Recent (and not so recent) happenings

So, again, I have not posted anything in months and months. Most of that is because I like to put pictures in my posts and the only time I work on our blog is when I have downtime at work. The problem with that, is that all of my pictures are on the computer at home. So, when I prepared pictures to print, I put them in Dropbox so that I could access them at work. Dropbox is a program that lets you share documents from computer to computer without the necessity of emailing them. We keep it on my work computer, the desktop and the laptop. Therefore, I can include pictures of December 2010 through April 2011. Yay! Here you go!

Christmas Eve with the Messengers. We do our party then and go from house to house, eating, singing, playing games, and doing the Nativity with puppets
Our pretty Christmas tree in the only space that it would fit in our apartment. We still have no star because everything is tacky and LED.

For Christmas, I got a turkey from Provo School District. I couldn't figure out how we were going to eat all of it, so we decided to have Jacob, Garrett, Natalie and Jordan over for dinner the last week in January. This is how perfectly my turkey turned out. :)

I didn't think to take a picture of all the food before it was eaten, so here is a picture of how much we enjoyed the yummy food. We had stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, salad cranberry sauce, rolls and pie.

So Trent, Wesley's brother left on his mission mid-January so we had an older sibling day before he left. This is Wesley partaking of all the goodies.

Trent made the mistake of lying on the floor and Tayvin (our niece) took great pleasure in attacking and tickling him. It was funny to watch.

This is our other niece Aria playing "Just Dance." There is only one song that she allowed us to play and so now when we hear it on the radio, we can do the motions along.
Wesley got lots of fun toys for his birthday, including an electric razor and a T-shirt to match "Big Bang Theory," one of his favorite TV shows.
In March, we went to the Bon Jovi concert at the Energy Solutions Arena in Salt Lake. I had never been to a rock concert before, only symphony concerts. It was AMAZING!!! It was super loud and we were WAY up high, but I loved it. These two pictures were taken on Wesley's phone. This one kind of shows the flow symbol and has Jon Bon Jovi out front.
This is basically a closer version of the same pictures :)

During March and April, Wesley got to play in the Orem Volleyball League with his uncle Drew. They played every Wednesday and ended up winning the tournament. He had a lot of fun, especially diving and jumping for the ball.

My Great-Grandpa Adams (Grandma Wasden's dad) passed away the beginning of April, about a week before my birthday. He was 94 and had been a widower for 24 years. Because his son is an agnostic, the funeral was held and the funeral home and the hospice chaplain led the service. He did a beautiful job, touching on many beliefs.

Because my Great-Grandpa had been a general, he was entitled to a military burial. In the background, you can see we had a real bugle to play "Taps," there was a gun salute, and a general was the one to present the flag to my Great-Uncle Johnny. Because he believes this is the end, he didn't want anything of Grandpa's and gave the flag to my grandma. She has is beautifully displayed with a picture of Great-Grandpa in full military uniform.

My Great-Grandma had died almost exactly 24 years before. They were able to engrave the tombstone quickly and now my great-grandparents are together again, waiting for the rest of us to do the temple work for them.

My birthday kind of snuck in to the rest of our lives. My birthday present from Wesley was an anniversary band to go with my wedding and engagement rings. It is beautiful, but I haven't managed to take a picture yet. Sometime :)!

Anyway, that is December through April in a nutshell. Hopefully I will remember and will post the pictures from Jon-Michael and Kira's wedding and Nauvoo soon.

Family Pictures

So, I know it has been a really, really, REALLY long time since I posted. My only excuse is that the only time I am really on the computer is at work, and I don't have access to all my pictures at work. That and I just don't take as many pictures as I used to. We don't have any kids yet to take a million pictures of. :) I still don't have access to many of my pictures, but I wanted to share the family pictures that we have taken before my brother left on his mission and before Wesley's brother left on his mission.

The 5 Messenger siblings
Here we have the Messengers. There are only 8 as opposed to....
14! Here we have the entire family, all 14 of us!

Just those who were in the original Johnson family :) Only 10.

Trip to Salt Lake

My artistic picture!

Mid July, Karla and her family came out for Karl to see his family in Cedar City area. While they were in Utah, Karla wanted to take her kids to Temple Square. Mom had lots going on that day, so Katelyn and I went up with them. We spent all day there. We went on a tour of the Conference center, ate lunch at a food court, went up to the top of the Church Office Building (I had never been up there and the view was amazing!) walked around Temple Square, went to both Visitor Centers, and hit the Church History Museum. It was a lot of fun, but we were all pretty tired when we got home. While there, we met up with Adrienne and her two kids and husband. Adrienne is one of Karla's friends from college and I remember her helping to babysit us. It was a beautiful day.

Kara playing with her Happy Meal during lunch.

Kameron enjoying his Happy Meal!

Katelyn and I by the reflecting pool in front of the Salt Lake Temple.

New Job!

So, many of you already know this, but I have a new job. I will be working as the main office secretary at Provo High School. I was working as a Teacher's aide in a Special Education classroom, but this job pays better, gives me more hours, gives me more opportunities to speak Spanish and most importantly, it includes benefits for both me and Wesley. Yay! I started on the 16th of August (yes, I know I am already behind on blogging even that, but oh well) and have been going non-stop since. I am in charge of ordering, answering phones, greeting and helping people that come in, the office TAs and the copy center. As you can imagine, it keeps me busy. Kerri, the previous secretary has been there to train and help me get into the swing of things. She will be leaving for graduate school next Thursday and will be sorely missed.

Graduation!

So, I finally got the pictures uploaded onto the computer from my graduation in April. It took me forever because I had to get my grandma's pictures from my mom's computer, my mom's pictures from her camera and then the pictures from my camera. Thursday of graduation was a beautiful day and we spent much more time taking pictures than we did on Friday, which was rainy and cold. We probably didn't take as many pictures as we could have, because we had Jason who was done and even, I think, Wesley was done with pictures. Graduation was very nice. Thursday's was less than two hours and even Friday's, with the reading of the names, was only about two hours. The reader read the names very quickly. Anyway, here are my favorite pictures from graduation!This is the traditional graduation picture in from of the purple trees.

My family!

The stadium where I spent so much time with the Marching Band, along with my sweet husband.

Babies!

Hey, it's me! Still haven't gotten the graduations pictures either from my mom (my fault, not hers) or off of my camera, so no pictures of graduation. I will put those up someday. So, several of my friends are having babies (Britt, Kellie, and others) or have recently had babies (or even not so recently) and I am really wanting to have a baby and it is just not happening. I think I am defective (again, not my mom's fault, but maybe my dad's....jk). So, instead of having cute baby bump pictures, or adorable pictures of my baby to put up, I am going to put up pictures of the baby that we do have.

I also get to play lots more with my nieces, Aria and Tayvin and that helps...most of the time. Sometimes it makes me want one more. Wesley anticipates my saying "I want one" at least once everytime we see Aria and Tayvin...and Krista and David.I have such cute nieces!

Graduating!

Wow! I can't believe that today/tomorrow I am graduating from college! It seems like I just graduated from high school, but five years have gone by and so much has happened. I moved away from home and lived with roommates, I paid for school, I had a boyfriend, I sent off a missionary, I went to Mexico, I GOT MARRIED (over a year ago!), I did my student teaching, I found a semi-real job, I found a new apartment for us and now I am graduating. All of my hard work has paid off and I get to really go into the real world. I have to be a complete grown-up. I became a mostly grown-up when I got married and had to do the car insurance, internet, utilities, phone bill, etc. on my own, but now I will had to find a real job, get real health insurance, and everything that comes with it. I am excited and nervous all at the same time. Life is pretty good and I am way excited to be graduated.