cookie dough

Graham is always asking me to make cookie dough.  Whenever I use the mixer, he assumes I'm making cookie dough...and has been disappointed when it turns out we're making bread or pizza crust.  (For the above picture, I couldn't get Graham to turn around.  He was insisting I take his picture 'backwards.')

the antics of boys

These pictures are in no particular order, but these boys sure are busy.  They're cute, but busy.  : )

One of the days we were unpacking and getting everything moved in Graham fell asleep watching a movie.  He never does this.  Poor little Graham was so tired.

picnic day

A few weeks ago we went on a picnic with Matt to the Train Park.

silly sleeper

Graham has been falling asleep in some silly positions lately, like under Mason's bed or sitting up and leaning against the wall.  This particular nap time Graham fell asleep reading Dr. Ted, one of our favorites. Silly boy.

happy 4th

This year for the 4th of July we celebrated with some pretty fun activities.  There wasn't ever any really good events happening in Arizona, mostly because it's just too hot.  Matt had to work during the day so the boys and I started the day at our stake pancake breakfast and bike parade.  The night before the 4th Matt and Graham decorated his trike.  At the actual parade Graham was more concerned with watching the other kids ride their bikes than actually riding his own.  He had to be pushed around the church building and did very little pedaling.

sea world

Some friends of ours in AZ were in town, and had extra Sea World tickets they weren't going use, and they were so kind to gift them to us.  We had to end Matt's vacation with a bang, since it was his last day as an unemployed/student/vacationer.  The day before he had to be at orientation we spent at Sea World, and it was fun.  The boys love the animals, especially the whales.

our cousins come to San Diego!

Our very first family visitors came to see us a few weeks ago.  Brad, Mandy, and the girls were visiting the Johnsons a little ways north, and they took an afternoon to spend with us!  Graham and Mason love having other kids around.  And those girls are just too stinkin' cute.

{This picture is from back in November.  They've grown up just a teeny bit.  : )  }

san diego house

We spent months looking at rentals in San Diego.  It was quite the chore.  We think we found a pretty good one, though.  Housing is sooo expensive in San Diego, many of the houses we looked at were a little pricey and weren't super great inside.  For as much as they charge for rent here, you'd think each place came with a butler, or something.  : )  Anyway, we found a good one, in the perfect area.  We went with a townhome, because 1. it was a little less expensive 2. there's a pool and 3. it's well priced for the area we wanted to live in.  We're pretty happy with it, although we had to scrub it down before we could really unpack, which was lame.  This particular unit was empty for a few months, which was unusual for any of the other rentals we were keeping our eyes on.  Everything else for this price in this area was going fast.  We didn't actually come look at it, but Matt's cousin, Chris, was kind enough to come check it out for us.  He gave us the okay, and we went forward with it.  The only reason we can think of why it was empty for so long is because it needed cleaned.  It wasn't horrible, but it was sparkling either.  After a few good days of cleaning, it was good as new.  The only bad part about the dirty floors, walls, and appliances was we'd just spent forever cleaning our own house.  When we left our Arizona home it was spotless.  Literally spotless.  There wasn't a speck of dirt anywhere.  Anyway, we're over it now, and are enjoying our time here so far.  We are realizing that we live in a place most people come to vacation, and it's great.  We still have quite a long list of things we'd like to do and see.  But enough about that...here's a tour of our house.

moving

Moving was and is hard.  We were super sad to leave Arizona.  We loved it there, and we loved all our friends and our ward.  While we were heartbroken to go, we were also tired of all our stuff in boxes.  At least I was.  Graham was too, because he would always talk about what was missing, especially the abc's that were on his wall.  We rented a huge truck.  The biggest one you can get.  26 feet.  Yikes.

last pool day

We took advantage of any pool day we could get before we moved.  Aren't these boys cute?  Thanks Bushmans for these awesome shirts.  We love them.  And they're super funny.

the last saturday

Our last Saturday was supposed to be a nice, relaxing day where we could just enjoy our last free day in AZ.  But we spent it in a rather different way.  We unhooked our washer and dryer early Saturday morning, only to find that the hot water valve wouldn't close, therefore spraying water in our house.  We turned off the water and started working on it.  And when I say we I mean Matt.  Long story short, the project ended up taking the whole day, and my dad came to the rescue and used his soldering skills to fix the pipe.  My heart sank when we had to cut the drywall.  The whole thing was quite disappointing, mostly because we had spent almost two months fixing things, painting, cleaning, and we were exhausted.  But, in reality, it was very good that it happened on Saturday, because 1: my parents were still in town and my dad could help, and 2: we had a whole day to do it and it wasn't Tuesday morning when we were trying to leave.  When we had it cleaned up and fixed, we went to Home Depot (again) and found a plastic panel to slap over the top of the whole.  So sorry, renters, for the eyesore of an "access panel" as we called it, because we weren't in the mood to fix the drywall.  : /

Graham and his 'Papa'

and a birthday

The day after graduation was Matt's birthday, and since we did a fair amount of celebrating the day before we just did a little celebrating for the birthday. Happy 2-9 Matt!  We love you very much and are soooo lucky to have you as our husband/father.  You really are the best.

Midwestern University presents Dr. Serafine

We spent the entire month of May getting ready for this one day, but when it finally arrived, it was quite surreal.  Our time in Arizona, and more specifically at Midwestern flew by.  (At least from my perspective.  I think for Matt there were some slower times, but looking back it went by too quickly.)