17 and 18 Weeks

I am a little late on the pictures for week 17. This picture accurately represents what I wear on a regular basis after work and on the weekends, yoga pants and a t-shirt. Comfort is king!

17 weeks

We are SUPER excited for week 18 because on Tuesday we have a doctor's  appointment with an ultrasound and we get to find out if Peanut is a girl or boy. We have no idea really either way on this. I have thought since the beginning it's a boy but over the last few weeks decided maybe its a girl. We have been told that for sure it is both a boy and a girl. Right now Chris thinks girl. I think boy. It is safe to bet we are having a baby and that is about all we got!

18 weeks

In order to bring some fun to finding out what we are having, we are actually having the ultrasound tech write down what Peanut is and putting it in an envelope. One of my coworkers is going to make us a cake and we are going to have a party on Saturday to find out. If you do not live in Greensboro or North Carolina, come here on Saturday and we will post a video of the reveal.   We are praying for a healthy baby and a good appointment on Tuesday.

Peanut on the Way!!

We are super excited to have Baby Johnson on the way!!

Late in October we found out that we are pregnant. We were very surprised, excited, and nervous all at once. We are so blessed by this gift and can't wait to meet our sweet child.  

Our pregnancy so far:

• We are 16 weeks along and due around July 7th. 
• Morning sickness/all day sickness/exhaustion: lets just say, it happened and it hit in full force. I started going to bed around 8:30 and could not get up in the morning and didn't want to eat anything. For the first few days everything smelled like fish and not a good fish smell. After the unexplained fish scent went away, I could only eat certain things and ended up on a Greek yogurt and crackers and peanut butter kick and then a soup kick and then the Greek yogurt kick ended drastically one day.
• Praise God as quickly as all the fun symptoms arrived, they have now taken a hike (except for today) I have not been nauseous or felt sick in about two weeks. I can even stay up until 10 on most nights. 
• Boy or girl Peanut??? We are finding out in early February if we are having a boy or girl and can't wait. More details will come on this and hopefully a video.    
• We have been blessed to see our baby once at 10 weeks and hear the heartbeat at our last appointment. 

I finally decided i should start taking pictures and documenting our pregnancy so below is our first picture at 16 weeks. Can't you see the baby bump? I promise it is there

Here are a couple more pictures of the pregnancy so far. We went to Peter Island before Christmas so these are from that time with the Johnson's!

                       On the beach with hubby

the whole family

Watching the sunset with Chris 

  

Every good and perfect gift is from above...

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. James 1:17

In order to accurately finish off our year summary for 2012 I thought I would summarize the last three months with the awesome, amazing blessings we received during this time period (well kinda...one came earlier in the year but fits well here).    

As I mentioned in the last post in June we started talking about Chris' job. We had talked before and prayed but never felt God's nudge in any direction. We started praying and asked several groups of people to pray with us for a direction. In July we shared this with our table group at our Life Community at Westover. It happened to be that the Sunday we shared this prayer, another couple (Ryan and Mackie) had joined our table and the very next day Ryan called Chris and asked if he was interested in marketing with the company he works for. Chris said yes and within two weeks had completed several interviews and had a new job. We were so grateful and still marvel daily in this provision. Chris is loving his job and enjoying the new challenges and learning curves.

Blessing 1 led to the opportunity to start looking at houses here (blessing 2).  We have always been open to God calling us to move somewhere else and had thought about all sorts of places. Now we knew God wanted us here and we immediately called an awesome Realtor, Roberta and started looking at houses. I thought that maybe this would be a fast process and was convinced we were going to buy one of the first houses we saw.  thankfully Chris is patient and talked some sense into me. In September we almost offered on a house when God very clearly closed the door. In late October, we were thinking that it might be time to hold off the search until after the holidays and then it happened, we found a house we both liked a lot. We went and looked at it and loved it.  We decided to offer on the house the next day and on November 4th were under contract on the house.  We knew we were going on vacation in December so decided to close and move the  second weekend in December. We are now all moved in and almost organized and we love our house.

Blessing number 3 to come....!

2012 with the Johnsons

Well after a long sabbatical from the blog, I decided it is time to revisit and attempt to restart the blog. 2012 was a fun filled, adventure filled and full of blessings year in the Johnson household.

2012 in Summary:

January was a quiet month for us. After spending an awesome week with the Rices at Smith Mountain Lake, we spent New years sleeping and relaxing together.  We celebrated Chris' 25th birthday on the 14th. The last weekend in January we drove to Virginia to see Peter and Betsy, Sam and Marina for Peter's 30th birthday.


February and March were uneventful as we enjoyed a very mild North Carolina winter. We both helped with the father daughter dance at church, we both traveled for work and spent time together. I can't really remember much about February and March so that is never a good sign. 


April on the other hand I remember very well. In mid-April we hoped the pond and went to England for a week. My dear friend Katy from Costa Rica married her sweetheart, Dan so we went their wedding and while we were there enjoyed a reunion with friends from CR that now live around the world., toured London and had an awesome vacation. 

         

May welcomed in our busy season for 2012. Kristen spent the first weekend in Chicago celebrating Karen's graduation and at the National Restaurant Association Show while Chris was in South Carolina for a wedding. The second weekend mom and dad Rice were in town for their first trip to Greensboro since our wedding and we enjoyed showing them around. According to the calendar there was a third weekend in May and I think we slept and recuperated. The last weekend of the month we went to Figure 8 with the Johnson's. We fished, walked on the beach and had a wonderful time with family.     

June started with the Beautiful Life Conference at church and a baby shower for a dear friend here. We celebrated our 3rd anniversary on the 6th. As we do every year we talked and reflected on the highs of the last year of marriage and talked about goals for the next year. During these conversations, we felt God calling us to start praying about Chris' job. We were not sure what He had in store but we were praying for wisdom and direction on the next step.

In July God answered our prayers in a big way for Chris' job (more on this to come) and we began the process of looking at houses to buy. We finally knew that God has us in Greensboro long term and we could settle down and buy a house. For the rest of July and August we spent our weekends and days searching for houses on Listing-book and looking at houses. The house search was a process that took all fall and again proved God's faithfulness in providing the right house at the right time. 

In September we went on our anniversary trip to Charlotte, NC. We went specifically to Charlotte to visit the National White Water Rafting Center. We had been talking about this trip for a while and were excited to go rafting and enjoy all the attractions. It was awesome. We got to the center early and spent all day there. We rafted, went on a high ropes course, rock climbed, zip lined and did an obstacle course. We also went out for a nice dinner and got to see some friends from college.               

Well I think the rest of 2012 will need to be on the next post. Hopefully later this week! :)


     

Its been a while...!

Well it seems the weeks have flown by and we are in SPRING....thankfully. With spring comes the joys of pollen and allergies but also beauty. The trees are green and the flowers are blooming and its starting to warm up. As in every season in North Carolina, we have been bipolar...some days are warm and in the high 70s low 80s and then the last week of March we woke up to heavy sleet and snow.

Along with this spring, like the last few springs in our lives came change...we moved into our new house and we absolutely love it. We are finally organized to a certain degree (don'tlookintheloftorguestbedroom...) and it is feeling like home. We have enjoyed adjusting to our new surroundings and for me especially the extra space in our kitchen and all over the place.

We had a wonderful uneventful move thankfully, with the help of many hard working friends and family. We also had fun and funny couple bonding time with the late night packing, the washer and dryer that sound like the second floor of the house is going to fly off every time we run the spin cycle or a combination of the two, the delivery and installation of the washer and dryer and some other roll on the floor laughing moments.

We have been blessed by our new home and hope that all of you will take the time to come by and visit us very soon! If you are ever in Greensboro, Winston Salem or the great state of NC we'd love to see you and now we have the space for you to sleep!

I just like this picture and it makes me think that summer is just around the corner and maybe I will take up trying to learn how to play golf this summer!

The house and other mussings!

Well as I promised, I wanted to tell more about my experience in New Orleans. Yes I wast there for work and I learned a lot there but really I learned so much more. As I walked down Bourbon Street at night to see what it was all about and as I experience New Orleans for the first time, my heart broke. I have heard of God breaking your heart for what breaks His and this happened. As I watched a city in ruin, a girl standing outside a bar in lingerie trying to make the wages she needed to live and as I saw the destruction within so many, my heart broke. As the last few days have gone by in a frenzy of two back to back trips, landing Wednesday night, back to work for two days to prep for round two, laundry, spending time with Chris and heading back out, this image has not left me. I am committing to praying for the city of New Orleans but more importantly I am praying, "Lord break my heart for what breaks yours." I have no idea what this means but I want to experience my God more and more every day and want those around me to see these things too!

Also to add to the excitement of being back in NC for the next few weeks, we went to our house on Saturday. What a treat to walk in to our first house as a couple. I got giddy as I thought about decorating and getting it all Johnson-fied, having family and friend over and all the adventures that are to come in the months to come. The first adventure will be getting our apartment packed, cleaned and moved again. I also think staying in a house for a while sounds like a great plan! So here they are pictures of our next home!

Welcome to Johnson Home 3.0!

This is a view from the back of the house towards the kitchen/dinning room.

This is from the kitchen towards the back of the living room.

I am a little excited about the kitchen. Lots of space and cabinets and room for all my kitchen endeavors!

UpstairsGuest Bedroom.

Loft

Guest room bathroomGo Tar Heels!

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom.

We hope you enjoyed the tour and come see us after the first week of April!

The Johnson's in 2011...

It seems like 2011 just started and somehow we are now facing the end of February. This year has flown by. I am not doing to well on my promise for more pictures but we are buying a point and shoot camera and will start with that.
So far we have seen God work in so many ways in 2011. We started the year celebrating Chris' birthday and enjoyed some wonderful snow days (thankfully not as many as last year). At the end of January we came to another decision point. Should we stay in our apartment another year or move into a rented townhouse. We had been looking and found a wonderful 2 bedroom townhouse right down from where we live. We signed our lease to move there and will be moving again in a couple weeks. We were blessed that the landlord is allowing us to sign a lease and wait to move for 5 weeks. We are excited for the additional space and living in a house again.
February has been a whirlwind and will continue this way until the end of the month. We signed a lease the first weekend, followed by time spent with friends. The second weekend Kristen helped with the father-daughter dance at church. What a treat. It was precious to see dad's invest in their daughters lives by showing them what a real date should look like. For some reason for one night my desire for all boys was gone as I watched these precious loved girls blossom in the love of their father both here and in heaven.
This weekend I came to New Orleans for a work show. I am going to have to write a whole other post for that. My heart is broken by this city. I will be back in Greensboro on Wednesday and then will fly to beautiful warm staying at a hotel at the beach, San Diego for another work show. And then it is March. We have lots to look forward to: Chris is taking vacation to spend time with Wes, my cousin Michelle is coming to visit, we are going to Virginia to see Peter, Betsy, Sam and Marina and we are moving. So somewhere in the month of March we will be packing up and getting rid and cleaning out our apartment and moving into our first house. Some pictures of the house are below. Its the front of the house....proof that we have a house and the kitchen. I will finally have room for all my fun baking endeavors!!!