The Johnson Clan

At the beginning of the month, Kathy asked us to write down one thing that we are grateful for every day until Thanksgiving. We spent today with my sister Dani and her family though, so we didn't get to share our lists. Here is mine: I am thankful... 1. for my husband. 2. for our home, and that it feels like home to us. 3. for heating in our apartment. 4. for our waffle maker. 5. that we live so close to our families. 6. that we actually get to see our families pretty often. 7. for Brigham Young University and the opportunities it provides. 8. that I live in a culture that values women's education and lives.  9. that I have the gospel in my life. 10. that Clayton is diligent in daily scripture reading and prayer. 11. that Clayton is also diligent about laundry. 12. for President Monson. 13. for American History. 14. that we are not in debt. 15. for the lack of snow this far in the year. 16. for my professors at school and how easy that mak...

First of all, I've realized that my videos are not working on the blog for some reason. Bummer. You guys are missing out. A couple weeks ago Tatum, Sierra, and I decided it was high time for another sleepover. So last night the girls came over (even Miss Penny Jane for the first few hours). Penny successfully took every item out of every cabinet, shelf, and available container. She even tried to eat a dish soap pod. Luckily she had Clayton following her around to make sure we didn't have to call poison control. We tried making pizza, but the crust didn't really turn out. I've made pizza a few times before and the crust was perfect, so we're not really sure what went wrong. Regardless, it was still edible, just crunchy, so we ate it anyway. Waste not, want not.  After that Dani and Greg came to pick up Penny and give us their left overs from their date. Then it was just us big girls and Clayton. We played Uno, acted out several Disney Princess movi...

Last night we had a little visitor. Dani and Tatum came to our house right after I got off work last night to bing us treat! Apparently Greg and Tatum spent a couple hours whipping up this batch of special cookies. They were a chocolate cookie with peanut butter filling. I don't know what they were called, but as my Nana would say, they were "sinfully delicious." They brought us a whole plateful, and now not even 24 hours later we only have two left. They were that good. We chatted for a while, and checked out our new phones. One of the cool features about the 5s is that it takes slow-motion video. Tatum was happy to be our dancer while we checked it out.

On Friday last week we went out with our friends Ryland and Megan. The Riverwoods is an outdoor shopping center, and every winter they decorate it in christmas lights and giant fires. Usually you can find bands playing or small concerts in the gazebo in the center too, so it's usually a fun place to go. This year they advertised that they were putting up more christmas lights than Temple Square in Salt Lake City. That's kind of a big deal. So we went to see what all of the hallaboo was about. It ended up being really pretty when they flipped the lights on. There were tons of people, free horse drawn carriage rides, a christmas concert, ice sculptures, and the Waffle Love truck. I've worked at a belgian waffle shop before, and I like to think that I know a good waffle when I eat one, so I can confidently say that Waffle Love has pretty decent liege waffles. Mrs. Stephanie Wood had her birthday on Sunday, so on Saturday we met up with Matt and Stephanie to celebrate....

Clayton and I have been having couples come over for dinner every Tuesday night. It's perfect because I have to leave for work at 7, so if we invite them over for dinner at 5 then it's the perfect amount of time to get to know them without feeling like they're staying too long. Haha. Tonight we had over Aaron and Alexis. They are a couple in our ward, and we really liked them. I think they're the first couple that we've had over that we didn't already know.  Aaron is studying Industrial Design at BYU, and he just started his own company. Alexis works as a tech teacher at a charter school in west Provo.  For dinner I made creamy potato soup in bread bowls. I know. Look at how domestic we're becoming. Having couples over for dinner, making bread bowls, what's next? Sometimes I want to take a picture of my guests as proof that we had people over, but I feel too weird telling them I'm taking a picture for my blog. It's somethi...

At our wedding we were absolutely spoiled with wedding gifts. We've been working on thank you cards for months and still have a ton to do... not that I'm complaining. It actually been kind of difficult finding time to write them. We have a deadline though, we want to get them all done by the end of Thanksgiving break. One of our totally awesome presents was this baby. It's a belgian waffle iron, and I've been dying to use it. This morning we had a couple hours before I had to run to work (I covered a friend's Saturday morning shift at the library because she is running a Ragnar in Las Vegas), so we made waffles! They were really good, we will definitely be making waffles more regularly. We were running short on time though by the time we were eating them. I guess Clayton was a little too rushed because he accidentally knocked his whole plate of syrupy-powdered-sugary-waffles right on his lap. I was laughing so hard I nearly choked on my waffle. At that...

This year Clayton and I bought ROC passes, which gets us into every BYU home basketball game. Of all the college sports, basketball is definitely my favorite. We got to the Marriot Center thirty minutes early and still ended up getting in last and having to sit in the nose bleed seats. Maybe next time we'll camp out 3 or 4 hours ahead of time. Our friends Matt and Stephanie came late too, but at least we all got to sit together. The game was awesome. We creamed Weber State.

This week just flew by. I think that tends to happen more when you're really busy, there are a lot of deadlines, and you're trying to procrastinate. This week I had tons of meetings with my research group. Right now we are working on a study on pain sensitivity between genders. Interesting stuff. I also had two exams and a couple papers due. Not to mention that our ward Halloween party was on Tuesday night, the hospital Halloween party was on Wednesday night, and Thursday we celebrated the real Halloween. After the week was over we were completely drained. So instead of spending our weekend trying to catch-up and get ahead in our classes, we took it off. We slept in, watched some movies together, and went shopping.  I like to think that I'm a fairly low-maintenance kind of girl, I mean I only wear make-up, do my hair, and match my clothes on Sundays, but man do I like to shop. And since married couples budgets are particularly tight, I haven't been shopping in months...