Tribute to the Beloved U.S.A.

God Bless the USA!

I just had to write a short post and say how grateful I am to live in this wonderful land called America and to be a citizen of the United States of America! There are many challenges we face as a nation and as a people, notwithstanding these challenges, this is still a great and wonderful land to live in. I am grateful for the freedom we enjoy in the this land and for the many blessings that gives to us. I am so very grateful for the many valiant women and men who have served and who are now serving to provide and protect these freedoms. I am grateful for the founding fathers and for their courage, conviction, and dedication to the great cause of founding our nation. May God continue to bless this great land and may we do all we can to defend and protect it!

(These are both pictures we took on our recent travels)

A Belated Congratulations!

I found this post today... I started it a few days before Daniel made his entrance to the world, and have been side tracked since then! I do want to recognize all of the accomplishments Scott had while completing his MPA at Cornell. It is amazing looking back on our Ithaca experience; the hard days following sleepless nights melt away in my memory and I think of warm fall days and beautiful rolling hills of fall leaves and a blue lake stretching for miles. I am grateful that the good memories outweigh the not-so-good ones! I am grateful to be where we are at now.

CONGRATULATIONS
TO MY CORNELLIAN!!

Love, Liz and Nathan

May 25, 2008: Graduation Day

I know that it has been a few months since your graduation, but what better time to congratulate you on all your accomplishments than now as we can look back a bit and appreciate your hard work as you start your new job. I am amazed at how well you did in all the classes you had, especially when I realize how much time you sacrificed to be home for me while I was sleeping after work and to be such a great dad for Nathan. I know that he loves you immensely. He always talks about his Dad, although he is a little confused that now you go to work and not to school! Here are some pictures from graduation. Scott has a great friend Jillian that helped him study for several of his classes, which I am sure contributed to how well he did. Simon, also another great friend of ours, who is now home in Taiwan. Nathan liked seeing Simon and talking about how he hurt his finger! Graduation was really fun to go to; all of the graduates parade into Schoelkopf Stadium wearing the full regalia of graduates. The weather was beautiful that day- sunny and warm. Scott even had a nice cap tan at the end of the day! It was so nice to have Scott's parents with us that day too. We are all so proud of Scott!!

From Groton to Germany and beyond

We really did not disappear off the face of the earth, okay, only sort of. :) We moved out of our wonderful Groton home with much help from our fellow branchers and were Europe until June 15th and are now in Utah.

We flew into Germany with Scott's parents and deposited Nathan with Oma and Opa Jackson and we flew down to Italy for a week! It was strange being toddler-free, and just being 7 months pregnant! We hit all the big sites in Rome, Florence, Venice, Pisa and Lucca. The weather was perfect for us and Scott got tons of great pictures. It is hard to try and describe what a great trip it was- the whole experience was just great.

We had some fabulous Italian food, among the favorites- gelato. Scott tried a chocolate ice cream that had crushed red peppers in it- he said it was great the first bite, but by the end of the cone his mouth was on fire and his sinuses were pretty cleared out! The gelateria's are so pretty, the gelato is piled high in each container and fresh fruit is displayed on top of the respective flavors. Very hard to pass up!!

I think my favorite day was in Venice, it was such a unique city and seems so well-preserved. The little alleys are fun to wander around in and the many bridges over the canels offer some great pictures. And of course, the gondola ride was amazing. We didn't pay for the singer and accordion-player, but we passed one in a small side canel and certainly enjoyed their talents! The gondelier spoke some english, and was very nice to wear his hat for pictures for us.

One side attraction from Venice-- we were wandering around the little side streets and Scott saw a familiar face- one from the show "The Office." His name is Stanley! He was very nice and posed for a picture with us. He asked if I was getting enough rest and water while being so pregnant. He also pointed out that there will be 28 shows next season and that Scott could watch some while up with the baby. (Notice that Scott is the odd one out with no belly!!)

Needless to say, we saw many wonderful things and enjoyed our European vacation and it is hard to describe all that we got to see. We are now in Utah, and happy to be here before the baby! We will have to do more updates more frequently now.

A New Table, New Posts and New Quotes

Finally, updates on the Johnson blog! We have some recent funny quotes from Nathan on the right side of the blog as usual and we have added an Easter posting below and this post about the table Scott made for Nathan.




Recently Nathan was playing with wooden trains on a train table at the store and as he was playing I thought, I think I could make that ... so the project began ...

I went to Lowe's and bought the wood, paint and other supplies I needed. I used some tools that our landlords have downstairs and the other items I bought to cut, sand, paint, and screw together Nathan's table. It took me a few days to complete the project and I'm pretty excited abou the way it turned out. I was really excited to give it to Nathan and he has especially enjoyed playing with the trains on the new table. It is 4' x 3' and it is 20" tall.

Easter Celebrations

I don't really know what happened to the month of March, it flew by so quickly! We have been busy with school, work and life with an active little boy. Nathan amazes us each day with all that he is doing. He is learning to speak so well, he can certainly express his opinions and ideas.

The weekend of Easter we went up to Rochester for a little getaway. We stayed one night in a hotel with pool- Nathan loved that. He hadn't been swimming for a long time and really enjoyed swimming around in his intertube. He got pretty brave and would jump in the water to Daddy's arms.

Saturday morning we went to the Strong Museum of Play, it was a great place for kids. We went with the Price's whose son McKay is Nathan's little buddy; I think they had a great time together. Nathan loved the trains - both to ride and to play with. There was a Sesame Street set complete with video setup so you could see yourself on TV, also a taxi with Elmo and Cookie Monster in the back seat (picture on left with McKay). Nathan liked giving them rides. There were all kinds of airplanes and cars to drive, sand boxes, boats to steer and toys to play with. My favorite part of the day was the butterfly garden. There were hundreds of beautiful butterflies flying around us and the garden itself was beautiful as well. Needless to say, Nathan slept the whole way home. It was a lot closer than we thought, just 20 min. from Palmyra, so just about a 2 hr drive for us.

Easter morning Nathan got a few treats in his easter basket, but the Easter Bunny came during nap time that afternoon and hid eggs all over the house. Nathan had to open each egg as he went to see what was inside. After a yummy dinner, Nathan enjoyed eating his chocolate bunny- he wanted to wear Daddy's goggles while eating- it was pretty funny (see video below)!

In Honor of More Masculinity Coming

Now that we know another boy is coming to our family and in honor of warmer weather we wanted to post this video of Nathan and all the things he got to "drive" last summer. While these are pictures and videos of him driving actual things, we have learned that almost anything, from a piece of bread to a cookie to a rock can be a great car or train. You may recognize the background music from one of Nathan's favorite movies - Cars.

It's a Little Brother for Nathan!!!

Thanks to all those who voted on our poll ... turns out the majority was incorrect in thinking that Nathan would have a little sister ... we went up to Syracuse yesterday and had an ultrasound done and we discovered that we are having another boy! We are really excited and Nathan seems excited too and says he will share his cars and trains with him (which is great, since he doesn't always like to share)! We had a girl's name picked out, so of course, we are having a boy, so now we've got some work to do to pick out a boy's name. It is all very exciting! Now that we know, it just seems right that we are having a boy and Nathan will have a little brother.