resolutions. Most never panned out and after a month or so they were forgotten. Last year I took the advice of Ali Edwards, whose blog I follow to pick one word to focus on for the new year. Last year we were just getting home from Kyle's heart transplant. After all we had been through I wanted to just get out lives back to as normal as possible, especially for Kyle. I have a friend who had been in Vietnam and I asked him once what made the difference for him when he got back to the states. I knew he had been through so much like so many others but he seemed to not have had the problems like PTSD that affected so many others. Although I would never compare the stressful time we and Kyle went through with what happened in Vietnam I did use remember what my friend told me. He felt he did so well because he immediately threw himself back in society, back into life. He got a job immediately, got involved with family and friends and tried to get his life back to normal as soon as he could. That was my goal last year and the word I chose then was "live". I wanted to help Kyle and our family "live" again. I knew life was different and we had new things to do, watch for, etc, but I did not want us to be afraid, or dwell on the past, especially Kyle. I think we succeeded in "living" again. Kyle seems happy and adjusted. He has chores just like other kids that he is expected to do. We try to treat him as normal as possible. I still worry about him, and about his future, but I try not to dwell on the fact that he is a transplant patient. We are doing what we have to do to keep him healthy, otherwise life goes on and is as normal as it can be.

So here I am starting off 2010 ready to pick a new word for this new year. I decided to borrow Ali's word from last year, "Nurture".
nur ture
verb [trans.]
-to care for and encourage the growth or development of
-cherish (a hope, belief, or ambition)
noun
-the process of caring for and encouraging the growth or development of someone or something

It seems fitting as we will add a new baby to our family this year. I want to focus on nurturing so many things this year, not only the new baby, but my two other children, my husband and myself too. There are relationships with new friends and old that I want to spend time nurturing. I want to nurture the relationships I have with my parents and other family. With the new baby coming our lives will change this year. I am nervous and scared yet excited and looking forward to it all.

I encourage you to pick a word for this year to focus on. It actually worked so much better for me than specific goals. It easily reminded me last year where my focus was. You can read more about Ali's word and other links here: http://aliedwards.typepad.com/_a_/2009/12/one-little-word-2010.html
What will your word for 2010 be?

Christmas Wrap Up and a New Year

It is hard to believe Christmas came and went so quickly but it did. I felt like I didn't get a lot of good pictures this year. I guess I blame it on being pregnant and tired! Ha! The kids were happy with their presents but I didn't think they would want me to post pictures of them in their pajamas and bed heads so I won't. When I asked them Jessica's favorite gift was her new guitar and Kyle's was his new Ipod. I did get a picture of our tree before we took it down. I love Christmas ornaments so we have quite a collection. We didn't even put them all on the tree this year because their are so many. Each year I get the kids a new ornament, usually one they have picked out from the Hallmark collection. But this year we opted for a photo ornament from pottery barn with a picture of our dog, Ralph, who passed away this fall.


In other news I am almost 18 weeks pregnant now. I had to finally break down and start wearing maternity clothes. Last Tuesday Kenton and I went to St. Luke's for our prenatal visit. It took most of the afternoon but was quite interesting. We learned a lot from the genetic counseling, then they did a level 2 ultrasound and finally an amniocentesis. Only preliminary reports back so far but everything looks great. We are expecting a healthy baby BOY! Here is one of Baby Boy Johnson's official ultrasound pictures.

We will return to St. Luke's next month for a fetal echocardiogram due to the congenital defect that Kyle was born with. They are not expecting anything to be wrong but want to check his heart because of family history.

We were so blessed in 2009 and are now excited that the new year is underway. We are looking forward to a great 2010. We hope you all have a blessed new year also.