Family

The three of us joined Gran and Granddad (Johnson) for part of their annual Texas Tour. We met them in Abilene and were able to visit with Grandmama Adams and then headed to Lubbock to visit Great Granddad and Grandmother Johnson. We also were able to visit with the aunts and uncles - James, Lesa, Tim and Darla. It was a great time because we do not see them much being so far away. Rachel quickly bonded with Great Granddad and grandmother and held hands and walked with them. As you can see from the picture she went on a mini stroll with Great Granddad out the front door while waiting for the "bus" to take us all to dinner.

Fun in the Sun

They weather has been beautiful in Rockwall so we have been working a lot on the yard. Pulling weeds, re-mulching the landscaping and adding a few plants. Rachel spent the time riding her tricycle up and down the sidewalk. Then as daddy sprayed the yard down she wanted to be "squished" as she calls it. It was great fun.

Sports

We have said many times that Rachel has a great balance of being a girly girl and a tomboy, only time will tell which will dominate in her future. Her preschool will come to a close at the end of May, so we have been researching what summer programs we can enroll her in. We have narrowed it down to a dance class or a soccer class. She loves to dress up and dance around the house, but she also loves to be outside kicking the ball and running around. We decided to let her choose. We asked -"Rachel, do you want to dance with your friends or play soccer with your friends?" She thought about for a little bit and said "I want to kick the soccer ball with my friends." So that is it. We will enroll her in the Soccer Tots program this summer. We took a trip to the dollar store today, and told Rachel she could pick out a toy. She chose a plastic yellow baseball bat and ball. She was so excited and ran to the backyard as soon as we got home.


She is a natural! She can not only hit the ball, but does pretty good at pitching, and of course she loves to pose for the camera.

Daddy's Girl

Rachel is a total daddy's girl. She shadow's him everywhere presses her face against the glass when he goes out to get the mail. She smothers him with kisses, hugs and love each and every day. She is a mamma's girl also, but daddy holds the key to her heart for sure.

Outdoor Fun

The weather is getting nicer and Rachel is wanting to spend some time outside, which is great! So last night the three of us spent a few hours cleaning off our back patio to create some room for her chalk projects. We moved off all the extra bricks from our house being built, we moved our smoker/grill, we moved our hose, we cleaned out all the leaves, dead grass, and such. We moved our lawnmower and some other yard thing into the garage. Rachel was a big helper. But by the time we finished we were all 3 filthy and it was getting late so Rachel could not stay out but had to go straight to the tub. So this morning the first thing she wanted to do was go outside with her chalk. Not even 5 minutes later I found her covered in pink chalk...so of course....it was right back to the tub.

A true Johnson....

Rachel has now proven herself to be a true Johnson to the very core....she is now addicted to playing games on the computer. She takes a computer lab at her preschool and has learned to maneuver the mouse, pointing, clicking and so forth. She plays color and shape games at school. So we let her play some "I spy" games on the Disney website for preschoolers. In this video Rachel has to find hidden animals in Belle's forest. It gives her a list of animals and then she has to find them in the picture and click on them. She loves it!

Misc....Rachel Things

Rachel spent one morning "decorating" her hair for church...I had a hard time explaining why she could not wear the clips that day.




Rachel has been enjoying running around the house with a pillow case covering her whole body...notice the barefeet...too cute.


Rachel's preschool had a patriotic day that included a parade around the church. She looked so cute in her red,white and blue.

Putt Putt

We took Rachel on her first Putt-Putt experience today. She got tired quickly but had fun hitting and chasing the ball. It was everything we could do to keep her out of the water.

Weekend in Georgetown

We spent a couple of days in Georgetown, we were able to visit Mimi and Boppa. Matthew was able to attend the Georgetown swap fest and won many prizes. Rachel had fun feeding the fish, playing at the park, but my favorite is that she got her hair cut and it is really cute!!!

Such A Sweet Girl

Rachel loves to have her back tickled as mommy sings Jesus Loves Me, so I asked her to sing it to me. It is Rachel's feel good song. When she is tired or sick she asks for it. As Matthew has been spending time resting this week, she has sung it to him as well.

The Chair....

Rachel's Papa (Andrea's dad) gave her a nice paisly recliner chair, and she loves it. It sits in her play room, she sits it in it kicks her feet up and watches cartoons in the morning. However on this day she fell asleep in the chair...it was in a matter of seconds. She was laughing at cartoons so I took her picture, then went to show her daddy and email it to her Papa, and when I went back in she was asleep. Talk about comfort!!!

Matthew's surgery went really well, with having an abdominal hernia repaired he can not lift anything over 5 lbs for 2 months. Pray for me!! So we had to warn and prepare Rachel. Mommy told her that "daddy had an ouchie on his tummy but the dr. would make it all better. daddy will be sore for a while so you can not jump or tackle daddy, we have to be very gentle around him." Surely this would suffice, but Matthew took it a step further and said "the dr will cut daddy's tummy to make it better." She did not react, but I looked at Matthew and said "why would you tell her that?" She never really said anything, but the day of the surgery Rachel and I took him to the surgery center, dropped him off and then I took Rachel to school. I went back to the surgery center to be with Matthew, after taking him home I went to the school to pick up Rachel. Her teacher told me that Rachel spent all day telling people that "my daddy is going to cut up my stomach, but it is okay because it hurts." I could not belive it, and then I had to explain what happened.

But the best part of this experience was getting Matthew out of the house for the first time....we went to Walmart...he rode on the motorized scooter with the basket. I had to walk away from him several times while hiding my laughter, especially when he had to back it up and the cart loudly went " beep, beep, beep." I wish I had a picture.

Playing with the cousins...

The Weaver family came to Rockwall for a weekend of fun! The kids had a great time and played hard while the adults visited and watched movies. Rachel loves playing with other kids and gets very emotional when her cousins have to leave. We will need to get together with them more often. She was totally exhausted from playing hard with no naps. We tried to get her down, but she wanted to play to much. She had fun playing dress up with Anna and playing rough chasing Andrew. It reminds me of playing with my cousins as a kid. Andrew and Rachel spent the night in her playroom sleeping in their sleeping bags, who knows how late they stayed up talking, I know I could hear them well into the night.

This and That....

Not much going on lately, but we are heading to a busy week next week. On Tuesday Matthew will be having minor surgery which will require much at home care by me...and everyone knows a nurse I am not. The rough part is that the surgery is Tuesday, Rachel will be at school which is good but then on Wednesday I have a meeting with the Texas Workforce at 9am so Rachel will be home with daddy alone. Pray that she is calm and low maintenance that morning.

We have been spending the past few days cleaning out our attic, pulling down old boxes, going through old toys, pictures etc....and getting rid of some stuff while preparing other things for ebay or an upcoming garage sale. In the attic above our garage we pulled out 10-15 boxes and were able to combine them into 2! Wow that is some serious downsizing. We enjoyed looking at old photos, we each found our old drivers license from when we were 16...and old photos of when were dating...good times.

School....

Today is "crazy hat, socks, and tie" day at school. So Rachel is sporting her dad's Mickey Mouse tie, and her pretty bright Hello Kitty socks from Mimi. Check out the sweater....they just opened a new kids consignment store called "Kid to Kid" they have great stuff. I got this sweater for only $2 plus two more sweaters and a brand new jump rope all for under $10... Rachel liked the store because they have a pretty pink door that is just for kids to enter in exit from...she thought that was so cool. She is very proud of her Princess lunchbox and backpack as well. Today they go to computer lab....she will love that.

Windy Day...

The weather has been great this month. I can not believe how many warm days in the '70's we have had so far this January. We took Rachel to the park today, she had fun. We did not get to stay too long becuase the wind was so strong, I was afraid it would bother her ears. We enrolled her in our church's preschool program. She goes a couple of days a week. She seems to like it. They get to go to music class, computer lab, discovery lab and chapel. She goes to the library and gets to check out books to bring home for a few days. We feel really good about her being there. She is growing up so fast, she is no longer a baby, but a little girl. A little girl who talks constantly. We moved around some furniture in house and turned a spare room into her play room. She loves it! It has a lot of direct sunlight and all her big toys go in there, she spends a lot of time in there.

The Holiday's are over...

I am a little glad, although Rachel was very upset when we took down the Christmas decorations....so we went to Target and bought a small fiber optic lit 32inch tree for her room. We let her decorate it with plastic ornaments and it serves as a great nightlight. Plus it let's her celebrate Christmas all year long! We had a great Christmas, Rachel decorated cookies and a gingerbread house with Gran in Tenessee, she played games and dress up with her cousins in Alabama, and spent 2000 miles in the car over a 10 day period! She is such a trooper!

How to Unwrap a Christmas Gift...

We celebrated our family Christmas on Wed night since we leave town early Friday morning. So we picked up Rachel from Daycare, had dinner and let her open gifts. It was a lot of fun. In this video she explains how to unwrap a gift, we love that when she sees the doll...her first words are..."hot dog!" She learned that from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse show...then sits patiently as Daddy tries to unbox the Ariel doll. As she grows impatient she tries to open another but is told to wait...then as mommy grows impatient the camera shuts off... :-)

Getting Ready for Christmas

It is that time of year where we pull out the Christmas decorations and begin hiding gifts. Rachel loves Christmas, she talks about it and Birthdays all year long. She loves to look at Christmas lights...so of course we went all out this year. I even decided to let her deocrate the tree in Mickey Mouse rather than my beautiful Victorian Tree, but her smile is always worth it. I will try to get some pictures of the house up later, but for now wanted to attach some pictures of Rachel decorating the tree. Love the hat!!! Of course these pictures will also make it to our annual Christmas card along with some others...We have a busy month ahead of us, next week we go to Georgetown to see my mom and step-dad, then we leave Rachel there and Matthew and I head to Houston. We have tickets to see the Titans beat the Houston Texans! We are very excited. Then the week of Christmas we head out to Memphis for a couple of days to see Matthew's parents, and then swing down to Dothan Alabama to my sister and her HUGE family - husband Chris, and the kiddos - Allison, Nicholas, and Grant, and then of course there is Nellie the dog. Then we head back to Memphis for an overnight stay and then head home. Whew...December will go by so quickly. Oh yeah...and today we are driving to Lake Whitney to see my dad and of course Sebastian who we miss a lot...Stay tuned for more posts..since I am home now I hope to do this more often.

The Mug Shot

On Saturday Rachel, Matthew and I took our weekly shopping trip to Walmart. Rachel always likes to bring her baby doll in and then have someone else hold it. Today she wanted her baby and her new purple necklace. We were not even all the way in the store before Rachel decided she did not want to wear the necklace. She proceeded to put it in my purse for later. Matthew and I seperated to make the trip quicker, and Rachel stayed with me in the cart. I was heading down the baby isle to get pedialyte and found some really cute pink gloves on sale for just $1. So I grabed them, a 2 for 1 sale. I handed them to Rachel and she got excited as she always does when it comes to buying her something. I then continued my shopping. As we were in the check out lane Rachel began to unzip my purse, I saw her and said ... "hey - you do not go in mommy's purse without asking." She replied "but I have to get my stuff." I just shook my head and unzipped it so she could grab her necklace. To Matthew and I's shocked expression I found the pink gloves in my purse. She STOLE them! Not really, she does not know any better, but wanted to put her gloves in my purse with her necklace. We just started laughing, pulled them out and put them on the counter with the rest of our groceries. Matthew immeadiately began checking all her pockets for more loot. Thankfully there was none. I am so glad she remembered to pull them out of the purse or else this may have truly been a real mug shot.

November is here...

The weather is getting colder and as we prepare for church Rachel has picked out her long sleeve dress, white tights and brown shoes. Then she asked to wear clips in her hair, and then asked me to take her picture. She is such a little girl and yet, she plays like a little boy. Gotta love her tough and feminine sides!