What we've been up to...

We made it to Iowa for little Josie's Baptism!

We decided to break up our trip on the way there by stopping in Des Moines on Friday night. We went out to eat and then had a "slumber party" at the hotel. Tripp slept in his pack and play which is probably the last time he will sleep in that thing. Thank goodness its a twin pack and play so its bigger than the regular ones or he really wouldn't have fit in it!

Cash slept with Darin and I got the pleasure of sleeping with Riley. We figured that if we each slept with one of the kids, we'd have more room. Well, we were wrong. Riley might be one of the biggest bed hogs ever! I woke up once to her feet on my chest and every time I would move her over, she would yell at me in her sleep! But, she would say "Dad, don't touch my dog!" or something like that. She never yelled at me...it was always her dad's fault! =)

We got up early Saturday, ate and then got on the road. We had a mission to be at least in Cedar Falls by 11 am because the Michigan game was on. We made it with just a minute to spare. Darin got to watch his game and the kids got to play with Becca and "Livy" as Riley calls her.

Good to be out of the car!

Sunday was Josie's Baptism.

Darin and Rachel's sister in law, Roseanne were the Godparents.

The priest was great...well, what little I got to enjoy of him. I spent most of the time out in the foyer with my children.

Before church started, Tripp made his way up to the altar. He was bound and determined to get one of the pumpkins that were on display. The Priest nicely told him that he could have one after mass, but that didn't set well with little Trippy and we had to take him out.

There were more pumpkins in the foyer for him to enjoy.

So, since 2 out of my 3 children couldn't handle mass, these are all the pictures I was able to get.

Rosie and Darin with Josie.
After our weekend, my parents came back to KC with us to celebrate Thanksgiving. We also had Christmas with them since they won't be coming back until I have the baby in January. The kids got a lot of presents and were very spoiled!
Cash loves to look at himself in this picture. He had the Santa wig on and he thinks it is pretty funny!

"Papa" and Tripp.

Darin broke out the Santa costume!

Tripp was a little scared of him all dressed up like that.

Playing with toys...

Opening more toys...

Riley was very excited to get some new ponies!

So our Thanksgiving/Christmas was a fun day. Darin spent the morning cooking, the kids played and the rest of us got to relax.

It is really nice to have a husband that likes to cook!

The rest of our week was spent running some errands and doing things like that.

I am trying to get everything ready for this move, Christmas and the baby. I have just about everything on my list checked off so that is nice.

Took Tripp in for his 2 year check up.

He weighs 35 lbs and is 37 in tall.

The doctor said that he looks great.

I also took Cash in with me to get checked out. Turns out he had bronchitis so they put him on some antibiotics.

They weighed him too...38 lbs. Only 3 lbs more than Tripp!

I found a home for our cat too which is exciting. Giving her up was a little more emotional than I thought it was going to be. Riley started crying and Cash kept saying "I miss my cat."

She is in a good home though where she is getting a lot of love and attention. My friend that took her in posts pictures of her on facebook so that we can see how she is doing. I think we made a great choice. I will tell you that after all the animals Darin and I have had between the two of us, it is strange not to have any animals in this house!

So now it is on to packing up the rest of our things and getting ready to move in a couple weeks! Two more weeks and we will have a new house!

Six more weeks and we will have a new baby!

Crazy, exciting times for the Johnson Family!

SOLD!!!

We sold our house!!!

We are super excited. This has been a busy, stressful few weeks for the Johnson family, but we made it!

Our realtor came over last night, we signed the papers and she put up our sold sign.

Now, pending no major disasters, we will be moving into our new house on December 14th.

Nothing like moving, the holidays and having a new baby over the next month and a half to make the time fly by.

Luckily, I have almost all of my Christmas shopping done and I have just a few things to get for the baby.

Oh, and I need to find a new home for my cat so if there are any takers out there... Today we squeezed in a dentist appointment. Between the many fruit snacks my kids eat and the number of nights I forget to brush their teeth, I was surprised to hear that they were all members of the zero cavity club! Obviously they are members, not due to my stellar parenting job, but because they have good teeth! Here is to hoping that stays that way!

Cash and Tripp did a great job with getting their teeth cleaned. Riley was a little more challenging. She wouldn't open her mouth and they had to do the "knee to knee" position with her which is what they usually do with kids Tripp's age.

Nice.

She is a stubborn one.

I told the nurse "good luck" as she took her back and obviously she needed it.

Off to Iowa this weekend for my niece, Josie's Baptism. I am really not supposed to travel at this point in my pregnancy, but the doctor said I should be fine. Darin is the Godfather also so we would hate to miss it.

Between me and the kids and all our bathroom breaks, this 5 hour trip should only take maybe 6 or 7.

We will see!!!

Tripp Turns Two!!!

Tripp is two!!! I can't believe that he is two years old already!

I put him in the shirt that Cash wore when he turned two. Somehow Tripp managed to rip the two off of the shirt by the end of the day, but it was cute for a little while.

He got a new trike from Grandma and Grandpa. He was really excited...they all were. They all wanted rides and wanted to take turns pushing Tripp around the house. We ended up having to put it out in the garage for fear of someone driving someone else right into a wall. A hole in the wall probably isn't a good thing when you are trying to close on your house! Opening some presents...
He loves Max and Ruby and was really excited to open his Max and Ruby Birthday video.

Lately Tripp has been very interested in naming body parts so I thought he would like this dog by Fisher Price. Its pretty cute and does a lot of fun things. He does seem to really like it! I found it hard to find presents for him that I thought he would really like so I was glad that he seemed to like what we did end up getting him.

Of course, this may have been his favorite part of the day. He just couldn't wait to have a cookie.

He kept saying "two, two." He likes numbers lately too.

And he got to eat on our special plate!

Here he is mad because he finally got his cookie in front of him, but he still couldn't eat it! We had to improvise on the candle. I packed all our other candles away so we used a match. Safe, I know, but it worked. He had to blow something out right?!

I love getting pictures of them trying to blow out their candles.

In this photo I'd like to thank the photographer for reminding me that I am, in fact, swollen no matter how many times I look at myself in the mirror and think "hey, I am not too puffy."

Pictures do not lie.

I am very puffy.

Not as puffy as I was with Cash and Riley, but puffy none the less.

Tripp with his non-puffy parent.

Happy Birthday little buddy!

We love you!

On another note, I had my checkup today. I go every two weeks now.

At 32 weeks pregnant, I am measuring at 42 weeks pregnant. I have had 3 people in the last week ask me if I am having twins. Then when they find out I am not due for another 8 weeks, they really freak out. Usually those kind of comments about how big I am don't bother me at all. I know people don't mean to be mean, they are just surprised at how big my belly is.

Now, the other day when we were in Nebraska Furniture Mart, these two guys were walking toward me and within total earshot, I heard the guy say "holy s**t!"

That made me mad.

I gave him my best Care Bear stare and hoped that he didn't run into me again. As I walked through the store and thought about it more, I wished I would have thought of something snappy to say back to him because I was just getting more and more angry.

How rude.

Anyway, don't want to give him another mention on my blog so...

I am also running out of shirts that fit over my stomach. I am even growing out of my XXL men's tshirts that I bought about 2 months ago.

Should be an interesting last 8 weeks!!!

Soon to be two!

Tripp turns two this Sunday.

We have been doing a little early celebrating since about Wednesday! My mom and dad sent him these cute little cupcakes from Baked by Melissa. They are only about the size of a quarter so they are the perfect size for little kids and they are really good. They had mint chocolate chip, chocolate chip pancake, chocolate peanut butter, peanut butter and jelly, smores and a few other fun flavors.

We let Tripp pick out the first cupcake since he is the birthday boy.

Nice of us, I know!

He always picked the ones with the chocolate chips on top.They also sent him this Woody doll who he loves! Woody is his new buddy for sure!

He even needed Woody to join him for snack!

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa! Tripp loves Woody, he loves his Woody birthday card and we all loved the cupcakes!

Halloween and more...

We got our Halloween cookies done! Nothing special. We just used the Funfetti Halloween cake mix and made cookies out of them. They were really good though! I think I ate more of them than the kids did. Still pregnant...I can do that! =) Pretty sure the kids loved them too!

We ate our cookies and watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" which was on tv. Cash liked it, but Riley wanted to turn it off. She did like Snoopy though.

Here's Darin getting the kids into their Michigan gear for their game against Penn State.

Enjoying some game time!

And finally, it's Halloween day!!! The day I have been using to bribe my kids with for the last week! Better be good!

We even got our pumpkin carved. These two weren't really diggin' having to stick their hands in the pumpkin to get out all the goo.

They asked all day long to put their costumes on so they were so excited when it was actually time! Tried to get a couple pictures of them. It was really windy so Riley is trying to hold "Trippy's" hat on for him.

I love Tripp in this one!

In this picture, Tripp was mad because I took his hat off. It was really windy and it would not stay on his head. Well, he was not having that! He loved that hat and wanted it on his head, not in my hand...something that would prove to be major meltdown material later.

Getting ready for his first time trick or treating!

They did well. They lasted about 1/2 an hour. Cash and Riley just wanted to go home and eat the candy they had and Tripp was just mad because the wind kept blowing his hat off. Every time it would blow off, he would stop dead in his tracks and just start crying and saying "ma hat, ma hat!" So one of us would have to run after it.

They also did good at taking just one piece, except Riley. She would grab handfuls every chance she got. I wondered why she had about twice as much candy as the boys did.

We finally decided to go home. Darin had to carry Tripp who was in meltdown mode after losing his hat one too many times. I took the other two to our neighbors house and then we called it a night.

We did let them stay up and help pass out candy. Cash was really the only one who enjoyed that. He would get so excited when the doorbell rang. Riley would yell out "we have another customer!'

We let them eat way too much candy that night and watch some of their favorite Halloween shows that we had taped.

Cash kept saying that he would have just one more piece and then he would be done. 5 pieces later, I finally had to hide the candy away from all of them.

It was a good night!

After all our Halloween hoopla, we had a busy, busy couple days!

On Monday, we got an offer on our house!

So we are to be out of here by December 15th!

We are really excited and now we are just hoping to find a house that we can move into!

We looked at some on Tuesday and are looking at more on Friday.

We also lost our dog, Blue on Monday night.

Sunday night we heard him around 2 am. He was acting weird and couldn't walk. We thought he either did something to his leg or was getting another ear infection.

Darin took him into the vet on Monday and they said that he had had a stroke. They sent him home with some meds and told us that if he wasn't better by Friday that we might have to put him down.

Monday night, I couldn't sleep so I came down and stayed on the couch until about 1:30am. Blue was so uncomfortable and he wanted to be up on the couch with me, but couldn't get up there. Instead he got as close to the side of the couch as he could. Every time he would whine, I would just pet him a little and he would stop. It was almost like he just wanted someone to be down there with him.

He finally fell asleep which was good so I went back upstairs.

Darin got up the next morning and went downstairs to get ready for work. He came back up and told me Blue had died.

Oh, so sad.

But, I am so glad that I stayed down there with him that night until he fell asleep.

We also considered it a blessing that he died in his sleep rather than us having to put him down on Friday. We had to do that with another dog and it was really hard.

He was really in a lot of pain and he was almost 15 years old so it was probably better.

We decided to let the kids seem him before we took him in to be cremated.

We asked the kids where Blue was and Cash ran to the sliding glass door and said "He's outside. Ummm...no, he's not outside. Where is he?"

So we told them that Blue had died and that he wouldn't be at our house anymore. We tried to explain that he couldn't move anymore, wouldn't have his eyes open and stuff like that. It was hard.

Darin took them out to the garage to show them Blue one more time.

Riley just said "Bye Blue" and ran back inside.

Cash sat down and pet him and said "But, I will miss Blue."

Then he said that we could get another dog at the store.

Hmmmm...not for quite a while will that be happening!

Even today, when I put them down for their rest time, Cash asked me if we were taking our dog and cat to the new house. I asked him what dog he was talking about. He said Blue so I reminded him that Blue died and he was in heaven with God. He said "Oh ya mom, I forgot. We thank God at school."

I think he knew Blue wasn't coming with us. He was just checking to make sure that was still the deal.

I thought it was sweet.

Finally, I had my sono and they figure the baby is a couple weeks ahead of where it should be as far as how big it is.

Normally, babies are around 3 lbs at 30 weeks and mine is around 4 lbs 4 oz. So not huge, but we will see how these last 10 weeks go. She predicted that this one would be around 9 lbs when it was born. So the fact that I am measuring 12 weeks ahead of where I actually am, is not the babies fault...its all of my children's fault! I have just had a lot of big babies in a short period of time so I just get a lot bigger they guess.

Finally, I can put my mom's never ending suspicion (and secret wish) that I am having twins again to rest!

Just one big baby!