Babymoon in Sunny California-Part 1

I feel like I post all the time....then realize I never WROTE the post I was thinking about. Ha! Silly, silly Ally.

Well! Of course I always have catching up to do of past events. Today?

The Babymoon!!!

We had heard an idea that taking a vacation before the babe comes is a fantastic thing to do. Chad Edward and I thought about it and figured this was something we really wanted to do since we would never have time without little wee ones again. (Don't worry. We will definitely be taking time for just the two of us in the future!) 

San Diego ended up being the place we decided to go. I was soooo excited to go to the beach! It's only my most favorite ever-PLUS my most favorite human, Chad Edward, would be with me...so what could be better?! 

We left for our 4 day trip in June on a Tuesday morning. In the end we decided to fly, and we were super stoked to fly together as married folk! One of our first experiences together as friends in high school was flying to Washington, D.C. together (which was my first flying experience ever), so we couldn't wait. 

We had a lay-over in Arizona and had a few set backs that cost us a few hours....but we stayed positive, knowing we were on our way to a week of awesomeness.

Once we figured out the bus/trolley system and finally got to our hotel, it was pretty late. And it just so happened that our hotel was literally RIGHT off the free way. Like not off an exit, but off the side of the road, so there wasn't a lot of options around for food. There was a diner right next to the hotel (the only food around), so we dashed over to get something to eat. However, they closed 1/2 hour early (stupid....) even though their sign said otherswise, so we were stuck without food!  But, we found a random pizza delivery paper in our hotel room and got a pizza. All was well!

The next day we got up and planned our travel to THE BEACH! Ah. We were the most excited for this aspect of our trip. We couldn't wait to sink our toes into the sand! By way of bus, we arrived at La Jolla Shores area. First we stopped at a little cove area (absolutely beautiful) and then hiked our way to the main beach. The hike ended up being a real hike :) where we walked along the coast, which lead to us walking through some neighborhoods for a bit, but we eventually found the beach.

Don't you love my oh-so-pregnant feet? Heavens.

When we got to the second beach, we were starved. We thought this burger place looked pretty swell right off the coast, but we were very disappointed. It was fine, but nothing special whatsoever.

My superman. :)

I wuv him!!!!

Modeling my new prego swimsuit. :) Say hi, Charlotte!

The weather went on and on being cloudy and sunny, but we just couldn't get enough of the beach no matter what the weather. It felt so good to be together on the sandy shores and in the waves. :) A perfect day!

Love always,
Ally Jo

Up At The Bird {Snowbird 2013}

A few weeks ago, The Best Family had a little vac-cay (vacation ;)) at Snowbird. It's up this beautiful canyon by Salt Lake City. Our family has a time share there that we share with my uncle so we get to go every other year. It was absolutely wonderful! Chad and I literally went straight there from our trip together to San Diego, so we got to enjoy 2 weeks of vacation.

We've had some additions to the family since our last visit to Snowbird, so it was fun to have all of us together with our new ones! My hubbie, Chad and little Carter and Charlie joined us officially. What fun we had! Everyone couldn't be there every single day due to work and other things, but there were a few nights that THE WHOLE family was there and it was the greatest thing ever. 

Here's the brosefs enjoying some relaxation. :)

Yummy dinner!

Chad and Carter spending some quality time together. Ha ha. 

He loves his little videos on the IPad. 

Um....cutest picture ever? I think....YES. Carter and Daddy! I don't think you get any cuter than that. 

Foot face....

The Johnson couple. :) Look at that pregnant belly...oh gosh. It's gettin' big! 

~THE FAM~

.Carter and Leaf.

.Jewls and Charlie.

.Topher.

.Squilliam.

.Benny Boy.

.Ally Pally.

.Chaddy.

.Lisa-Mom.

.Pa.

.Sir Thomas.

It's crazy to think that's all of us! Every time we all get together, we feel someone is missing. Guess it's all those little grand-babies earnestly waiting to join us! (Charlotte's workin' on it). Seriously though. We are quite the gang and have the greatest laughs together. Let's be honest. We're all sorta unique and....interesting in our own way. Every addition to the family has brought a whole other color we were missing. But all our oddness adds up to one killer set of people. Family really is forever, and we wouldn't trade ours for anything!! 

Every year we're there, tradition must follow that we take the tram ride together up the mountain. It's BEAUTIFUL up there on the way up and we always have a good time in the mountain air. :) Lots of pics!

The brothers were having fun with the poles...awkward?...what?

Parents and the remaining children. :)

Mommy and Wilbur.

I love my Mommy! What a babe!

Parentals. 

Girlies. (and Charlie)

The Sibs! Man, I love these guys to death. We've had such fun together as the Best Children.

The boys.

Love my hubbie!

Ze boys. 

"Bally"

Little Charlotte is gettin' big!

Brothers on the zip-line.

This is my "if you take another picture of me, I'll kill you" face to the husband. :) Ha! Seriously though.  I feel like once you get married, you're spouse becomes your personal paparazzi. Ha ha, gotta love my Chad Edward. 

When we're at Snowbird we eat lots of food (duh), relax, play games, go the the pool, hike, enjoy the spa (oh my eucalyptus room, which I couldn't go in this time due to baby), and trips down to Salt Lake for adventures and Litza's Pizza. Ah! Yum! We always have a splendid time, and this year was no less than that! Love you, fam. Can't wait till our next visit. :)

Loves, 

Ally Jo

Our Little Kicker

Everyday brings more and more anticipation for our little girlie to get here. Yes, we are freaked out about the no-sleep that will come. Yes, we're freaked out about how Chad will be working and going to school everyday, then come home to his wifey and baby + homework to be done. Yes yes yes.

But we are SO overwhelmingly stoked for this lil one to be with us. :)

She has become quite the kicker! She's always kicked multiple times a day, but about 2 weeks ago she REALLY kicked for like 5 minutes. Like, full on alien invasion in there! You could see the tum tum moving like crazy. She has quite the punch! Chad was close by so he felt her too, and we were just laughin' and laughin' with the biggest grins on our face. :) We're hoping this is a sign of having a little soccer player in the family! Oh Chad Edward would LOVE that.

Since around that time, her kicks have been harder. She has these episodes where they were like the first time she started kicking real hard. It makes me laugh out loud. And this includes at the Worldwide Leadership Training for missionary work on Sunday! While everyone else is laughing at the funny comment from a general authority, I used the opportunity to let out a laugh for my little Charlotte. :) Ha! I love being a mom already!

Today I tested out the "putting something on top of my stomach and watching it move" thing. I put my cell-phone on top of my bumpie and, wazam!!! It was jiggling back and forth. Love it! This will be a new favorite past time when she starts kickin'.

Everything is going along smoothly so far in this pregnancy (knock on wood!). Yes, I had a terrible 1st trimester full of buckets and buckets of puke and the toilet literally became my new best friend. I spent most of my days for about 2 months straight lying in bed and trying to get down anything that would stay. But now I feel SUPER compared to all that blah and couldn't be happier.

I do get hotter much quicker and easier (thank you, summer), and trying to get up once I've lied down is a joke (not to mention losing energy like a deflating balloon and having feet that swell up the wazoo) but I feel great other than that! I am lucky to not be sick and to feel peachy during these last few months. Let's hope it stays!

I know I should be posting pictures more often, but as most picture posters know, EFFORT is all I can say. :) Ha ha. When you don't have an Iphone to just press 2 clicks and it's on facebook in a second, it's a bit more of a process. So I will do my best to post pictures soon of...oh wait...my huge-of-life summer thus far.

Pics comin' soon! (Hopefully).

Well, I'm off to a weekend in Hurricane, Utah to enjoy the preparations and festivities of my cousin Brad's wedding! (Stoked? I think, yes.) Him and his girlie are adorable, so I'll post a picture of them. :)

Hooray for love!

Loves,
Ally Jo

Real Love

Today has been a fun, relaxing day. 

A good representation of a lovely summer's day. 

It started out sleeping in and morning snuggles with hubbie (which is always good, except with the slight exception of both of our clouds of morning breath. Don't you wish their was some remedy that would make your breath naturally be minty fresh in the morning?), then sending him off to work {which was NO BUENO :(} for a long, full day at the MTC. After that, my mommy, sister and nephew, brosef, cousin and her kids hopped in the car and went to the duck pond! Hooray for duckies!

The ducks were super cute {minus the ones picking on the wee little girl duck} and gobbled up our bags of bread. Little children are adorable and my cousin's kids plus Carter make for a perfect outing. I must say, though, experiencing these first, intensely hot days of summer are NOT making me exciting for a full summer of being big and prego. My mom had 3 fall babies which meant 3 summers of being pretty big in the summers and I don't know HOW she survived! This is gonna be a loooooong summer. But Charlotte is totally worth all the sweat....and buckets and buckets of sweat!

After that, we journeyed to our family friends, The Andersen's to enjoy some DELISH, homemade donuts.

I remember in high school that my friend Kyle, an Andersen, would invite all us friends over for Donut Night where we would indulge ourselves in his Dad's amazingly perfect, mouth watering, melt in your mouth, HOMEMADE donuts. Ah.....they are to die for! They are waaaaay better than Krispy Kremes, and that's sayin' something. He fries them up, then you dip the top of your donut either in chocolate, or maple. Mmmmm...the BEST. I may have ate 1 or 2 more than I should have..but no ones counting points, right? Charlotte will just be super sweet because of my intake of sugar!

While I was there, I had a great chat with Brother Andersen (who is also a seminary teacher at AF High) about life and what not. There was something he mentioned that I wanted to write about today that I found quite interesting and am really looking forward to happening for me. 

We were talking about how I was gonna be a mama and how that was just so crazy {since he's known me since I was a wee little child myself} and said I was gonna be a great mom. I thanked him for his vote of confidence and that his words were very encouraging and I hoped I could be everything Charlotte needed. He looked at me and said he wanted to tell me something.

You know when you think you understand love when you're younger and a teenager, but then you get married and you feel this whole new level of understanding? Like that this love with your spouse is so much more deeper and intricate and beautiful than what you ever could have imagined before you were married? It feels great!

Then you have a child. And I promise you something. The moment you look in your daughter's eyes, Ally, you will experience a whole other world of love that cannot be explained. You will think, "I never knew I could feel this way" and will have such joy when you look in her eyes. Then as your children grow older, you will understand why we need babies so much. They are so innocent and close to heaven and the Father when they come to us. We always love our children, but of course they have their phases where they stray and we just wish they made good decisions and hope they become good people. When they're little, they still have that innocence and are OUR teachers. 

Wise man! :) I loved specifically when he talked about that love that happens when you hold and look at your child for the first time. I, as well as Chad, are beyond excited to experience that for ourselves. And our little girlie will be our teacher! :)

3 more months!

Loves, 

Ally Jo

It's A Girl!

After writing a post about our little girl

and my sister's boys, I realized I NEVER wrote a post 

about finding out we were having a little girl!

Ha, ha. Silly me. 

That's what the craziness of leaving to China

4 days later after finding out will do to ya. 

Well, for posterity sake, I must write! The Friday before I left for China, we hopped in the car that morning and drove to my ultrasound. We were freakin' out! Today we would find out the gender of our wee one that we already loved to much! Chad and I were both equally excited for either a boy or a girl, so we knew we wouldn't walk away disappointed for a second. It would just be fun to know!

We had names decided for either one at that point. We've sort of had this thing/idea for our boys of using superheros real names. Like Clark (Clark Kent) for Superman or Anthony (Tony Stark) for Ironman. We'll see how that goes once we have boys, but we knew we loved Clark for 100% certain. So if it was a boy? Clark.  Clark Chad Johnson.

If we had a girl, we loved Charlotte. This was one of my names that I have adored forever and have wanted to name my first girl since the beginning of time. ;) There's a bunch of different places the name has come from-some namely one of my brother's friends that was super classy, and one of my favorite author's of all time, Charlotte Bronte. :) And NO, we are not naming our child after a spider, thank you very much Charlotte's Web. Good night. I thought, and Chad Edward agreed that the middle name of our first girl should have my name in it, and I wanted to tie in my mom and sister's name as well. So putting our names all together, Alisa emerged. So, Charlotte Alisa Johnson she would be. :)

We anxiously waiting in the waiting room. I remember we were reading an article about the Boston Marathon bombing....sad....but happiness soon followed a few minutes later when we went into the room. :) I laid down on the chair, plopped out the belly (too much information? Ha ha) and she squeezed the jelly on my tummy and we got to business lookin' at our baby!

Chad couldn't make it to my first ultra sound (which you don't see much anyway), so I was super excited for him to be here and experience this! It was so cool to see all the parts of the baby's body. Initially before we started, the nurse said it may be hard to see some things since the baby was only 19 weeks and usually she likes to wait till later to do it (but I was gonna be in China for the next few weeks), but she totally ate her words! She saw everything she needed to and said everything looks great. 

Some of our favorite things was seeing the baby's spine (super cool), and profile. The baby was playing with her ear at one point :) and then sticking her tongue out and wiggling it later on. She did some flips for us while we were lookin' at her! 

Now when it came time that she actually told us the gender of the baby, she said it mid-sentence so we actually barely even heard her. We were expecting some big pause like, ".....and.......ITS A GIRL!". But nope. She said something like, "and here's the abdomen, looks good...and this is the 'big name of something Chad and I had no clue what it was',  and looks like it's a girl....and over here in the foot bone...." WAIT. What? Oh!!!!! Wait, did you say, girl?!

Can we have a moment here?

She probably thought we were crazy because we didn't even react at first. Well, can you blame us? Ha, ha. We asked her if she said GIRL, and she re-assured us it was. Oh dear. Well, thank you nurse! Now we'll celebrate 3 minutes later! 

But we were SOOOOO excited! A little girl! Our beautiful little Charlotte! Daddy was now gonna have 2 girls to watch over and look after. :) It was a bright, shining moment for us new parents. 

It's kinda weird, and Chad would probably say, "ya right", but once I knew, it was like I always knew she would be a girl. Ya, I definitely had times I felt like it was a boy in the last few months, but GIRL just made sense! I knew that this was right-and meant to be and felt so much love for our little girl in that doctor's room. 

We enjoyed the rest of the ultrasound and every moment looking at our little girl. What an eventful day!

The next day we met up with Mama Gunther and she took some pictures for us for the announcement we had planned to tell our families and everyone. It was SOOOO fun, and we had a blast shooting it! This was the finished product. 

We had each picture wrapped individually and had each of our mom's open one, then Chad and I opened the last 2, along with some girl baby clothes we had gotten the day before. They loved it! It was so fun to see our idea come to life. And everyone was so excited for a little girl!

We love our little Charlotte so much and are enjoyed the special time we have with her while I'm pregnant. It's so special being able to feel her move around inside me, and to finally have Chad feel her too! You never get this time with them again, so we are enjoying it and look forward to actually having her with us in September. Hooray!

Loves, 

Ally Jo