Rachel's 1st birthday party

We had a party for Rachel's birthday on Saturday. She had fun diving right in to her cupcake. Then we opened presents and she was more interested in what was in the package than unwrapping it. She had a blast crawling all over the room and playing with her new toys. Its hard to believe that its been a year already.

Check out this drool!

Its warm outside

It was finally warm enough on Wednesday to take the kids outside to play. I think we were all starting to get a little cabin fever. It was actually so nice that I got a sunburn! Guess its time to bust out the sunscreen.
Rachel is clapping at the wind chime she sees and hears and Cory is eating grass. What a typical boy.
Rachel enjoying the sunshine.
Cory eating himself some tasty grass.
Eying another blade of grass.
Now he is mad at me for taking his grass away.

P.S. Cory is not mine, I babysit him for my cousin.

our new home

This is our new house that we are buying right now. We expect to move sometime between the 26th and 29th. We are really excited to finally get our own place. We do own our condo so this isn't our first purchase but it is our first home. The condo didn't really feel like a home to us, it felt like an apartment. This place is still in Orem and it has a spacious back yard with lots of planter boxes and a swing set and a garage. It has 3 bed 3 bath and 2 family rooms and 2 fireplaces. My favorite thing is that it has a unfinished room in the basement where the laundry is so I can finish it and turn it into a salon. I would love to have somewhere to do hair other than my kitchen. It also has brand new carpet but I don't know what the owners were thinking when they picked out the color. It is practically white. It is going to get stains so easy. I though they should have some more common sense because they have 3 small children. I would never pick a carpet that would show dirt and stains . We have a light carpet in our condo and I hate it. it has gotten so dirty in the 2 years that we have lived here. We take our shoes off when we come in but the carpet goes alway to the door so the area around the door where we step when we walk in is the dirtiest. if I had it my way, I would have put tile down in the entry way so it would be easier to clean. especially in the winter with all the snow that gets tracked in the house. We will just have to put lots of rugs down over the carpet in our new house so it will hopefully stay clean longer. There will also of course be a no shoes policy in our house but thats hard when you have to bring in lots of groceries or something that keeps your hands full.
I will post more pictures when we move in so you all can see how nice the place is.

Rachel reading

Rachel loves to read and usually will read out loud and talk to her books. This time she is quiet for a minute then says hi to her book. She waves and says hi all the time but rarely for anyone but us so I was happy to catch it on camera and prove that she really can talk.

Rachel

Ok so I'm starting a Johnston blog just for fun. We'll see where it goes. Thought I'd post some pictures first. These are most recent of Rachel. She turns 1 on Friday!