The Johnson Clan

Last Tuesday we were having a Johnson family conference call when Scott told us that Kathy's health was really going downhill and that he thinks we need to be there soon. We booked flights that night and flew to Utah the next morning. We were picked up from the airport and drove straight to the hospital where Kathy had been for several weeks. We had been getting updates about her from the family ever since she was diagnosed with brain cancer last October, but there was always a disconnect since we live so far away. We were never there to watch the progression of her sickness, and we think the family may have been downplaying how severe her symptoms and complications were. When we came to her hospital room she was in a coma and was having a lot of difficulty breathing. She had contracted pneumonia and had been in a comatose state since Monday. The doctor's had her on the strongest antibiotics they had, but it was going to take 2-5 days for them to kick in. In the mean time ...

A friend from our Ward has a brother who gets free tickets to the Sabres games. Hockey is as big in New York as football is in Texas. So just like the Dallas Cowboys, although the Sabers aren't a really good team all of Buffalo is fiercely loyal to them and the games are a big deal. Clayton and I were invited to go to their game last night, but Clayton had to go on a business trip out of town. I brought my friend Maria as my date. Turns out she loves hockey about as much as I do, so I'm glad we had each other to talk to during the boring parts. Don't get me wrong, I like hockey... but only when a fight breaks out or someone scores. The company was fun though, and it was a true Buffalo experience. Plus I was glad to get out and do something with friends while Clayton is away. I have a plan for every night this week so that I'm not bored.

We have started putting up Christmas decorations. We bought a tree that was fairly small in our minds, and then we were surprised by how big it was when we took it home. The only place we could find that it would fit is in the kitchen. Getting the tree this year has been quite the ordeal. Last year we bought our little tree from Home Depot, set it up, decorated, easy lemon squeezey. This year we bought our tree from a similar store and brought it home to find that it didn't fit in our tree stand. It still had a few little branches sprouting from the bottom of the stump. So what did we do? We grabbed Clayton's super old, super dull, samurai sword, took the tree outside, and tried to fix the problem ourselves. Well the sword broke after a couple of swings, which to be honest I was kind of expecting, and we ended up trying to saw off the branches with a pocket knife. After an hour of setting up, we finally got the tree to fit in the stand at a slightly crooked angle. ...