Treehouse Museum with Grandma Stratford

While we were in Northern Utah for Thanksgiving, my Grandma Stratford wanted to make some time to spend with the Johnson grandkids.  She set up a little Thanksgiving dinner for the nine of them at her house, complete with M&M confetti on the table (she removed all of the non fall colors from the bag by hand), and ice-cream sundaes.  

Once everyone was full, we went to the Treehouse Children's Museum.  

It was a great little museum!  The exhibits felts so much more intentional than other children museums I've been to in the past.  There was a lot of information in each of the exhibits, and the whole atmosphere felt much more in control. It was still very impressive that with the buddy system we didn't lost a single child!  

Daxton's favorite exhibit was the grocery store where he was given a shopping list and had to check out each item.

In the international section we found sample houses from around the world.  I loved how quiet the Mongolian yurt was.

The puppet show in Germany was a blast.

Art & crafts

The best part of the visit was when we went to the little play the staff put on.  The roles were all filled by volunteers from the audience: Faye and Emma were bunnies, and Kelton was cast as a rock.  I admit that I was skeptical with Kelton's role because what does a rock actually do?  Ultimately he had one of the funniest parts.  The story was about a coyote who took what he wants and did what he wants with no consequences.  It wasn't until he offended a group of rocks that chased him wherever he went, that he realized he had to change.  Kelton had his fellow rocks spent the whole play bull dozing animals who stood in their way while chasing the coyote.  It was incredibly entertaining!

The Johnson Nine!

Moments in Logan

It was a quick weekend spent in Logan, but we still managed to squeeze in some great cousin time.  The kids talked us into having a cousin sleepover.  By some miracle, they all actually slept!  

The next morning they slowly woke up and quietly played video games.  I'm ok with that kind of cousin bonding.  

My mom was also crazy enough to join me on one of my training rides.  It was only 20 degrees outside that morning, so we pulled out all of the layers she had and hoped it would be enough not to freeze.  We rode up Blacksmith Fork Canyon and it was beautiful.  Our fingers and toes took turns freezing, so it was probably good the ride wasn't longer than 90 minutes.  I wish it had been warmer though because that was a beautiful ride!

On the way out of town I insisted that the kids stop at the temple to take a picture.  We don't visit the temple grounds often enough.  They were goofy while posing for the picture, but even with the overzealous hugs, these kids still love each other.  I am one lucky mom that they actually like one another.  What great kids!

Stockton's baptism

Jeremy took the boys out to Utah on a whirlwind trip to see Stockton's baptism.  They were only there for a short day and a half, but were glad to be celebrating with family.  The girls and I needed to stay home for some other events, but were at least able to participate on Zoom, which was really nice.  Congratulations boys on a great choice.

Blast season wrap up

This is the last classic season that Cambrie had with her soccer team.  Next year things get complicated with high school soccer.  If the girls needed to have one last season together, this was the season to have.  For the first time in their history, the girls won almost every game, and had one tie.  They were on fire and did so, so well.  I was so proud of them for all of the hard work they've put in to finally have a season like this.  

Coach Tom has been with them for almost three years now and was the perfect coach for this group of girls.  We were lucky to have him with us.  I'm glad that Cambrie has had such an enjoyable time playing soccer.  Next spring she is going to try out for the high school team and we have no idea how that is going to go, but we're hoping for the best.  

Congrats Extreme!  

(As a bonus, Lucy even came to watch Cambrie's last game.)

Basement progress

The basement is coming along slowly.  We've had to prioritize some things in our lives and the basement has definitely taken a backseat.  In October my mom flew out for a frantic three days to help me get the tile up in the shower.  It really was a frantic three days but we managed somehow to get all of the tiling done. I just need to grout now, but this is progress!  

I love the tile so much.  I can't wait to see everything else installed.

 

IM Florida

This is it, Ironman #12!  Jeremy has been super dedicated while striving towards this goal.  It wasn't exactly the path he thought he'd take to get to Kona, but getting that Legacy spot is a huge accomplishment.  Of course, he had to complete this last race of the season to be able to register.  Bruce had been denied his first Ironman race because of covid, and instead did the Bear Lake Brawl.  But he wanted to hear, "Bruce, you are an Ironman!" to feel like he did what he set out to do.  So these two hunks flew down to Florida for a great race.  Jeremy was hit with a bug the day he flew out, and we all really hoped he wouldn't be too sick to race.  

Gorgeous beach pics

Pre-race day breakfast feast

Race prep

Upon arriving on the warm shores of the Gulf Coast, they realized that it wasn't warm at all!  A cold front was sweeping through that weekend and made for a pretty chilly weekend.  We all held out hope that it would warm up for race day, but unfortunately it wasn't to be.  Race morning dawned cold.  The very cold air, combined with Jeremy's illness meant that he was pretty miserable before the race even began.  

I was watching from home, and as I watched the story the Ironman trackers told, I could tell that there was going to be trouble.  The pros were coming out of the water 10-15 minutes slower than they normally do.  If the swim was that bad for the good swimmers, what was it going to do to the athletes who had trouble in the water?  Jeremy and Bruce finally stepped out of the water after a very long and difficult swim.  The wind was kicking up waves, but the worst part was the rip current offshore.  Jeremy said that there were times when he put his head down to power through, only to sight and realize that he was actually moving backwards.  The buoys were moving with the current as well as the swimmers.  Jeremy was smarter on his second lap and decided to sight off the pier they were swimming alongside which meant that he was able to stay relatively straight.  The running joke between the athletes was comparing their Garmin data.  A typically Ironman swim is 3800m, but some of the athletes were up to 5800 after being pushed around by the currents.  

I saw some Ironman Live coverage of the pros hopping on their bikes.  Everyone was wearing a jacket.  Some were wearing gloves.  And Heather Jackson was wearing rubber cleaning gloves.  The wind was cold and it made for an uncomfortable ride.  Because Jeremy had been sick he didn't want to push too hard on the bike and instead wanted something nice and steady.  He did that.  There was  headwind that kept following him that was driving him crazy, but luckily that was the worst of it out there.  

While he was in T2 I started getting nervous.  He normally has about a 5 minute transition time.  I watched the clock climb from 5 minutes, to 10 minutes, to 20....  Something was definitely wrong.  Leesa was there in Florida with the guys and so I called to check in.  She had taken some bad advice and had walked way out on the bike course to watch the guys pass (but never saw them), so she wasn't anywhere near T2 to check on Jeremy.  When she finally arrived I had her check with medical and the officials in charge of drop-outs.  No one had any idea where he was.  After frantically searching for nearly 40 minutes we decided that he was probably out on the run course and there was something wrong with his timing chip.  Ultimately there was something wrong, he had left it in T2!  As soon as he realized there was a problem he had a volunteer take a picture of him to time stamp his progress.  We didn't have a single set of eyes on him the entire marathon.  We didn't know if he was hurting, if he was okay, or how sick he was feeling.  It wasn't until I got a text from Jocelyn saying that she had seen him on the course around mile 18 that we knew he was alive!  We were able to see him cross the finish line based on her information, and that was a huge relief.  He immediately found a race official to let them know what had happened, and they honored his final time.  While waiting for Bruce to finish, Jeremy was cold and shivering.  He couldn't keep food down and was so tired.  He probably shouldn't have raced based on how sick he was, but he needed this result so he powered through.  Bruce crossed the finish line and was really happy with his results.  He did a great job.  I was proud of both of those fabulous Ironmen!

Jeremy: Swim 1:39:18, T1 8:42, Bike 5:39:08, T2 8:17, Run 5:20:00, Final 13:04:26

Bruce: Swim 1:43:34, T1 16:05, Bike 6:37:34, T2 15:48, Run 6:36:49, Final 15:29:50

Lotsa Leaves

Leaf time!  We've had no snow this entire fall, which meant that the leaf situation was fabulous.  I didn't have Jeremy's dedication to pull all of the leaves from our yard into one enormous pile, so instead the kids had three separate piles to jump in.  Daxton loved the leaf pile in the front yard.  He had been given the small leaf blower to help with chores, but decided that burying it under the pile of leaves and having leaves shoot from underneath him was a lot more exhilarating.

  McKenzie is fun to watch jump in leaf piles because she's always trying to pose for that picture perfect moment.  She doesn't mind the running leaps, the tossing of leaves into the air for effect, or doing and of it more than once for the perfect shot. 

Kelton just loves burying himself in the pile.  He'll sit there silently, not moving, waiting for the perfect moment to jump out and startle someone.  

As I'm looking through these pictures, I love the motion and action captured in these kids' play.  

Daxton's face in this one makes me laugh, it's so him.

I still haven't found an easy way to clean up any of these leaves.  This year we didn't bag most of them, we simply smashed them into the garbage can.  The boys were great stompers.  We were able to get the entire backyard and half of the front into that can-that has to be a record of some kind.