Hi everyone,

 

We had a great Christmas vacation.  We visited my parents, Brice, Breann and Hazel, Hannah and Andrew and Craig, Heidi, Owen and Kent. 

 

On Christmas day we walked down to Temple square with Craig and his family and enjoyed all the lights.  It was a bit cold, but the snow added a nice touch.   

 

While everyone was at my parents, we decided it would be nice to have a picture of four generations of Johnson boys.

We then went down to Prove for a few days.  We had a good time when we went to dinner with Martin and Cindy.  Their girls like to torment Craig and Brice (or vice versa) and loved to play with Hazel.

We went to the dollar movie in Provo.  Later we watched 'Contagion' on DVD and spent the remainder of our vacation washing our hands.

Thanks to everyone for hosting our trip.

Lucinda received a Kindle Fire for Christmas.  As part of her present I decided to put her book, "Letters from India", on it.  We printed the book through Blurb for the hard copy.  One of Blurbs's options as to make a PDF file.  That was easy but a PDF file didn't work.  Shrinking a picture book size book down to a kindle size made it really difficult to read.  Another option was to create a file for an I-Pod - that didn't work either.  Then I opened the book file with WordPad and found out that I could almost read in the XLM code.  So, I transferred the file to XCEL where I wrote a macro to take out most of the extraneous code and was left with plain text.  Unfortunately, the original book file did not have the text in sequence as their program put it in order (what were they thinking?)  So I had to reorder the text.  Finally, I added a few HTML tags so that the Kindle could read the book.  Did I tell you that all the pictures were in the wrong place?  I only fixed about 1/2 the pictures.  Maybe next Christmas I can give mom a present of her book with pictures.

Love,
Dad

Hi everyone,

We visited Amber's house during Thanksgiving. We had a great time: shot bows and arrows, went on hikes, ate real Tennessee barbecue and welcomed Bianca into the family. The weather was nice.  We had lots of fun but decided it was best to have children while you are young.  We had a hard time keeping up with the children. 

Both coming and going we stopped in Peoria to see Matt and Emily and Craig and Heidi and their families.

On the return trip we delivered Amber's old van to Craig in Louisville. While in Louisville we visited the Louisville slugger bat factory. Too bad I don't play ball anymore - they had lots of bats that you would buy.

Love,
Dad

Grandma and baby Bianca

 

Bianca posing for a family picture.

 

While in Bristol, we took a family picture for Amber.  We took lots and lots of pictures of her family and one or two with us and her children.  The best picture (all the children with their eyes open,  looking at the camera and standing up straight) was with us - life is just no fair!

Hi everyone,

A lot has happened since I last updated the blog.

First, the drought wretched havoc on our lawn this summer.  We did water it enough, but not enough.  So, I had to over seed a section of lawn.  I mowed the grass really short, racked and de-thatched all the debris and almost died in the process as it was so hot.  Next came the seeds and fertilizer.  The sprinklers were set for three times a day watering so all we had to do was wait.  The weeds grew first.  There was one that I couldn't identify which puzzled me, so we let it grow until we could figure out what is was.  It was a watermelon.  Someone had been spitting out watermelon seeds on the grass during the summer.  Unfortunately, the summer was too far spent to get any watermelons from it so out it came.

We went to Utah for my sister Corinne's funeral.  It was a nice funeral.  Corrine planned the funeral and wrote some of the talks.  She had had cancer for five years and knew her time on earth was coming to an end.  Her children all had a part of the program and handled it well.  I did feel sorry for them with the loss of their mother and decided that I will not put may children through that ordeal.  Any suggestions as how to do that?

Katie, Jean, Rebecca, Jake and Barry

 

Gordon, Margaret, Roger, Grandpa, Grandma, Virginia, Barbara, Douglas

After the funeral, we went to the Utah state fair with Barb and Dennis.  The next day we went on a hike with Brice and Breann.  We went to a Brazilian bar-b-que with Brice, Breann, Hannah and Andrew and ate way too much food.

We had to put in a new furnace.  The first cold day when we turned on the furnace nothing happened.  A cold house does not a happy mother make.  So, we have a nice new furnace.  We even had to turn it on this week as we were hit by a hard frost.  I understand that there was snow in Minnesota and Nebraska but only clear and cold here.  All our flowers and tomatoes have been zapped.

I'm almost finished with my last project in the workroom.  I made of desk with a piece of marble that we shipped back with us from India.  It looks good.

Mom is in Maryland this weekend.  She decided to visit her mom and sister as we haven't seen them for awhile and wouldn't be able to see her during this upcoming holidays.  We plan to go to Amber's for Thanksgiving and Utah for Christmas and maybe Japan (or someplace halfway) in the new year.

Thanks all for now.

Love,
Dad

Our house is empty.  The movers came a week ago Saturday and packed up all of Craig and Heidi's worldly possessions.  Last Sunday morning Craig and Heidi left bright and early for Peoria.  Lucinda and I went back to bed after they left.  When we woke up, no one was here and all their things had disappeared.  It was sad to see the empty bedrooms.  First Brice and Breann left, and now Craig and Heidi. Oh well, its time to break out the ice cream and watch an old episode of 'The New Yankee Workshop.'

Last weekend was a hard one for me.  Two Fridays ago, they had an going away party for Craig and Heidi and the Freestones (Ben was transferred to Sioux City).  Saturday I spend the day at Camp Igawanis for cub scout day camp.  On Saturday night there was a wedding reception for Danny Stern.  (Yes, Dan Stern)  On Sunday, I had to teach the Gospel Doctrine class.  And on Monday, my boss's boss wanted any update on my project at work.  (Most everything is going well on my project, except that we have one part that likes to crack.  We might be taking a trip to Germany and visit the supplier.)

On Tuesday Lucinda taught one session of homemaking meeting.  The night was devoted to journaling.  Not nearly as many came to the journaling meeting as did the salsa meeting.  Wonder why?  I'm sure that she did a good job.  She showed them her 33 years of weekly journals, the CD containing the scanned journals and our book, Letters from India.  She enjoyed the class but was a little disappointed that more people didn't come.

Pack meeting was last Thursday - you missed lots of fun games.

We are thinking of buying new windows for the house.  I'm struggling with the thought, new windows or a new Corvette.  They are about the same price.

Yesterday, we started going through the house, room by room, to give it a good cleaning.  My workshop creates a lot of dust that goes all through the house.

Today I teach the High Priest's group.  It's an interesting class.  All I have to do is come up with one good question and then let the class take care of itself.

Lucinda and I are doing fine.

Love,
Dad

Hi everyone,

Did I mention in our last post that we were stranded at Great Falls overnight?  The airplane had mechanical problems.  No big deal, but airlines sure do test one's patience.  The airlines did give us vouchers for hotel and meals.  We ended up flying via Denver and Dallas on our way to Iowa.

This summer I published a book - actually I published the same book twice.  I collated all the blog posts from India, added pictures and put them all in a book.  I wanted to do the printing myself.  We would have required a new printer, a page folder and a book press but it sounded fun to me.  My plan was vetoed and I published the book through 'Blurb' instead.  It was a very painful process as Blurb supplies their own program which I had to learn, was not intuitive and was slow and cumbersome.  If that wasn't enough, it doesn't even have dahl masala in the dictionary. 

When the first book arrived, Brice took one look at it and exclaimed that I had used the wrong font.  I used the 'official' John Deere email font which should have been good enough.  But no, I used a sans serif font when I should have used a serif font.  Lucinda took one look at the book and said that the pictures were too small.  Oh well.  Changing the font and increasing the picture size took most of the summer.  Anyway, there are only two copies in print.  When you come and visit we'll show you the book.  (You could visit Hannah who has the original copy, but be prepared to seeing the wrong font and small pictures.)

Brice and Breann left yesterday for BYU.  Brice's internship in Waterloo went well.  He is not sure, however, that he wants to write software for John Deere. 

This week Craig and Heidi plan to move to Peoria.  Craig got a good job at Caterpillar.  Many thanks to Matt for helping him find the job.

We really enjoyed having everyone live with us.  It was great to have a chance to 1. Get to know Craig and Brice as adults and 2. Get to know their wives.  We really like Heidi and Breann.  That being said, no one else should feel obligated to come and live with us so we can get to know them better;)

That's it for this week.

Love,
Dad

p.s - Below is a picture of the zip line.  Can you get feel yourself plummeting down the moutain?

p.s.s - More wedding pictures, including mom and I making bouquets can be seen at  http://silly-willeys.blogspot.com/


Zip lining down the mountain

Hi everyone,

Lucinda and I went on vacation to Montana and Canada for Heather's wedding.  We decided to go out early and visit Glacier National Park.

We had a hard time finding a place to stay near Glacier but finally found a place in White Fish on the west side of Glacier.  Since we wanted to drive through Glacier anyway, why not stay of the far side?  We were totally surprised when the resort was part of the Big Mountain Ski Resort.  I am more of the type that wants to experience the great outdoors on a close and personal level instead of a city slicker that prefers seeing the wilderness from a hot tub at a ski resort - but we decided to buck up and stay.  It turned out of be a nice placd and we enjoyed ourselves at the resort.



Looking towards Glacier National Park

We decided to take the ski lift to the top of the mountain and hike down.  The trail went through the forrest and not the ski slopes.  We crossed some open areas and said to ourselves that those certainly were not ski slopes.  We were wrong.

The trail was about 6 miles long and took all afternoon.  The were one tired pair of hikers when we were done.

We passed on the mountain biking, but found something else to do . . .

Hiking down the ski slope

Lucinda mentioned to me that she always wanted to go down a zip line.  Who would have every thought?  I wasn't about going to be left behind, so we went down together.  They started with a short line, then a little bit longer and then the third line that was 1,900 feet long and way above the trees.  They said that we reached 60 mph.  All I know is that our eyes were watering so much that we couldn't hardly see anything.  We went down a total of seven lines and really enjoyed the experience.

I asked Lucinda what else she had always wanted to do but hasn't.  So far, she is keeping mum.  Maybe sky diving?

Zip Line

The next day we drove throug Glacier National Park on the 'Road to the Sun.'  We stopped at the pass to stretch our legs and walk around.

We found a trail at the pass for hiking.  You can see the cut in the cliff on the picture on right, 1/2 way from the road and the top.  The trail was plenty wide, unless you looked down.  The trail went to a chalet in the moutains.  We didn't have time to hike all the way or spend a night in the mountains.  We had to go to Lethbridge and meet Aunt Julia and her family.

Heather and Braiden were married in the Cardston Temple.  The reception was at the groom's house.

I have been very bad - no post since early April! 

In that time, we painted the garage door, Brice came for the summer and we visited Matt and Emily's house over memorial weekend.

You remember that our house was very dark with dark siding, windows, doors and garage door.  We put on much lighter siding last fall.  It clashed with the windows and doors, but we didn't like the dark siding that came with the house.  Also, the birds and squirrels were poking holes in our house.  We put light trim around our windows.  Painted the doors different colors, but what should we do with the big and dark brown garage door?  Replacing it would be expensive, so we decided to try paint.  We scrubbed it with comet and floor soap.  Painted it once without success as the brown shown through.  Painted it again which covered the brown and looked pretty good.  Let's hope it will last.  (If not, we might have to move out)

You will note the motorcycle in front of the house.  That came with Craig and his family - much to his parents chagrin.

Brice received an summer job with a software company that works for John Deere.  He works in the same office that I do.  We we though that working in the same office would solve transportation problems as he is without a car.  He decided that he didn't like starting work at 6:30 am and found my bicycle.  That worked pretty good, except that my bike was in storage for three years and hadn't been used very much since then.  The tires might have been a little old.  After two or three flat tires between our house and John Deere, we both all new tubes and tires.  So far, knock on wood, no more flat tires.

Brice is lonely.  Breanne had to stay in Prove for the spring term.  She is coming next week and we are excited to see her.  I suspect that Brice is a little more excited that we are.  Anyway, Brice has been brave.  I don't think that he is entirely convinced about this baby thing.  He has been spending quality time with Owen and Kent. 

We had a good visit with Matt and Emily and their family over memorial weekend.  Everyone from here went - mom, dad, Brice, Craig, Heidi, Owen and Kent.  It was good to have someone besides myself for Zach and Quinn to jump on.  Brice was their favorite target.  Below are some pictures from a hike in a park near Emily's house.

And of course, we had to stop by the Machine Shed on the way home . . .

Love, Dad