Lunch at the Counter

I took this picture last week of Kimball sitting at our counter eating lunch. He is such a big boy! He does great sitting on the stool and eats lunch at the counter every day. I love having a counter for him to sit at when I work in the kitchen. He loves to watch me do my “kitchen work” and in our old house always wanted to sit on the counter. Now I tell him he can just sit on a stool at the counter and that keeps him happy.

I choose the flies

Ever since we moved to our new house it seems we always have a few extra guests each night that end up in our room. We always find one or two flies that persecute us. A small annoyance, but manageable.

This morning I found an ant infestation in our mailbox. It looked like the ants were moving all of their soon to hatch babies into our box. It was rather disgusting. I wished Joseph were home to deal with the problem. While I was taking care of the ants I discovered a rather large spider. (Since it was on MY driveway it was too close for comfort. I have had some rather unpleasant experiences with spiders over the past 4 years…usually me in the bathroom with spiders. I now have a fear of large spiders.) After taking care of the ants I tackled the spider. Since he was big it took some effort to kill him…he was too big for me to just step on comfortably. I finally broke out the Raid and after two squirts he died.

A friend of mine thought it was probably a small wolf spider…harmless but huge. Here is a picture of it. I threw a pen in the picture to help with the picture scale. It was a cap less Papermate pen.





So, I will happily face a few flies each night in exchange for a mailbox free from ants and no large spiders.

Homeowners!

Joseph and I bought a house today! We are really excited to be homeowners. It has been a whirlwind adventure the past two weeks, but at least it is all over. We saw our house for the first time two weeks ago today and we both really liked it from the beginning. We kept this under our hat for the most part incase something didn’t work out. The Lord has been very generous in extending to us many tender mercies. Our loan went through very quickly, the inspector admitted that he rarely does next day inspections but had an opening for us, and we were able to find renters to fulfill our current lease.



We bought a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house. It also has an office so that will be nice. The office would be a 4th bedroom if it had a closet, but it doesn’t. The house is in a good neighborhood and is only a few blocks from the elementary school. The middle school is probably a ½ mile away. Joseph’s work is a mile and church is just over a mile.

I guess the only negative is that we are moving again while I’m pregnant. We moved about 6 weeks before Kimball was born two years ago. Being extra tired and sore aren’t the most enjoyable, but it is only for a few days. I told Joseph I didn’t want any more moves when I’m pregnant! I will also miss the pecan tree we had, but that is small peanuts, or should I say pecans, to owning our own home.

The Trend

Today was our ultrasound for the baby. Unfortunately, Joseph was unable to come to the ultrasound because he had a full day of surgery. I called him with the news as soon as I got home. We are excited about the new baby.
The baby will keep the original due date of January 11th, but a c-section has tentatively been scheduled for January 7th.
So, in Annette’s family the trend is to either have all boys or all girls, but no mixing of genders. We have wondered over the past 21 weeks if we would carry on the trend tradition or if we would break the trend and have a mixed family. And now for the unveiling… our family will break the Johnson tradition of one gender families. It’s a girl! We are excited. All along, Kimball has maintained that the baby would be a girl. He was right! She is almost 1 pound and seems healthy from what could be detected during the ultrasound.

Ready, Set, GO!

Within the last week Kimball has learned a new phrase: “Ready, Set, Go!” Kimball loves his new Hotwheels. In the beginning Joseph said “ready, set, go” so Kimball would know to watch the cars; Kimball is now the one to say “Set, go!” We frequently hear him saying it to himself when he plays with his cars.

Kimball also has two favorite cars. He calls them “Lloyd cars.” A brother at church gave Kimball the two cars and we told him they were from Brother Lloyd. We would ask him where his cars from Lloyd were so he started calling them “Lloyd cars.” The Lloyd cars are also some of the fastest cars so that adds to the attraction.

The Birthday Boy!

Sunday was Kimball’s birthday and he is now 2! It is hard to believe he has been a blessing in our family for the past 2 years. The time really has flown.



In order to prepare Kimball for his birthday we talked about his birthday ALL week. We tried to tell him what it would be like, but he didn’t seem to grasp the idea. Maybe next year he’ll understand better when we say it’s his birthday.




For his dinner we had Spaghetti Carbonara, broccoli, and grapes. All three of those are favorites with Kimball. He wanted yellow cake, but I spruced it up with a ganache frosting.

Kimball received a lot of great gifts, but his favorite new toys are the matchbox cars and the racing track to go with it. Joseph likes it too!





Kimball loves stickers. He was excited to get new ones.


Kimball with Mom.

Just Like Daddy

Kimball’s current mission in life is to be “just like Daddy,” and that is how it should be. Joseph and Kimball are the best of pals right now. They even have a special greeting that they do when Joseph comes home from work. Joseph rides his bike since he is only 2 blocks from the office and 4 blocks from the hospital. He usually calls before coming home and I open the door so Kimball can watch out the storm door for Joseph. I always know when the two of them see each other because Kimball starts shaking his head in their special way. I made the mistake yesterday of doing their greeting to Kimball and he took off for the door saying “Daddy”. I had to quickly smooth things over before Kimball started to cry because Daddy wasn’t really home.

So, I go into Kimball’s room last night as we are starting to get him ready for bed and I saw this:




Before bed each night Joseph will play some hymns on the recorder while I change Kimball’s diaper and get him in his pajamas. Last night Kimball was in Joseph’s chair playing the recorder and had the hymnal wide open. He would play a few notes and then turn to the next song and that continued until Joseph went into Kimball’s room.

I’m glad Kimball and Joseph are buddies. I don’t mind in the least because Kimball saves plenty of hugs and snuggles for me.