I am going to start out by saying that I have always loved anything princess. Even in college my friend Vickie and I would occasionally drive around listening to the disney princess soundtrack. Silly, I know, but joy at the same time! I love having a little girl so I can continue to play princess with her! Today Dan is helping Anthony lead a Confirmation retreat and he isn't supposed to be home until 9 or so. On long days like this I have to brainstorm and think of something fun to entertain the kids. While Emma was napping I had the idea of surprising her with a princess tea party. I made a castle tent and even decided to dress up in one of my old bridesmaid dresses and play princess too. When Emma woke up she first saw me dressed up and she just looked at me. I asked her if she wanted to join me for a princess tea party and she said no. I was shocked and all of a sudden felt very silly! But then I embraced my silliness and talked her into putting her minnie mouse dress on. When she saw castle and tea party set up, she immediately jumped into pretend mode. We had a blast! Kolbe even tried to participate and was referred to as prince Kolbe. Needless to say it was a very successful afternoon and fun was had by all!

There have been many moments today that I have thought about blogging. I get those glimpses of inspiration and now that I am here typing, I am drawing blanks. What did I do today? I did recieve two phone calls back to back from two of my college buddies. Thank you Ana and Vickie for bringing more joy to my day! I started to make invitations for emma's birthday party, but sometimes I am just not tech savy and Sheena was kind enough to help me finish them. Emma's momma and Godmomma make a good team. :)

Emma is only allowed to have her pacifier at bedtime to help her fall asleep. This is a recent development and mom and dad are thrilled, Emma is dealing with it. Every once in awhile she will say things like "i am tired, it is time to rest," just hoping to get her paci back. And then there are more desperate moments like tonight when she dramatically cried out, "BUT I Neeed my paci and I Want my paci!!" I told her that I want a shower and I want daddy to come home, but sometimes we dont get what we want when we want it. She just stared at me and then asked again. Patience is a virtue. I guess.

Today I was putting the kids down for a nap and fell asleep as well. I woke up to the phone ringing, I thought it had been hours, but when looking at the clock it was only 15 minutes. hmm. oh well. I decided to get up, grabbed a diet coke out of the fridge, got a handful of pink, red and white m&ms and decided to go upstairs to the computer and try blogging again. So here I am and I don't really know what to say! I do wish that right now I was in Steubenville with the rest of the fam getting ready for Joseph's arrival. I also wish Dan didn't have to work late tonight. However I am grateful for these few minutes of quiet and for my coke and chocolate. mmmm....
Life around the Johnson household has been busy, but great! Dan and I are going to a Theology of the Body study every monday night together and I love it! it is so fun to get out with my hubby and take a theology class without having to be tested on it. :) Emma goes to the nursery and gets to play with a lot of kids and she comes home so happy too. win win. Last night I tried to leave Kolbe in the nursery for a little while, he didn't last long, he is such a momma's boy. :) When I went to get him, Emma was in the back of the room, dressed as snow white and telling the other kids where to go and what to do. She was apparently in charge of some game they were playing and they were all having a great time! I went back upstairs with kolbe and continued to listen to the session. The priest who is teaching was just ordained last summer and he is 28. ( i think :) ) He is passionate, young and on fire for Jesus! I love listening to him teach because he is obviously so in love with his faith and vocation.
Let's see, what else, I am out of m&ms and contemplating running downstairs for more...but before I do, here are a few pictures from Christmas!

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. :)