Winter is a Time to Celebrate!

February turned out to be a busy month for us.  We all managed to get sick and health-ly make it to family birthday parties.

On our way to Joe's birthday party, Andy and I were talking about some of our favorite memories of Joe.  All the babysitting, how Joe introduced Andy to some of the Johnson sayings, the times they came down to Winona for the weekends to visit, the time Joe and Grace went down to Waseca with us for fireworks, and for me my favorite memory.  The night in February when I spent the night at my Grandpa and Grandma Johnson's.  Gracie was there too and I still remember my Grandma telling us that we had a new cousin, Joe.  Joe is one of the kindest human beings and I am so proud to call him my Godson.  When Andy and I started dating, Joe was three years old.  The age of Alex.  That is crazy to me.

Aiden enjoyed running around and having Grace and Maia chase him at Joe's birthday party.

 

My boys played so nicely with the four "little's" of the Johnson cousins.

We also celebrated our niece, Rachel's birthday party.  This was not even a month ago and it was cold.  The kids really wanted to go sledding, because-well...winter has not been so "winter-like" around here so they haven't been able to go yet. 

Alex's first run down the hill with Rachel and he found out fast why icy snow isn't fun to sled on. Right then and there was a perfect example of how Andy tends to under-react and I tend to, well, overreact (sometimes).

As Alex is walking towards me (from quite a distance away) and his image is becoming clearer, all I see is red on the right side of his face.  I look at Andy like, "What the heck?"  Andy says, "He's fine, come on Alex, let's go sledding again!"  Are you kidding me right now?  I say, "Um, we're going in and cleaning that up".  My sister-in-law, Kristen, put it perfectly later saying that they, like us, have a good balance in our relationship. Somewhere between over-reacting and under-reacting we are balancing it out and parenting.  I couldn't find a better partner in Andy.

Alex learned all about Star Wars and it was so nice that he could go off with his cousins and play.  We had a great time.  It is always fun getting together with family. 

We are so blessed!

Happy Birthday Rachel and Joe!