Baby Girl is Here!!!

Tessa Lillian Johnson was born at 9:10pm on her uncle Justin's birthday, August 29.  8 pounds 14 ounces and 20 inches long.  Isn't she beautiful?

Poor Brittany had a rather difficult time.  Please pray for her recovery.  (But she still takes a cute mommy/baby picture!)

Daddy Brad.

Nana and Papa with sweet baby girl.

Uncle Keelan.  I will get more pictures with the rest of the crew later today.  

Justin is 12!

Happy Birthday to my "baby" boy, Justin!  He is 12 today!

Random Stuff

I haven't posted many pictures lately, so I went through my phone and found all these.  Just a bit of this 'n that.  I took this one of Caylie on the back porch deck yesterday.  That purple bow in her hair is the new favorite.  She must wear it most days, regardless of her clothing color!

This is the brand new Goodwill store where Taylor is working.  It doesn't open for another week.  They've been working hard to get shelving and clothes racks put together, and the store stocked.  Next week I'll do a whole post about Taylor's job.  He's doing great.

Now that Caylie's in school all day, I can clean her room and have it stay that way for several days!  Usually it does NOT look this way!  She likes clutter, apparently, and enjoys walking on a toy-covered floor.  Sigh.

 Brittany and I saw this wreck happen right in front of us the other day.  The red car hit the gray car, going about 40mph.  God was looking out for us, as the red car could have easily pushed that other car into our path.  

 Here's Caylie waiting in line for school to start.  She is the tiniest one in her class, of course!

Waiting in a very long line to pick Justin and Caylie up after school.  It's like this every day.  Crazy.

This was Caylie as soon as she got home from her first day of Chinese-immersion all-day kindergarten!  It was mentioned to me that her teacher might have been looking the same way.  (Ha!)

Our worship band rehearsal at church.  This month marks 17 years that I've been on the team.  (Wow, that makes me sound really old.)  

Brittany at almost 41 weeks with our awesome chiropractor, Dr. Patti Gonzalez (and her baby!)  If you're in the Denver area and needing chiropractic care, you can find Dr. Patti here!

Stay tuned for baby news!

39-Week Baby!

Brittany is 39 weeks and 2 days.  Baby will be along any day now!  

First Day of School Pics!

All three of the school kids are in school now!

Justin started 6th grade at Global Village Academy last Monday, August 4th.

Keelan started 10th grade at Gateway High School on Tuesday, August 5.

And Caylie started Chinese-immersion kindergarten today at Global Village Academy!

Where We've Been All Summer

 It was a rather unsummery summer.  Not like the usual ones.  Usually the kids and I spend our days at the reservoir.  But this summer, Jim and I spent a lot of time in the car, driving kids to where they needed to be.

6 early mornings a week Jim, Keelan and I went to Better Bodies gym.  Jim and I usually go anyway, but we got a summer pass for Keelan.

6 mornings a week we took Justin to swimming lessons at Utah Pool.  He's been taking lessons continuously for almost a year now, and is doing great.  He knows all the strokes, can swim 100 meters, tread water for a long time, and is learning to dive. 

5 days a week Jim took Taylor to his new job!  He is now working at a new Goodwill store that is soon to open in Aurora, but for several weeks he worked at this Goodwill warehouse in Stapleton, while the new store was being built.

5 days a week we took Keelan to Pickens Technical College for an automotive class.  This was part of the Aurora Youth 4 Success summer program.  Keelan wants to do the two-year automotive program at Pickens during his junior and senior years.

 3 days a week we took Caylie to her preschool class at the Beck Recreation Center.  She l-o-v-e-d preschool!  When we would pick her up, all her little friends would run to hug her.  So cute.

And that is where we've been all summer!  

Caylie and Justin's New School

Caylie and Justin will soon be attending a new school.  I know I said I'd talk about Caylie's schooling for awhile now, and I'm just now getting to it; sorry!

I had originally planned for Caylie to go to preschool this year and kindergarten when she was six.  But when we had her testing at ChildFind earlier this spring, and found out that day that she still understood Mandarin, we decided to look at other options.  I knew there was an international charter school near us that offered Mandarin, Spanish and French immersion.  I called them and found out that they had an opening in their Mandarin kindergarten for the fall.  We went to visit and decided that we'd like to try it.  It is a full-day kindergarten, which was the biggest drawback for me (I'm not ready for my tiny girl to be gone all day!) but we're going for it anyway.  Since she has only been home a little over a year and isn't yet fluent in English, I don't think she's really "ready" for kindergarten yet, but if she needs to go two years, that's perfectly OK.  After all, she's my tiny girl!  We're excited about this opportunity for her to regain her first language.  We're excited for her to learn more about her Chinese heritage.  We met her teacher the other day, and I think she will be great.  She is Chinese and lived in China until just a few years ago.  Even though Caylie acted a little shy with her, especially when she was speaking in Mandarin, she is extremely excited about kindergarten  ("keengon", as she says it, hee hee.)  Her first day at Global Village Academy will be August 11.  (This is why she went to preschool over the summer!)

I had planned to home school Justin again this year.  He loves being home schooled - a little too much.  He is happy to just be at home with me and the family, and doesn't care that much about interacting with other kids his age.  As I was reading an email from Global Village Academy a couple of weeks ago, I saw that they were offering a new class for 6th graders this year.  This class will be different from their other middle school classes, as it will be for students who have no prior experience learning another language.  This class will learn Spanish, but from a beginning level.  (If only it had been Mandarin, it would have been perfect!)  So once again, we decided to go and check it out, and after speaking with the principal and taking a tour of the building, we decided to give it a try.  Justin is very excited that each student will have their own laptop!  He's also excited for a real science class that includes dissections, haha.  It will be a new adventure for Justin, and a little out of his comfort zone, but I think it will be good for him.  We met all of his teachers the other day and found all of the classrooms, and now he is ready to go!  He will start this coming Monday, August 4.

Here are Justin and Caylie in two of their new Global Village Academy shirts!