hello again

WOW!! i am STOKED about the awesome response to/on our blog since the big announcement. ya'll are suckers for a new baby, sheesh...

i desperately need to take this time to post a big T.H.A.N.K. Y.O.U. to my baby's-daddy for keeping our little blogger world up to date with our big news and all that comes with it. he's been the only one posting new blogs in the past month, while i'm off somewhere "laying down/not feeling well/wussing out". four posts in 15 days?! daaaaannnng, babe!! you rock.

oh, and thank you for the little pea that's making me so sick. i love you.

when i first started this blog, i asked the man if he'd "partake". i knew my intent was to share our week to week engagement excitement/struggles, but i presumed his involvement would be... sparse. much to my surprise, his first blog was awesome! and they continue to be (you have the right to your own opinion). i mean, i know my husband is witty and funny, but his writing was clever and refreshing, and i loved it. as we continued to contribute to the new blog, i found one of us would write a blog then run and tell the other person, "read my blog, read my blog, babe! didja read it?! huh?? huh??? reeeeeeeeaaaaaad ittttttttt....!!!!" it was FUN. a lot of our posts were about marraige and relationships, and it was always interesting to read where the other's head was at that time.

well, here we are, 7 months away from adding a little one to this crazy little family of ours. recently, we've become beyond excited about our blog and enjoy looking back at all the time and energy we've spent making it an interactive public journal. we promise in advance that not all the future posts will be about the baby--but we can't deny it's a big part of of our lives. (okay, today it's the size of a green olive, so it's not THAT big a part yet, but you get my drift.) we can't wait to share with all you (5) devoted readers how this journey will continue. most of all, though, i can't wait to print our blog into a book or three (blog2print.com) and show baby johnson who his/her parents were before he/she came into the world.

oh my gosh. does this mean MY parents were around before I came??? oh, heck no way...

(oh, and for those of you looking for a picture of how happy the new dad was after he found out, say no more....!)

the shirt says, "i'm new here". hehe, chuckle chuckle.

No Diving Allowed

The funny thing about announcing that we are having a baby is that practically everyone seems to have a prediction about what the gender is. We have heard quite a few predictions for a girl and quite a few for a boy. Since those are the only two realistic options, I think the bases are pretty well covered. It seems, though, that most of the predictions seem to lean in a certain direction (we’re not telling which yet) so we decided to have a little fun with it and start a pool! Since most people seem to have a prediction, we thought it would be fun to see who is the most accurate!

To make it a bit more challenging than just predicting gender, we thought it would be fun to add a few more categories to see just exactly how good you really are. Just post a comment here and let us know your prediction for: gender, length, weight, and birth date.

Here is how it will work:

• Each category is worth up to 5 points
• Points are deducted for incorrect guesses as follows:
• Minus 5 points for incorrect gender
• Minus 1 point for each inch below or above actual length
• Minus 1 point for each ounce under or over actual weight
• Minus 1 point for each day before or after actual birth date
• The winner will get to change the first diaper something fun after the baby is born!

___________________________

Example:

Your guess = Boy, 20”, 7 lbs, & 3/22/11

Actual baby = Girl, 19”, 7lbs, & 3/24/11

Your score = 0 pts for gender, 4 pts for length, 5 pts for weight, & 3 pts for date

___________________________

The person with the most points at the end of the game is the winner! In the event of a tie, the point will go to the person who first made the correct prediction. Don’t be afraid to put your two cents in if we have never met. The game is open to anyone who reads our blog (and so is the prize!)

Alright folks, start guessing!!

*UPDATE*

To give everyone a starting point, the technical due-date is March 27, 2011.

I am geek. Hear me roar!

Geek. It’s not a word I liked when I was younger. As a kid it definitely had a negative connotation and didn’t put you in the cool crowd at school. Oh how times have changed since then! Nowadays geek is cool. Geek is something to be proud of. Lego’s, Mythbusters, and video games…OH MY!

When I met my wife I had to release my geeky-ness in small amounts. It started small with an insanely overgrown music collection. Then it moved on to animated movies, tons of pop-culture references, and my collection of old-school video game consoles I have kept since I was a kid. Over the years of knowing each other she has come to see exactly how much of a geek I can be am and has even slowly started becoming one herself (although she won’t readily admit it). She craves watching The Big Bang Theory (we sing along to the song every week!) and has come to appreciate my The Nightmare Before Christmas decorations.

When we discussed having kids before we were pregnant I would always tell her that our kids will grow up with a geek for a dad. Our kids will most definitely be schooled in the ways of the Atari 2600, classic cartoons, and knowing who The Goonies are. Now that we have a child on the way, she actually encourages my geek to shine. From her encouragement of me buying baby clothes with geeky sayings on them, to the creation of our announcement video she is embracing my geeky side and actually joining in on the fun. It’s pretty awesome. SHE is pretty awesome.

A while back I stumbled on a blog called GeekDad. It has become one of my favorite blogs to read and pull ideas from for when my kid(s) are ready to join the Geek Nation. (I just made that term up. I have no idea if it really exists.) They review, keep track of, and keep me in the loop of all things geeky that kids are sure to love (and learn from!). Yesterday we decided to send them a link to our announcement video to show them how geeky we can be. Much to our amazement they LOVED it! So much so they decided to feature it on their blog this morning! We officially have geek cred and I am wearing it like a badge of honor. Jump on over and check it out!

Thank you!

So apparently we should announce that we are pregnant more often! In the last few days we have had more traffic than ever on our blog. Thank you to the few people who have commented here. We were beginning to wonder if anyone was actually reading this thing! It’s one thing to get Facebook comments, text messages, and emails, but it feels really good to see people comment on our blog. We get all warm and fuzzy inside then we curl up on the floor with a blanket and fall asleep with a smile on our faces. True story.

Anyway, thank you all for your support and well wishes over the last couple of days. We are pretty dang excited about having a little one on the way! And we are really excited to be able to share the news with all of you in such a fun way too! The video was a lot of fun to make and see come to fruition (with a little a lot of help of our friend Justin!). It will be just a few quick months before March rolls around and we are looking forward to every minute of it.

preparing for anything

turn up the volume, folks. it's a VIDEO and it has SOUND.




a special thanks to justin jones aka The Digital J for his help in turning our idea into reality. (the idea of the VIDEO, not the OTHER idea... that credit belongs to josh and i--oh, what trouble we get into when left to our own devices! KIDDING. we couldn't be more blessed, thankful, and excited!)

a little daydreaming never hurt anyone

i'm aching for a roadtrip. all i want to do is pack a small bag, a big cooler, grab the dog's leash and a few cans of her food, follow the husband to the car, dog in tow, and hit the open road while it's still dark.

the first thing i'd do is fall asleep :-) what? it's still dark. and once the sun would come up i'd wake back up. no big deal. i'd take over for driver josh, who's probably dead tired by that time because 'morning's just aren't his thing'.

june would be zonked in the back for hours. as a matter of fact, she'd probably go a good 8 hours before needing ANYTHING. she'd just sleep--happy as a clam. a dog clam. she loves that gosh darn car.

we'd get hungry and start scavenging through the cooler for some yummy food, only to find that we didn't pack anything that sounded good. we'd pass a jack in the box and start our week of back-to-back-heart-attack-food-consumption with a breakfast jack or a sausage bisquit, probably wrapped in bacon--because everything tastes better wrapped in bacon. the food in our cooler would inevitibly go bad before we ever got near it. i mean, who really wants an apple when you're driving by a krispy kreme?

regardless of where we were going, we'd find ourselves in nature sometime around noon. whether it's a stumbled-upon national park or a spontaneous walk on the beach, the car's a/c would eventually get to us, and we'd need a fresh air break. and whether she knew it or not, june would need some exercise by now. josh would be scared to let her off a leash, so i'd cleverly pull out her 25 footer so she could run and play and still be "nearby". are we overprotective? maybe. but do you know how badly i'd feel if we LOST her 7 hours from home? no chances.

what's that, in-n-out? you want us to swing by since we're still in california and may not be for much longer? ohhhh. okay, sure. why not? (another step closer to a heart-attack, but honestly, not much different than a typical sunday...)

we'd be back on the road with full bellies, ready to laugh and play and joke with each other as we make our way to that evening's destination. by this time, josh would have picked an album to listen to, i would have picked four of them, and it'd finally be his turn to pick again. good thing he's so easy-going on the music scale when it comes to long road trips. on these trips, he's good to go with "anything, babe" :-)

after a few moving-car landscape photoshoots and 20 minutes of jittery, nonsense video camera footage, i'd go back to sleep. what? it's been a long day!

we'd probably find our first hotel sometime around 7, just in time to unload the car, rile up the dog, and go get dinner. i know--we've barely had anything to eat ALL DAY, so we're obviously starved.

get some rest, because tomorrow we're doing it all over again.