Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from the North Pole!! We have so much to be thankful for at the Johnson Casa.. My sister is flying up tonight to spend Thanksgiving with us.. we have a friend from Bethel, AK, in town as well. Tomorrow is Linner (lunch-dinner) with the Sutterfields, the Finchers and the Lands (Finchers are Jim and Carol, Anne Stirber's (Clayton's mom) first cousins. The Lands are the Fincher's good friends, he did our landscaping this summer). I am praying that it is a great afternoon/evening. I think the food is going to be yummy and plentiful.

Things I am thankful for:

* God's provision and grace to us this last year

* Safe flights for Clayton

* Healthy kids

* A beautiful home, food in the fridge, lights turned "on"

* Fabulous friends in AK (an unexpected blessing with this move)

* Healthy family members outside AK

* many, many more....

If you are reading this blog, I am thankful for you!!!! We're going to miss our AZ family and the annual celebration and the Woods' house as well as the mega-family gathering in Duncan. We love you guys in AZ and we're with you in our thoughts tomorrow (and all the other days as well). Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

A Presidential Visit, A Sledding Misadventure and Other Randomness

Sorry to say that this post will be without pictures (insert big sigh here). Clayton took the camera to work last week and he went to Vegas this morning for this week and I still don't know where my camera is.. He took it to work last week to get a picture of Air Force One on the tarmac at Elmendorf. Yep, you guessed who our mystery guest was last week in AK. Mr Prez himself. It was his first trip to Alaska and he got off AFO during a refueling stop to "rally the troops". A two hour stop apparently constitutes a visit to a state even though those Facebook quizzes say you can't count a state as visited if you just were in the airport for a layover... anyway, I guess when you're the president, you get to make your own rules.. Anyway, there was much pomp and circumstance at EAFB concerning this visit, you can imagine. It turns out, they actually used the 525 (Clayton's flying squadron) hangar for the staging for the speech. Maybe you all didn't know, Clayton flies F22's so the 525 hanger actually stores F22 jets (weird, I know).. which the President's advisors promptly had removed (insert sound of a record being scratched and brakes being applied squeakily). Oh, and the president also wouldn't sign anything that had an F22 logo on it. So all those pictures, t-shirts, hats that had F22s on them, right, his aides informed the pilots he wouldn't sign them. Oh, and the F22s that they made the maintainers move from the hangar, they replaced with an F15 that is headed to the bone yard. And let me also add that Clayton's butt was in the alert shack (F22s on 24 hour alert to keep the Russians in check).. and there were 2 F22s flying air-support during Barack's (I'm going to call him by his first name, we're all equals here in AK) visit.. BUT, by all means, make sure the man isn't photographed with one. WHAT?!?! I digress.. He said some nice words about military families and blew other assorted smoke up people's hind-ends. I think people enjoyed lining up for his kool-aid. I mean, it was a historical event and I'm sure my kids would have appreciated the opportunity to see a real live president had I not had other plans that day. (I guess the logic for the advisors, let's lay blame where it is due (snicker, snicker), is that one of Barack's first acts as president was to effectively kill the F22 program. Forget about the billions already spent on the program that he wasted signing off on the bill...again, I digress. I guess he wouldn't want to appear hypocritical being photographed with or around an F22).

UGH!! I thought I'd feel better after the rant but I don't. Now I'm going to post a picture of us as a family.. we're not ashamed to be photographed with an F22.

And here's another one of Clayton who is not ashamed to FLY and F22 let alone be photographed in one.

(please don't let my irritation offend those of you who are big fans of his.. really, I respect the office and all that.. I do. I was just (and am obviously still) VERY ANNOYED by the behavior of his advisors..who speak for him)

********onwards and upwards*********

So we've got some snow.. and we're sledding. Clayton took the kids one evening last week and they had a great time. So good, in fact, that Kara's dinner prayer went something like this: "Dear God, thank you for this wonderful day. Thank you for my friends and my good day at school. Thank you for our food. Oh! And thank you for my awesome crash. Amen." I guess when Clayton was "launching" Kara down the hill, he ended up launching her off the sidewalk and she ended up sailing off a 6 foot "cliff"/retaining wall onto our street. Sweet! NOT!! We're thankful she wasn't hurt and we've spent much time reviewing how that is not awesome... My sweet little adrenaline junky.

Clay-Clay is good, too.. he's a hoot. He found out his friend Ryan's mom is pregnant and asked us how you get pregnant. I told him that God gives you babies. Fortunately, it satisfied him (for now). UGH!!!!

The kids and I are on our own this week, as mentioned above. Sadly, it's been below zero and is predicted to remain that way for the week. I'm sorry, but just like 115 is hot, anything below zero is cold. We've got the proper cold-weather gear but it just doesn't cut it when it's that cold. I went for a walk this morning and I forgot how unforgiving frost on the upper-lip can be.. in other words, I will be waxing my lip tonight or I will never live it down once Clayton gets home. Ah, the joys of arctic living. Wish you were here :)

Snow!!!!

We had our first "measurable" snow last night.. it was a winter wonderland (or horrorland, depending on the person/driver) this morning. I was patting myself on the back having gotten all the appropriate snow gear together for the kids. Sadly, however, I didn't bother to see if Clay-Clay's snowboots still fit. They don't. Not even close. Ooops. At least he had his snowsuit, jacket, gloves and hat. I'll find some boots before Wednesday (unless there's been a run on size 12 kids snowboots..which there probably has been).

Here are some pics of this morning.

Clay getting carried into school..no snowboots.

Kara on her way into the school.. see how dark it still is at 9:00??

IDK.. I think we got like 6"?

My personal sidewalk-shoveler. Thankfully he was going to work later today and shoveled for me.

See... I told you!!!

Visual proof that Kara got an award at school. My neighbor, who is a tuned-in, good mother, took the picture because she noted that I was, in fact, absent :)

Mother of the Year.. It's locked in.

I know all of you out there who thought you had a good shot at mother-of-the-year are going to be severely disappointed to hear that it's officially mine. Yep, that's right. You all lose and I win! Why? you ask.. well, for starters, we arrived at Clay's school this morning, on time, only to find everyone wearing their pajamas. WHAT!? How did I miss that memo?? Oh, it was in a note in the backpack that I kept forgetting in the back of Kamdon's car. Easy mistake to make. So, I'm looking at Clay who is losing his composure by the second.. I can see that my suggestion of "Who cares! You can just wear your regular clothes" was the wrong thing to say.. So, I say the next best thing "I'll go to Walmart and buy you a pair. I'll be right back". Also the wrong thing to say. Clay is MELTING DOWN, his teacher is looking at me like I'm, in fact, mother-of-the-year already.. so I grab him.. we run to our friendly neighborhood Walmart and promptly buy the first over-priced pair of Spiderman PJs we see. We changed his clothes in the car in record time and got him to circle-time just in the nick of time... disaster averted?! (but judgement NOT averted as several mothers asked me how I could have forgotten (I didn't have it in me to tell them it's impossible to forget something you NEVER KNEW!!!!) the PJs).

NOT SO FAST! So I go pick Kara up at school.. she comes running out of the building waving around an 8x11 piece of paper that looks suspiciously like an award certificate with a big smile on her face. "What have you got, Kara?", I ask. Says Kara "Remember that award ceremony I wanted to you to come to?? I got the award for Art in first grade". WTH? I remember her saying something about an award ceremony but there was nothing from her teacher or the school on this one... but seriously, feeling like a giant jackass nonetheless. Again, wondering how it is possible to forget something I was never actually informed of. Oh, and yes, there were other parents there.. just not me (and CERTAINLY not Clayton).

Considering we have 2 squadron functions this weekend and Clay having his first sleepover with Ryan tonight, I fear that I have more than ample opportunities remaining to cement in my award for the year, if not mother-of-the-DECADE, the rate things are going.

Needless to say, I am very proud of Kara for her art award and I am sufficiently repentant for making Clay forget (his words.. how I can make him forget something is beyond me) his PJ day at PRESCHOOL! Any chance I'll be able to just escape to a spa tomorrow? NONE!

Trick or Treating Fun!!

(What Halloween night looked like when we headed out trick-or-treating.. COLD!!)

We've had a fun and busy Halloween weekend up north. First and foremost, there is no snow (yet)! Some of my more faithful readers may recall my "slip" on the ice last year. At least I didn't have to worry about that whilst trick-or-treating with the kiddies. However, it was still COLD! We did our street and 2 others before we called it off. This year we had a neighborhood party at our house. Lots of families on our street have kids our age so it was fun to hang out, have chili and drink yummy fall sangria. I think fun was had by all (except for the resident grinch, Fokker.. he says no more parties.. I've heard that before).

On Friday night, we went to the ubiquitous "Fall Festival" at Clay-Clay's school (i.e., Peace Lutheran). Peace is a small little church with billion dollar views of Anchorage, the inlet and the Alaska Range. The pastor and his wife are so sweet and their little church puts on a really fun night of games, candy and hotdogs. They had been building it up all week at school so Clay was primed to go. We brought Ainsley, Chase and Ryan along for good measure. Lots of fun. Both Friday and Saturday nights make us thankful for the good friends we have in Alaska.

Candy, games and face-painting galore on Friday night.

Kara and Ainsley... Ainsley came as Ariel, Kara as a movie star (fancy).

For this party, Clay came as Jeff Gordon. He didn't enjoy the homemade mac-n-cheese. It's powdered cheese all the way for this discriminating palate.

Our spooky music and black cat deco. (Clayton made me change the channel from Sounds of the Season because he thought the pictures of skeletons were too scary.)

Monster eyeballs. Actually, they didn't turn out like the pictures I originally saw but they were tasty.

Mummy dogs. YUM!

Most of the kids who partied at our house on Saturday.

The movie star and the pirate. Clay HATED his "fake boots". I thought he looked so cute. And Kara, of course, was fancy.

Post trick-or-treating coloring and sorting of candy.

Clay-Clay just observing the rest of the kids.. he was tired and his hands were still cold from trick-or-treating. He swore he wouldn't want his gloves. He was wrong.