Gingerbread Houses

Every year Jeremy's extended family gets together for a gingerbread house marathon.  Each family creates one, two, or sometimes three amazing masterpieces.  We haven't always been able to participate since we live out of state, but this year we were able to make it-even if it meant leaving a Utah State football game a quarter early.  Our house this year was inspired by the girls and their current love of fairy houses.  Jeremy is always the creative genius behind this houses and I'm there to provide artistic backup and help with the manual labor.  Jeremy tried something new this year and wrapped the warm gingerbread around various sized cans to make a round house.  It wasn't perfect but we found that the resulting cracks actually inspired Jeremy to carve a wood grain design into the entire exterior of the house.  I loved the effect. 

We meet at Lynnette and Jan's house with our prepared gingerbread, bags of candy, and pounds of powdered sugar ready to be made into frosting.  After finding a corner of a table to work on we get started and it is nothing but sugar and chaos for the next five-six hours. 

While Jeremy was assembling the walls and roof of the home, the girls and I started getting some of the details ready.  We needed bricks for a chimney and the girls were perfect little helpers taking off all of the tootsie roll wrappers and even shaping a lot of the bricks. 

They lost interest after that and started running around like sugar-high crazies with their cousins.  I didn't realize until I looked at the pictures afterwards how busy they actually were. 

 

A picture of the representing Rogers' clan.  Dantley brought a friend, Telly, and actually had to complete his house this year. 

With the structure built it was time to add all of the fun whimsical elements.  We had a gummy worm thatched roof, vines crawling up the walls, lollipop gardens, a gold coin bridge over a fish pond, laffy taffy twisted trees, and frogs climbing all over the property.  All those details required a lot of frosting to hold in place, and at one point I was caught unplugging the frosting tip. 

Five hours later we had finished our creation.  We were pretty proud of our fairy house and the girls were ecstatic.  They want real fairies to be able to live in it.  We had to leave pretty quickly at that point to drive back up to Logan and we crossed our fingers that the house would survive the drive there and eventually to Colorado.  Luckily (and very surprisingly) it made it in one piece. 

 

 

A quick pic of Dantley and Telly's completed house. 

And this was one of Jeremy's favorite's that night, a trailer made by his Uncle LaMar and Aunt Loralie.  We had a blast and it's always fun to see what Jeremy's family can create.

Johnson family pics

Only days after Camille got home from her mission we took some family pictures. My Aunt Barbara helped us out and I really like how they turned out. I have also decided that it is really tough to get three little kids, and six big kids to smile all at the same time!

Daddy-daugher love

Our little fam

"Just" the girls

This one...makes me smile

 

My princesses

 

I love the sun effect of this one

Hermana Johnson returns home

My sister is home from her mission!  I think I may have been counting down her release date more than she was.  I was really excited to see her come home.  We got to the airport right on time but it still seemed like an eternity before she showed up at the top of that escalator.  I was so afraid that I wouldn't recognize her right away.  I know that sounds silly, but I didn't want to miss the moment.  When she reached the family you could tell she was in total shock.  Really, we all were.  Hugs went all around.  New kids and grown kids were handed to her as she met them again.  And there was a lot of crying. 

The neices waiting patiently.

 

The rest of the airport greeting party.

Once our tears and smiles were under control, we decided to head to Spaghetti Factory for lunch.  That's a restaurant that always seems to be a family favorite and I remember going to for a lot of family celebrations. 

Camille's request before we headed back up to Logan was to visit Temple Square.  I think she really wanted to see the temple, and she was also looking for a sister missionary she had spent time with at the MTC.  We weren't able to find the sister, but it was pleasant walking around Temple Square enjoying the spirit that is there.  The next few days included a lot of adaption for all of us having Camille home.  It was so nice to see her again and to have her excitable missionary spirit rub off on all of us.  I am so glad she is home!

Chilly days

Autumn has finally decided to come to Colorado.  It was summer, then winter, then summer again all within the last three weeks.  But now, it's officially fall.  We had a brief snowstorm last weekend and the girls couldn't wait to play in the falling snow.  Cambrie tried catching snowflakes on her tongue.  McKenzie lasted about two seconds before she realized that snowflakes are cold on her face and couldn't feel the snowflakes on her tongue anyway. 

The girls grabbed their umbrellas so they could still play without getting wet. 

After a very warm mushroom soup for dinner (which the girls wouldn't touch) I decided to treat the girls to caramel apples (something they would eat).  I made a simple caramel dip that they dipped their apples in, then they rolled them in crushed up candy bars.  Twix bars were the favorite....I helped myself to McKenzie's left overs.  It was really a fantastic fall day.

Soccer Star

Cambrie's last soccer game was today.  She was a little rusty because of game cancellations the last few weeks due to wet weather, but she still had a good time.

 Cambrie has three other friends on her team; Audrey, Brynlee, and Ella.  We all quickly learned that Cambrie and Audrey cannot play on the same field at the same time.  If those two are together they hold hands, hug, and look for Jack Frost when they should be chasing the soccer ball.  Cambrie and Ella played together a lot and were a pretty good team.  But today was the first time that Cambrie, Ella, and Brynlee were all able to play at the same time.  It made is fun for us to cheer for all of them.  I don't know if we were cheering because we were trying to forget that it was slightly chilly out, if there were three girls to cheer for, or if we were just making sure we got all of our cheering out since it is the end of the season.  The opposing team today was very, very good and our girls only scored one goal.  Luckily our girls don't bother keeping track so they have no idea how whipped they were today. 

While Cambrie is playing, McKenzie has two choices: to sit back and relax,

or to kick one of the extra balls around with her dad.  Honestly, she didn't always enjoy the games but she made it to every one. 

Before all of the girls ran off I snapped a picture with the four of them.  I don't know who will play next season, but I hope we always have another friend on our team. 

After the girls ran through their last fan tunnel, they each received a medal.  When Cambrie received her T-ball trophy she couldn't believe her luck and thought that it was the coolest thing ever.  Well, her medal now ranks up there pretty high on her "awesome" list. 

Soccer star!

Happy Halloween

We love Halloween around here.  I'm not sure if it is the excitement of the changing seasons, the anticipation of the candy, or the joy of costume wearing but we have a great time.  Each year we carve pumpkins I expect the girls to be over their repulsion of the pumpkin guts.  Yet each year they grimace and groan as they pull out the slime from inside. 

 

When it came time to trace out their patterns on the pumpkins, Cambrie chose a ghost and McKenzie chose a spider.  The patterns had little holes punched in them so the girls could color the pattern with markers instead of poking it with pins. 

 

McKenzie was sure acting scared of her spider when she was done. 

 

We were able to get a picture of the girls the next morning with their creations. 

 

Waiting for trick-or-treating to start is the longest part of the day for my girls.  They had planned on going out with our neighbor, Jacob, and meeting up with Audrey and Brynlee for part of it.  But waiting for their friends seemed to take forever for the girls!  The sun was setting as the girls were getting ready to leave and I love the sunset colors in the background. 

 

The girls wandered around outside while waiting for their friends to arrived.  As they walked next door they had a spooky surprise.  Jacob's dad had installed a spooky skeleton would popped up from his coffin when kids called out "trick-or-treat!"  Throughout the night I heard so many girls crying outside because they were scared.  It was actually quite entertaining. 

 

The princesses were escorted by a Batman/Spiderman combo of a friend. 

 

This year Jeremy took the girls out while I stayed at home passing out candy.  I've never actually had that job before but it was fun to see all of the kids in their costumes.  The whole night I had the line from the girls' story book rolling through my head, "The night was filled with laughter and the cries of 'trick-or-treat!"  The girls got back about an hour later and were totally exhausted, but they had enough energy to dump out their buckets to count their bounty.

 

  McKenzie immediately stuffed two, and then three lollipops in her mouth at the same time.  She just couldn't decide which one was best. 

 

I had turned on Phantom of the Opera to watch while the girls were gone and they got back just in time for "Masquerade."  McKenzie loves her princess dress because it spins so remarkably well, and she couldn't pass up the opportunity to dance to the music.  The girls were so tired that they went to bed remarkably well and have been happily munching on their candy ever since.  Happy Halloween folks!