I have been blessed with many wonderful friends in my life so far and all of them have helped me become the person I am today. I am grateful for my childhood buddies and the memories of eating chilly willies and singing Celine Dion songs. I am grateful for my high school friends who I learned how to drive with and spent weekends singing and dancing to our favorite music. I love my college friends who became my sisters and now I am thankful for the friends who are with me as my children grow up. There is one friend that I would like to highlight tonight and I am going to affectionately call her my Christmas friend.

Ana and I became friends our sophomore year of college when we roomed together during our semester studying abroad in Austria. We didnt really know each other at the beginning of the semester and we were both really nervous about the situation. but like always, God knew what He was doing when He put us together. We soon became best friends, sharing and doing everything together. We both started our days with our favorite granola cereal with milk and honey and a big cup of coffee. We looked forward to our cup of raspberry tea in the afternoon and would then sometimes end our days with a nice glass of wine or maybe some nutella and then say our bedtime prayers together. (* I wanted to post some actual Austria pics, but I couldn't get the scanner to work... oh well! )

Ana is my Christmas friend because she is, well in love with Christmas and all of the joy that goes along with it. I will never forget walking into our dorm room one day in the middle of October and she was listening to Amy Grant Christmas. As Christmas grew closer during that semester we took part in any festive activity we could, from baking apple pies, playing in the snow, singing Christmas carols, watching Christmas movies, throwing Christmas parties with our dear friends and having an illegal Christmas tree in our room, fully decorated of course. I will always remember one afternoon we both decided to take a nap and we woke up to the sound of Christmas music playing outside our window by a group of Austrians and their wonderful instruments. It was amazing. Life was good.

Oh I should also mention that Ana is also the person who introduced me to my husband. Yep, God definitely knew what he was doing when he put us together. :) While we were in Austria Ana mentioned a few times her good friend Dan and when we returned to the States I met and well, the rest is history!

Every year when Advent comes around I will always think of Ana and how grateful I am for her friendship and for her love of Christmas! I pray that one day our daughters will find wonderful friends like we did, and who knows maybe they will find each other in Gaming! :)

Because life has been so crazy recently, Dan and I have been in need of a night out together. So Friday night was date night and we were both looking forward to it all week. While I was getting ready I was reflecting on all of our date nights when we were dating in college. I remembered how I would be in my dorm room and I would spend an hour or more getting ready by showering, drying and curling my hair, picking out a nice outfit and putting on make-up and jewelry. I would listen to fun music and my friends and I would sing and hang out while I waited for Dan to come pick me up.




Whether it was a formal, Irish fest or just going out to dinner and a movie, it was always a fun date night.

Now life is different, but a very wonderful different. On Friday I waited until around 4 p.m. to go shower and I had plans of taking my time to dry and curl my hair and get all "pretty" for my night out with my husband. Well as you can see my plans were a little different. Here I am drying my hair, sitting on the floor with my hand on the outlet, letting Kolbe crawl all over me, and Emma squeezing my arm while trying to dry her hair too. Very different from my college days....





But needless to say, I was still able to get all "pretty" and Dan and I had a wonderful dinner out. We left at 5:30 and were back by 7... we are crazy-fun these days!



Thank you Lord for my beautiful children and for my amazing (and very good-looking, I might add) husband!

So it is a Saturday night, the kids are bathed, in their pjs and are quietly playing before bedtime. Dan is playing the guitar which provides beautiful background music for the evening. I thought it would be a perfect moment to blog...since I haven't thought about it for a long time...oh, here comes Kolbe, my blogging moment is over...

Ok, It is now Sunday morning, I am going to try this again.

Life in the Johnson household has been very busy the last few months. Along with his job at the high school, Dan is working part time as the youth minister at our parish, we are busy with Emma and Kolbe, and now we are moving... Yes, we have our house on the market and are moving to a new house walking distance from our parish and less than ten minutes from Dan's work. We are going to be renovating the house over the next few months and we are praying that during that time our current house will sell. St Joseph, pray for us!!

In the midst of all of this craziness I hope to keep the blog updated with what is going on. I don't have the best blogging history, so we will see how this goes. :)

Jennifer is getting married this Saturday...I can't believe this day is almost here!  As the Matron of Honor, I am supposed to give a toast at the reception and I am struggling with what to say.  I have 20 years of memories to pull from and so many emotions to follow up with those memories. The other factor to think about is will I be able to speak without crying...I get teared up just thinking about her in her wedding dress walking down the aisle. So I guess I will have to count on the Holy Spirit to give me the strength I need!

                                                

Our family loves Philip!  I am excited to have another brother.  He is so perfect for Jenn and I am so grateful to God for both of them!      

                                                        Emma loves her baby brother!

Sometimes she loves him a little too much. It is so cute, 

she just wants to play and she wishes he would play with her!

Uh oh, where is Kolbe...I have to remind her that he needs to breathe...

Peek-a-boo!

There is my beautiful baby boy!

Having two children is so much fun!

 I love spending time with them while they are awake and while they peacefully sleep. :)

After naptime Emma decided she wanted to put on her "bathing soup" and go "run in water."  Kolbe was still napping so I thought it would be a perfect time to go play in the sprinkler!  Emma's buddy Addison gave us a really cool crazy sprinkler that we love to play with. :)   So i went outside and moved the chairs around and got the sprinkler all ready to go.

We put on her swim diaper and bathing suit and then she escaped and came back with a stinky diaper. After changing her a second time, we put on sunscreen and we were finally ready to play outside! Suddenly the idea of running in the sprinkler wasn't a fun idea anymore...she didn't want to get wet... I was standing there thinking "you have go to be kidding me"...

I decided to call Dan and started sweeping the back deck. I look over at Emma and she found her broom and cell phone and was acting just like mommy. Of course my heart melted and together we cleaned and pretended we were Snow White and Cinderella. Just whistle while you work...too bad I don't know how to whistle!

Yesterday Stephen and Abby came over to play. It was a rainy morning so we pulled out the dress up box and attempted to play make-believe.

Super St. Stephen, Snow White, and Abigail the Rock Star made an appearance in our home!

Time just keeps flying by.  It's funny, Dan started our blog. He thought that if he wrote the first entry, that I could then keep it up. Well... four months later...

Our life has changed a lot since our last entry. Kolbe Francis came into the world on February 27, Emma's 2nd birthday.  I woke up in the early hours of her birthday with contractions every 10-15 minutes. The contractions kept me up for a few hours and finally around 4 I fell back to sleep.  I woke up around 6 and we began Emma's birthday celebration by bringing her breakfast in bed.


I had a feeling that Kolbe was coming that day and I was just trying to process the thought of having 2 children with the same birthday. :)

Emma's little birthday party was scheduled for 11 and at 11 my contractions were 5 minutes apart. Dan packed the car and we waited for our family to arrive to get Emma's party started. We sang, she blew out her candles, she opened her gifts and then Dan and I were out the door and on our way to the hospital!

                                              Kolbe was born at 4:30 p.m.   8lbs 5oz

Having two at home has been an adjustment, but so much fun!  Emma loves her little brother. She loves to hug and kiss him, except her affection can sometimes be a little too aggressive. 

She is learning how to be gentle...

Ok, so it is after 9pm, definitely my bed time, so I will have to continue my update later. Good night!

Emma played and played and danced and sang- she is beautiful!

Jesus' Birthday Cake, Delicious!

Emma blows out the candles and had a great time doing it. I am pretty sure she thought Christmas was her birthday! We explained St. Nic and Jesus' birthday. She was so cute. She can almost say Baby Jesus and of course she loved the nativity sets everywhere. They are great to play with. In fact at one point baby Jesus went missing. We asked Emma where he was, she shrugged her shoulder and said, "I don't know." Thankfully, we found him in drawer later.

Emma loved her Cozy Coupe. She can't quite get around in it yet, but she loved sitting in it watching the train go around the tree saying, "Choo Choo." Of course she was in the car with her pink princess purse, tiara, and princess heels. Daddy is ready for Kolbe and some blue. 

Mommy and Kolbe are doing great and lookin good. 

Nana and Pops got "matching" aprons from Emma, she is so thoughtful. I think Mommy, Daddy, Emma, and Mommy's "excuse" Kolbe thought new aprons would inspire baking- "cookies... cookies... yum yum."