Walking, Walking

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I walk with two friends along the Rillito River trail. We walk between 3 and 4 miles (we think...we haven't actually measured it or anything). Since this is something I do so often, I decided to take a picture of us all and post it. So here we all are. Tess is in the middle with her son, Timothy. She is also pregnant and due in July. Jennifer is on the right with her two daughters, Emily and Merideth. It's funny to watch the kids try to interact with one another as we walk. Each of us mothers brings treats for our child and they share as we walk, reaching out their little hands to see if they can touch each other and pass the food between the strollers without dropping it. It's hilarious! They are getting quite good and we only have spilled food every once in a while. It's ironic because we tend to have more toys and such somehow find its way out of the strollers than we do food. Hopefully the weather will continue to be cool enough in the mornings so that we can keep going. If not, we may have to switch to swimming. :)

Berlynn Noelle Johnson

I made it down to Vegas to see Stacey's baby this past week and I'm so glad I did. She is the cutest little baby! She was born at over 8 pounds, but I'm telling you I have no idea where she's hiding all that weight. Of course, I'm just used to holding James who's about 25 lbs now and was in the 90-95 percentile for his height, so he's my little giant. But Berlynn was so much fun to hold. She's is surprisingly alert for being so young. And even though babies shouldn't be able to focus, she would follow people's faces with her eyes when they came into her line of vision. It was pretty amazing. When she cries, she has a little squeak to it and it's just so adorable. I just wanted to squeeze her! We're happy to have you in our family Berlynn.

Congratulations to Stacey!

My younger sister, Stacey, had her baby, Berlynn Noelle, on April 18. She was born at 4:56am and weighed 8lbs 5oz and 20 inches long. I'm supposed go to Las Vegas tomorrow to go visit them, but I had food poisoning or the stomach flu this weekend, so that trip may not happen because I would bring the flu to them. I'm going to wait for a few days to make sure that no one else in the house gets it. But I just wanted to let everyone know how excited I was to be an aunt...again.

New Title

As you who are very astute may have noticed, my blog has a new title. Paul had come up with the last title, and I never really liked it, but I wanted him to feel a part of the blog. I've decided that putting his picture in and letting him help me with some of the entries is good enough. After all, the title is a very important part of the blog, is it not? So I just want to ask each of you whether you think this is a good title for my blog in particular because I decided I wanted it to be something that was unique to me. I think this is one of the sayings that I use the most, so I figured it was very fitting. What do you all think? Can you think of anything better that describes me? I'm just not very good at this...

The Real Easter Egg Hunt

James got the hang of this Easter Egg Hunt a little better than the first one in which he participated. Because he's still so young, we decided to put raisins in the eggs so he didn't have an overload of sugar. I think this was pretty smart on our part because he was better in church on Sunday than I think I've ever seen him (well at least during Sacrament Meeting) which was very good because I was asked to lead the singing, so Paul got to take care of James all by himself.

Peter Piper's Pizza

Paul and I have been seeing commercials for Peter Piper's Pizza since we moved here to Tucson and we decided the other day that we needed to take James there so that he could play some of the games. It was disappointing, to say the least. We're used to things like the Nickelcade in Orem and the Showbiz Pizza (which is now Chucky Cheese), so we expected lots of games and pretty mediocre pizza. The pizza was pretty much what I thought it would be (although the pepperoni tasted unlike any other pepperoni I've ever tasted), but the games were pretty lame. There were only about 20 games in all. Of those, about 4 or 5 were out of order. But we managed to still keep James' interest with the Kermit Car and the driving simulator (he loves to sit on my lap in the car and play with the steering wheel when we're picking up Paul from work, so I figured he'd love the simulator as well). I do have to say, though, that we can't charge Peter Piper's with false advertising. For those of you who don't know, their catch phrase is "Peter Piper Pizza's the one, where the food's as good as the fun". And unfortunately, the fun was just as good as the food--which I wasn't expecting. I guess it's one of those places where things seem so much cooler when you're a kid...cause James seemed to have as much fun there as anywhere. So in reality, it was a bust for Paul and I (kids that we are at heart) but to the true child, it was very entertaining.

This is NOT James' favorite toy

A few months ago, Paul and I were at the Dollar Store just looking around (I don't know if you've ever done that, but it's something fun to do if you're bored). I'm not sure what possessed him to get it, but Paul thought that James would really love the sound of a whoopy cushion. When we finally got it home that night, James was completely unimpressed, so we haven't really shown it to him again. Today, I decided to see if he was any more excited by the noise, but this was his reaction (hopefully you can see it). I'm such a terrible mom that all I could do was laugh.

Adorable Moments

I drive Paul to work every day because we only have one car, which means sometimes the mornings are a bit of a rush to get everything ready to get him to work on time. (As a side note, I never appreciated how my mom was able to get all of her children up and ready and out the door with a lunch and all the homework to turn in, and on top of everything else, remember to make my dad a lunch and get everything all done without so much as breaking a sweat). Anyway, so this morning I was rushing around trying to get everything ready for Paul to get to work on time and I came around the corner and saw this and I had to stop and take a picture. James LOVES brushing his teeth!

Another adorable moment happened yesterday when I was sweeping and wiping up the kitchen floor. James always wants to play with the broom and dustpan, so I've given him a small brush and a dustpan so he can feel like he's doing the same thing. He's finally started to understand how to do what I'm doing.

Trip to the Zoo

I realized just now as I was looking back through the blog that I didn't write about the zoo trip that we did a couple of weeks ago with this same group. I can't say that James pays much attention to the animals themselves yet, but he did enjoy a few of the exhibits. I think the more that we go, the more he'll like it. Luckily, the price for a year pass is very good, so I think we'll have to get one of those so that we can have that be one of the things we do fairly often.
It was spring break here on the day we went, so the exhibits were pretty packed, but it was still fun to get out and to show the animals to James that we read about in his books. I don't think he really understood that these were the same things, but he'll get it soon enough.
Unfortunately, two memorable things happened that day--one to me and one to my friend.
James lost a shoe at the zoo that day (I know, not a huge deal, but very frustrating because he wanted to get down and walk, but I didn't want him getting out without shoes on). The other thing was one of the women that I went with lost her daughter for about 10 minutes. It was obviously very scary for her and we all ran around the zoo searching for her. Emily (the little girl) is only three and gets scared of people she doesn't know very easily, so, needless to say, she was very frightened by the time mother and daughter were reunited. It reminded me of the time I got lost at the Thomas and Mack Center when we were there for a regional conference (that's the big sports arena on UNLV campus). I haven't thought about that much since it happened, but as a mother now, I realize how scary that is to realize you have no idea where your child is. Hopefully that will never happen to me!

Easter Egg Hunt

Each Tuesday, there is a play group in which James and I are involved and today's play group was and Easter Egg Hunt. The women who are sort of "in charge" of the group have set it up so that each week has a letter theme and todays was E (obviously for Easter). We each had to bring twelve eggs so that we could have enough for all the kids (some parents have 2 or 3 kids so it worked out so that they only had 4-5 each). It was hilarious to watch the kids go around and gather the eggs because you can really tell the difference in ages. James is the youngest that can walk, so he was the most distracted and ineffective hunter of them all. I helped him find his first one (well they were all sort of just lying there on the ground, so they were really easy to spot) and he picked it up and shook it to hear the candy inside. He was so excited about the first one that he hardly had time to go around and get any more. But once he saw that the other ki They are sizing each other up ds' baskets were getting more full than his, he decided that he would rectify the situation by trying to Easter Egg Hunt from their baskets. Luckily I caught him in time and just brought him over to where some unclaimed eggs were. I think he had alot of fun and I can't wait to do it on Sunday with Paul's help, so that he can be there to enjoy it as well. Plus, James can take his time because he won't be racing against other kids to try to get the eggs first.

James with his Egg Hunt booty

Ramblings

I am lucky enough to have two friends from my old ward who have invited me along to their M-W-F morning walks along the Rillito River trail. We do three miles each day and it definitely makes me feel better having done something that day. But today Jennifer and I talked about our physical goals for the upcoming little while and I decided that I need to share them with you all so that you can keep me on track. We both decided that we would love to do a half marathon. Now I haven't decided whether I want that to be a real one, or one that I just get out there and decide I'm running 13 miles, but I really think I feel a sense of great accomplishment either way. Anyway who knows me (especially Paul) knows that I didn't have a great love of running when I was a teenager and into early adulthood. Actually, to tell the truth, I hated every time I ran. I felt AWFUL each time I would attempt that first run after a long, long time of no running, and it kept me from ever trying a second run. Every six months or so, I would forget how bad I hated it the last time and try it again, but it never stuck until now. After I had James, I wanted to so badly to be back to the size/weight that I was before I got pregnant with him that I was willing to try anything...even running. And I've found, now that I've done it for a few months now, that I actually quite enjoy it. It's the first week or so that's REALLY bad, and then you slowly acquire the running legs. I'm still not very good, but I'm getting better bit by bit, day by day. Anyway, so after that long explanation, that is how I came to the decision of today that I would like to run 13 miles. I don't want to really shoot myself in the foot and try for a whole marathon the first time and never want to run again after I do it. So I figure if I take baby steps, then I'll eventually be able to run faster, longer. I've tried running on a treadmill near a mirror and watch myself so I can fix my form, but all I can do is just watch as my face gets beet-red and my semi-normal form slowly creeps into the wounded-deer form that is quickly becoming my trademark. But all that aside, I need you all to keep me honest and keep me in line. Ask me how I'm doing so that I don't give up. :)