Falling Apart!

Before sharing the exciting news of the day, everyone should send some good thoughts/prayers/positive chi to Adam, who broke a rib this week. He's functioning and doing pretty well, but is in a lot of pain, and will be for the next couple of weeks. As far as tragedies go, this is very, very minor, but it surely doesn't feel so to Adam when he sneezes... He broke it when he fell flat on his back while teaching others how to curl on Tuesday. The fall knocked the wind out of him and he remembers worrying that he broke his cell phone when he heard a crack. Well, his cell phone was safe in his front pocket, but when he was still in pain on Friday, went to the instacare, where he learned he did indeed break his rib. He's got a wrap to wear when he wants and some ibuprofen. Ouch.

In better news, Grace lost her first tooth this morning! I can no longer deny she's growing up... She's quite excited and can't wait for the tooth fairy to come tonight.

Takin' Back the Blog

Okay, so it's been nice that Adam's been keeping you all posted, but I figured it was time for me to start blogging again and reclaim this space. I won't whine about how busy I've been or anything either. But, here is one thing I've been doing this week:

This is a good friend's new baby at ten days old. Her husband is an artist and that is one of his paintings Luca is in front of. It's not everyday you get that kind of backdrop. :-)






Since I last wrote, it's also snowed ANOTHER ten inches (the Adam-created mountain in our front yard is now at least seven feet tall...) and just starting to snow again now. It's absolutely beautiful here. And cold. This morning was 5 degrees when I was walking the girls to school. Yikes! Fortunately, there's never a reason to be cold when you have knitters who love you. :-)

And, yes, Jenn and I are now completely CPR/first aid certified. The idea of anything happening in my presence is terrifying, but the thought of not knowing what to do if it did terrifies me even more. So, I feel a bit better now. Now Jenn and I are insane enough to consider taking our Brownies up to camp this summer... It's an organized program with camp counselors and everything, but this is a VERY energetic group of 7-8 year old girls. We may need alcohol (when we get back, of course...).

Parenting is easy

Karyn hasn't been posting much lately because she's been "busy." Today, she and Jennifer are in the big city (that's Salt Lake City) doing first aid training. Ironic that the guy without first aid training is here taking care of the kids.

Fortunately, parenting is easy. Just give the kids cookies, as I demonstrate today:



And other times, they just lie there reading and writing:

Or plummeting down a mountainside (in their new sleds!) . . .

On Monday, we got another 10 inches of new snow, so Tycho and I walked up the street to the trailhead and went skiing:

Now, where did those kids go? We need to bundle up to go get Anna, walk home, take a nap, and then get ready for dance and violin. I'm fairly sure that Karyn and Jenn are out drinking Cosmopolitans.

Rock Star

This is Grace, posing with her ultra-hip shades from the eye doctor.  With them, she plays the role of a rock star, which has extended from yesterday afternoon all through this morning.  (She wore them to school today.)  The doctor said she may be dilated for today, but everything about her eyes is just fine, aside from some plumbing that's a little narrower than most, leading to a few more infections and some occasional tearing when she's watching a movie.

Graceful Skiing

Grace decided that trying out skis for the first time would be a good idea today, especially since there's snow up to my knees in our back yard. I (Adam) skied with her for a while, breaking the trail. She kept asking for more trails and eventually had a whole network of them crisscrossing all around the yard. Then she stayed out even after I went in, just skiing, falling, getting up, skiing, repeat. She says she likes skiing more than ice skating.

Looping back from around the swingset.

This is just after having fallen, now back on her feet and ready for another loop.

STILL coming!

Update:
It still hasn't stopped snowing! Crazy, crazy. We have gotten at LEAST 18 more inches from what we already had. We've got a mountain in our front yard that is about five feet high. Walking the kids up the hill this afternoon was quite the adventure, since most people hadn't shoveled and the streets up here weren't yet plowed, so we were walking in snow that went up past their knees--even when crossing the streets! Thank God Adam is on sabbatical and could help shovel:



What's even crazier is that apparently SLC only got an inch this morning...

It just keeps comin'!

The snow around here just keeps a comin'.  It's awesome!  It seems like for the past couple of years, there has been a storm here and there, but the snow had time to melt in between and the storms never really amounted to much.  Well, the snow took its time getting here (with record highs and nearly no precipitation in November), but it's here now.  We're in the middle of getting yet another snow storm--and it must be our fourth or fifth in a row since just before Christmas.  Here's the girls getting ready to walk to school this morning (with helpful, on-sabbatical-Adam):

2007 in review

Living with a photographer and having 3 . . . no, 4 cameras in the house and having other people show up with cameras means we have a lot of pictures. So, one fun thing we get to do is sort through them at the end of a year. Here's one organization of it, 60-some pictures in a slideshow (together with a plug for Brandi Carlile's music):

http://kjohnstonphoto.com/2007hits.mov

Feel free to holler if this doesn't work. It's a big file, but it seems to stream okay. I originally tried to post it directly into the blog, but the resolution was really poor for all of these still images.

Or . . . I also did things the old fashioned way here:

http://kjohnstonphoto.com/album07

When Mom's away