A Rice kind of weekend

This weekend Peter, Betsy  Sam, Marina and baby Rice #3 on the way came to visit. It is always a treat to see them and with increased space we can now host them here. We had a great time. Friday night we celebrated Betsy's birthday with cheesecake We also stayed up way to late as Sam and Marina ran around the house after being in a car for 5+ hours. They found Chris' Lego's and had a great time playing with them all weekend.  

Saturday we ventured out to one of the spring kid's consignment sales at a local church. Betsy and I were both in search of cheap maternity clothes and maybe a good deal on things for baby Rice and Johnson. We found some great maternity clothes and laughs at some of the options. Oh the joy of wearing clothes that look like a box! After lunch and some relaxing we went to the park in hopes of getting some fresh air and running out some of our energy and freezing a little. Somewhere between trip one and two the temperature dropped. Even with the less than warm temps we had a great time and all used up some energy just in time for nap-time.  Our evening was spent talking with the rest of the family on Skype, playing Bananagrams and eating dinner.

Sunday morning we ate breakfast and the DC Rices started their long trek back home. We enjoyed having them here and can't wait to see them again soon... hopefully before Peanut and Baby Rice #3 arrive.

We all had cameras out and no pictures were taken...its a problem. So below week 22 picture courtesy of one of my coworkers.  

20 weeks down 20 weeks to go (approximately)

We are halfway through our pregnancy and can't believe it. We have experienced lots of changes over the last few weeks. On Saturday we found out that Peanut is a boy and we are super excited. Please check out the video in the post below and see our gender reveal. We are thrilled and so blessed that everything is going well. We had an awesome ultrasound on Tuesday and got to see all our little boy's intricacies. Our God forms are bodies and puts every piece together perfectly for our needs in life. What a cool opportunity to see Him working on forming our baby's body. 

In other exciting news, I felt him move for the first time. I think I was helped by the sugar in a cough drop but he definitively kicked me. Now I try to feel the kicks but haven't been too successful.       

Here are some pictures from our gender reveal party. I didn't take any picture other than of the actual reveal...need to improve on this. 

Awesome cake my coworker Suzie made. 

 

daddy ready to find out what our peanut is!

the suspense builds

                     It's a boy!!!

And you can see our ever growing baby bump.

  

We are so thankful for our sweet baby boy and can't wait to meet him in July  Now we have to come up with a name!! 

Baby Johnson is a...

Here is the video:

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! :)