summer is here

snooze

Tom is in the nap/no nap transition. lately he skips it more often than not but there are some days when he just can't help it. this is true fatigue.



Ash is quite amused.

it hasn't taken long for him to master his G'pa Kent's snoozing technique: find a good spot on the couch, nestle in half sitting up, half reclining and... aaahhhh, zzzzzzz.

on a Tuesday

this year our anniversary landed on a Tuesday, which is the day of the week we were married. we had the chance to celebrate 11 years in San Diego: a couple more Spanish missions, cacti, a great little bakery, and the beach... oh, and ice cream too.




thanks to Aunt Ash and Ollie for holding down the fort with Ash & Tom!

let's sing a song of 5!

five whole years with this sweetie Ash...




a blue princess dress (made by Ash & Mom) to celebrate, plus real binoculars, and a bath robe with her name on it. good times!

Snappy Tom turns 3!

with a sea creature party complete with gummy sharks and Swedish fish atop ocean blue cup cakes! the shark blimp also made a showing.




the piñata was a Christmas stocking gift and had nothing to do with the sea but the kids enjoyed giving it a good whack all the same.



a big happy birthday to my sweetie Tom!

the Earth is flat

and yes, i did drop off from the face of it. but i'm back now with an update: a trip to Monterey in January! whale watch, aquarium, Carmel Mission...

'tis the season for making good things

i love these people.

trick-or-treat, fools

this year Ash and Tom learned a Halloween song i used to sing as a kid:

"H, A, double L, O, W, double E, N spells Halloween!"

it's sung in a minor key and stuff so it's spooky. plus, it helps you know how to spell Halloween!

Ash showered her subjects with continuous pink, English had trouble with tribbles, and Tom pitied all of the fools.




p.s. thanks to modern technology, i can post about Halloween on December 19 and no one is the wiser... until i tell you, wah ha ha ha!

N | M | A

it's been four weeks now, so i think it's time to post about this new big thing...

museum school director, and i'm diggin' it. of course there is so much to learn and i remind myself regularly that it's all about pacing - one thing at a time - but i can see a little glimmer of the future and it looks awesome.

huge thanks to my lovely little family who wholeheartedly support this new adventure. and you are right, Ash. it is so fun to work in an art museum!

what a beautiful pear

what do you do when life gives you a 40-pound box of ripe pears? make pear juice.

no, wait. scratch that.

what do you do with the 40-pound box of ripe pears that you ordered through the ward? core and peel a few halves to bottle (they are as beautiful as they are tasty), then make pear butter out of the rest! here's the new recipe i tried out. no need to peel the pears (yeah!) and it's so delicious!

it's so terribly satisfying

to witness a car that's driving way too fast (especially on a residential 25 mph street) get pulled over by a cop. sweet justice.

a (sort of) short rant about smartphones

i know smartphones are the way of the near future (not necessarily the far-future when no one will have cell phones, but that's a topic for a different post). anyhow, i know smartphones are the way of the near future and to be honest half of me would really like an iPhone. if it weren't so expensive to buy the phone and pay monthly for the data plan i'd probably have one by now. but the other half of me is bugged by smartphones. maybe it's because i don't have one. but it's definitely because of the "data plan required" business. if you're in the market for a new phone you have to buy the data plan. why can't i get a smartphone phone and just use it on my regular dataless plan? the folks at Verizon told me it was because smartphones update themselves and need the internet to do that. uh, that doesn't sound very smart to me. my dorky phone get updates and i don't have the internet on my phone.

now you may say to yourself, why would you want a smartphone if you couldn't really use all of its features? good point. but the thing is, when the time comes that i am in the market for a new phone if i don't want to buy a data plan my phone choices are quite slim. and i hate to say it but the non-data phones don't have the sleek design of the new smartphones. and i know they're doing that on purpose. of course i'm going to want great design. so i have to choose between great design + expensive data plan or an affordable plan + a dorky phone. and that, frankly, is really annoying.

a personal question

what do you do with the extra frosting after the cake is finished? of course i'm talking homemade frosting. sorry folks, but the store bought stuff is not really frosting. sure it looks, even smells like real frosting. but it is not real. i know, i know. cake snobbery. but the fact remains.

anyway, back to the question at hand. do you toss it? spread it on graham crackers the next day for a poor man's sandwich cookie? keep it in the fridge for a few days because it is such good stuff but then finally toss it once you realize there will always be another tasty treat in your life? what do you do?

that was one awesome, butt-kickin' vacation

Newport Beach, CA 2011: seven days of pure Johnson fun complete with loads of beach time, boogie boarding (riding froth, real waves, and tandem with Ash), singing at length about riding the froth, vacation 'staches for the guys, tide pools, a birthday party luau, SPF 15, Balboa Bars, Red Vines, Oreos, and the Vista Cruiser.

i ain't goin' in to work
gonna take the day off
we can stick it to the man
when we ride the froth...

we ride the froth (we ride, we ride the froth)