Out of their little mouths...

Grab your coffee, hot chocolate or martini of choice because once agian, it's story time, but this time, it's about those funny Johnson boys:

1. Yesterday I wanted the boys to nap SO bad. We have had two days of HECK with them because they won't nap PLUS they are learning to fight like cats. So I put them in their bunks and threatened them with the swatting spoon from the get go. "If you boys get out of bed or talk, I will go down stairs and get the spoon. " Their eyes got as big as silver dollars and they said, "Okay mamma!" They immediately laid down and were silent. I went to the next room and watched my latest addiction, Adoption Story on Discovery Health, and over it I could barely hear them chattering. Then they got louder...and louder...until suddenly they were full on yelling because Tyler wouldn't go get Blake a book he wanted. I really wouldn't spank the boys for talking, so I shouldn't have threatened it in the first place so I muted the TV and yelled, "BOYS, THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!" Dead silence. Then I hear Tyler, 3, from the bottom bunk say, "Blake, what did she thay?" (He has a lisp that is priceless.) Silence. "Blake, what did she thay? Did she thay this is our last morning?" Again, Blake fearing the spoon, said nothing. "Blake, I just don't know what she thaid and I just need thumbody to tell me what she means!" 5 minutes later, they were sound asleep, after their final morning. =-)

2. Today at naptime I had a suprise for them. They always sleep with a CD on and I had just fixed a Veggie Tales CD they used to listen to all the time. While they were laying down, I pushed play and it started. I expected them to freak with excitement. Instead Blake (5) said, "Mommy, it's my turn to pick the music,"

I said, "I know honey, but I fixed your CD so I put it on for you."

He replied, "But I need to listen to the radio because I need to hear the news. If we listen to the CD, I'll miss the news and won't know what's going on." Yep, he's Mike's kid.

3. The other day I took Tyler to a scrapbooking store. The gal who worked there was about 19 and wearing low-rise jeans. She was filling up a sticker rack that was on a bottom shelf so she was squatting down and her pants were very low. Tyler was watching what she was doing very carefully. I was in a different section of the store and all of a sudden heard him say in his non-indoor voice, "Aren't you going to pull your panth up?" (again with his lisp) I wanted to run out of the store and leave him there, but I think you can get arrested for that. The gal just looked at him without a smile and reached back and pulled her panth up. I went and took his hand and kept him with me.

Later that day Blake and Ty were playing with their Legos. They didn't know I was listening. Tyler, out of the blue says, "Hey Blake, today at the store, I sawed a girls underbuns!" Not kidding! Aparently locker room talk starts at 3. Dear Lord, help me!

Missin' Mom...

Well, this is Dick and Dianne Fankhauser. The people who decided to have me 31 3/4 years ago. This was taken at their 25th wedding anniversary, shortly before my mom passed away from complications of Aplastic Anemia almost 8 years ago. I can't believe it's been that long! I still feel her regularly in my life, I think mostly because even though I fight it, I have become her. =-) But, my last post has made me want to reminisce a little more (here you go, Christi!) so here are some of my favorite memories of my mom, the one and only Dianne Yvonne Fankhauser, as remembered by Dianne Jr, aka Darbi. (Yes, I know the picture is sideways. I can't figure out how to turn it. But it's too cute to not post.)



1. While I was in college, we would talk on the phone almost every day. She loved to tell me what shows she was into. She wanted Mike and I to start watching Everybody Loves Raymond. Since we never did, she would tape it for us. We'd get home. She'd make us sit down. It would take her at least 20 minutes to, on VHS, fast forward through Oprah, nope, went too far, rewind Letterman, now cue it forward....here it is. We'd watch for 15 minutes, just long enough to get into the show as she'd stare at our faces, and then sure enough, a new Oprah would start that she had taped over Raymond with. She'd get a puzzled look on her face and say, "Oh wait now..." and start the whole process over again.



2. She loved her Richard Simmons Sweatin' to the Oldies tapes. After school, she would close all of the curtains and turn one on and dance her heart out. Then she'd call me from the back room for the finale. If you've ever seen the tapes, Richard has all of his exercisers as actual former fat people, instead of models. So at the end, they all make a row and clap to the music, while each former fat person dances down the row alone with a big grin (and they still shouldn't be wearing spandex, but they are) and the screen says their name and how much weight they've lost so far. Mom would just sit and cry EVERY TIME! She knew what was coming, she knew their weights by heart, but by golly, she was so proud of them!



3. One Easter eve, my brother Paul already had his licence and I was 3 yrs younger than him. Every year my mom would make our Easter baskets and then hide them in the house. She'd always put together a scavenger hunt with clues all over the house. It was SO fun Easter morning. Well, I don't know what was going on in my mom's life this particular year, probably just the stress of having 2 teenagers. But anyway, as I was wondering what would be in my basket and where she would hide it, she hands me a check and says, "Here. Go to Safeway and pick out your Easter basket." At first I was crushed, but then I realized the possibilities. Paul and I jumped in the Chrystler Le baron and headed south. Jelly beans, peppermints and 50 different ways to mix chocolate and peanut butter together were all in our cart. Then we hit the checkout. Back at home, mom hears the phone ring: "Hello?"

"Mom, It's Darbi."

"Hi honey, is everything okay?"

"Not really. They won't let us use your check."

"Oh, yes they will, I do it all the time. Just let me talk to them"

"Yeah but mom, this time you signed it 'Dianne Safeway'."


4. My mom was crafting in her craft room and she saw a rat! She was home alone and so she naturally called 9-1-1. The dispatcher answered.

"What is your emergency?"

"I'm OK! I want you to know I am o.k. It's just that there is a giant rat in my craft room."

"Ma'am, we are for emergencies only. You will have to call someone else about a rat."

"Well WHO am I supposed to call then? I know DAVE!" and she hung up.
Our neighbor was Dave and he always helped us out of any situation. In this particular case he came down the road in head to toe camouflage with his hunting bow and arrow and got the rat with lots of laughs and little to no effort. But my favorite part of the story is "I AM OK!"

I have to get to wrapping now, but I will for sure add to these stories again one day. But the last thing you need to know about my mom is that nobody loved like her, nobody understood like her, nobody listened like her, and nobody laughed like her, even at herself. She could make a stranger feel like a best friend within minutes and her own kids felt like the world was all going to be okay, even in the middle of complete chaos. I say I fight being like her, but it really is an honor to be like her, for she was much more like Christ than anyone else I know. Minus the flaky parts. Those are just thrown in to make us love her more.



I pray that this Christmas you love like you've never loved before, listen like you've never listened and laugh like you've never laughed. Celebrate the freedom we have because Christ came and died for us, and the loved ones we will be gathered with again one day because of God's perfect plan. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

How do you do Christmas "right"?

We took the boys to our gym the other day to see Santa. We knew it would be MUCH less busy than the mall, the pics were $2, and it was about 2 blocks away which made it nice in the snow. Blake didn't want anything to do with Santa even though he had candy and even though Blake was told he was just a guy who worked at the gym in a different costume. He stood by the door and wanted nothing of it.

Tyler, on the other hand, was all smiles. He loved the guy in the costume, loved the candy, loves the gym. We stayed for a few minutes, donated some used toys and left. The end. But here's the thing:

I'm having a hard time deciding as a young family raising kids who are finally starting to understand stuff, just how to do Christmas the "right way". I know there is no right way. There certainly are a lot of wrong ways...lighting baby Jesus on fire, that would be one wrong way...etc. But I mean there's the whole, don't tell your kids at all about Santa because he's the anti-Christ and it's lying so they may end up to be mass murderers, and then there's the way I was raised where Santa and huge presents were TOTALLY the focus, so I didn't really get the whole Jesus thing until much later in my college years. Christmas was about me and what I wanted and what I was going to get. In fact, here's how evil I was...

When I was 16, my mom dropped me off at the mall to get a gift for her. Dad gave me $20 to spend on her and mom was going to pick me up in an hour with my gift in hand. Does anybody out there remember Mr. Rags? It was kind of like Ambercrombe now. Definitely a teen store, not made for a woman's body. BUT they were having a buy one, get one free sale. So, in I went. There they were...Long neck mock neck Mr. Rag shirts...usually $40, but today they were $20, and if I bought one for MOM, I'd get one for ME! And so I did. Since the Medium fit my then 25 pound body, I knew the Large must be perfect for my mom, so there you go...I bought a shirt "for my mom" for Christmas.

When she opened it on Christmas morning, she acted like I'd bought her diamonds. Holding it up to herself it was OBVIOUS it would never work. There were two BIG reasons why. But she didn't say a word. She wore that thing all over the house, as uncomfortable as it must have been, cutting off her circulation in many different places, because she wanted me to know how much she loved the gift. That's how a true mom is. And I deserved the death penalty.

I was a brat to the core and I don't want my kids to end up that way. I know that how we celebrate Christmas as a family will have a lot to do with how they will decide to celebrate with their families in the future. No pressure.

So, last year Mike and I participated in our own version of Advent Conspiracy (look it up on YouTube if you haven't seen it already). We bought gifts out of the World Vision catalog for everyone and then bought little toys for the cousins and for our kids, on top of like a soccer ball for a child in Africa. It was great and we loved it, but we got a sense of being "party poopers" from others who just wanted to do Christmas the regular way. It's like it's hard to do it if other people don't want to do it with you . So this year we're going to do the same type of thing, but we still have all of these questions in the air...Do we buy our own kids gifts even though they don't need anything? How much do we let them talk about the whole Santa thing without being Scrooges? What do they really understand at this age anyway? And then I talked to an amazing woman, Pastor Jeanne. She's been at our church for YEARS and she is SO with-it. She wants to preach until her dying day. Sometimes she just says things that make so much sense and I wanted to share it with you.

PJ: "Darbi, are you done shopping this year?"

D: "No, we're going to kind of do some sort of charity thing but I don't know what yet."

PJ: "Ever since my kids were little, we always took whatever we spent on presents and matched it and gave it to the church."

D: "I like that idea. It's just so hard as a young family to figure out how you want everything to be for Christmas. You know, with Santa and gifts and all that."

PJ: "We started from the beginning telling our kids that Santa is just a pretend man that children like to talk about at Christmas time. They were never once deprived by knowing that. I remember finding out as a child that he wasn't real and how upsetting that was that my parents had told me otherwise. I didn't want to do that to my kids. And as far as gifts go, we always did small gifts to the children at Christmas and told them they'd get their big gifts on their birthday. If they complained, we'd say, "Is it your birthday?" "No" "Who's birthday is it?" "Jesus'" and the complaining would stop. We would always have a birthday party for Jesus too."

So anyway, there is never a right way to do things, but I liked how Pastor Jeanne told me she did things. When Blake and Ty have a case of the gimmies, I can just explain to them that it's not their birthday yet. It's Jesus' birthday. And I think that's a good concept they can understand.

Hope you all are figuring out your special way to do Christmas with your families. It's hard, but as long as it's wrapped in love and prayer, it will be perfect. But let's just pray the snow storms will let up so I can do a little more shopping! Little miss last minute isn't quite finished and I don't want to have to shop at the Plaid Pantry on Christmas Morning like I've had to do a couple years in college because they're the only ones open!!

Ma-haller!

Here's a taste of some pics from Hawaii! If you come over to our house, we will bore you with some more! Wish your were here! (Yes, I was looking for a treasure. Will I ever grow up?)
Sunsets on the beach are the best. And mornings. And afternoons. And nights.

Mike demonstrating a favorite instrument of ours. (We wanted to buy you one Matthew, but they were $50. Too much money just to make you laugh, so here's the pic.)

At the Dole factory. Didn't know how pineapple grew until now. How cute is that one?

Stinking gorgeous hibiscus flowers EVERYWHERE. In every color.

Yep. A guy just put his bird on my hand. And then yep, he charged me.

We were suckered into going to a time-share dealie right away, but this was our free "taxi"
plus we got $100, free lunch and a weekend get away at ocean shores. Not too bad. I think that's when Mike came up with the phrase Ma-haller!

We miss everybody but we're having a great time and we have lots of tips for when you come (like: please bring us with you). See you soon~!

In honor of baby Klovdahl

Makenna showing Blake some love

Preslie, Blake and Makenna at church

My heart is heavy today for some of my best friends, the Klovdahls. Their 4th baby passed in the 10th week of pregnancy. Again, it is so hard to be away from friends and "celebrating" while you know they are hurting and you want to be hugging them and taking care of them. Since I can't, I just wanted to honor their little sweetie on my blog.

It's funny how we girls get when we find out we're pregnant, or even a friend is pregnant. As soon as we see that pink line on the pregnancy test, we already have that child's life planned out for them. I will tell you MY plan for that fourth Klovdahl child. =-)

SHE was going to have fluffy light brown hair, huge chubby cheeks, and look just like her big sister Makenna. She would be even more laid back than her big brother Connor (hard to imagine) and she would be fought over by all of the youth group girls to be held for the first two years of her life.

She was going to grow up with our family and go camping, go to the beach, go to church, and be in our pictures, our memories, our daily lives. She would say things that would make us laugh. She would fall down and cry and we'd run to save her. She'd call Kelsie from college when her boyfriend broke up with her and Kelsie would call me to tell me all about it.

I could go on and on but the point is that once again God has allowed a curve ball to be thrown into the lives of my friends and it sucks. But I know and they know that He will get them through this difficult time and that while we WANT this baby so badly to be with us, there is NO better place for her to be than safely in the arms of Jesus...until we join her in Heaven one day and can hold her for the very first time. Whole, healthy, complete, chubby Klovdahl cheeks and all.

I love you guys to bits and will be home soon.

And for you guys in blog land, I posted pics of Makenna and Blake from a few years back so you could see how cute the Klove kids are. They make the cutest babies, I swear!!!

Please stop what you're doing and dance...

No pictures yet, but it's midnight our first day in Hawaii, and it is truly paradise. Both of us are stressed because there are too many things to do and not enough time to do it in, but it is amazing. It is more than we could have imagined. More people, more buildings, more poverty, more entertainment, more beauty, more excitement & more creative ways to spend your money than they ever showed us in that double episode of the Brady Bunch.
Its been so weird to take this vacation in the first place when other people who are close to me are having a rough go at life. My brother is struggling with addiction, several good friends are laid off and have small children, there's sickness everywhere, and we're just going to celebrate our anniversary like we don't even care?
Tonight Mike and I sat in an open air bar and were listening to two guys singing to an acoustic guitar and a ukelele (my favorite!)They're called Beach 5 & will hopefully be linked to here . They were singing all songs we knew that we could kind of sing along with. I just LOVED it. The temperature was perfect, our food and drinks were perfect and the atmosphere with the palm trees was just incredible. So then the singers asked if there were any birthdays and sang happy birthday. Then they asked if there were any other special dates out there. I, of course, had just taken a huge bite of my fish taco, so I just held up 10 fingers. He said, "You're 10 years old?" This is in front of about 100 people. I said, "No! Married for 10 years!" So he said, "Congratulations. This song is for the couple who has been married for 10 years." and people clapped. The song was "Still the one". I reached across the table to Mike and took his hands. Instantly everything flooded my mind as I looked into his sweet face. The laughing we do so hard until we cry, the fighting we do over mostly dumb stuff, the births of our 4 babies, how much he loves me just because I'm me and how much I love him just because he's him and how I can't imagine life without him. I said, "Honey, I'm going to cry right now, okay?" and he said, "Okay," And I climbed over to his bench and reached my arms around his neck and he reached around mine and we swayed with the music and just loved each other while the men sang that song for us...IN THE GENTLE, BREEZY, NIGHT IN HAWAII. Can you stand it?
I didn't want to write this to make you puke, guys. I wanted to write this to tell you that we have been through a lot in our marriage. We have had times of mourning and times of "being in the valley" and it is not fun. But let me tell you, NOW that God is leading us through a time of dancing, we are cherishing every second and will NOT take it for granted. One, because we know this will not last (Hello, foster system) and two, because our friends can not all be in this place with us. But if anyone is out there in blog land reading my ramblings and you are in a valley time, please be encouraged. Know that this period will not last forever, that God will get you through your situation somehow, and try to look for the LITTLE ways in your days that you can dance.

Anybody got a coconut bra to loan out?

So the day started out as a giant stress ball. I came down stairs to find Mike on the phone, his eyebrows wrinkled, papers spread out on the counter and huffing his breath. You know that sound. The sound you get from your husband when he asks you how long you've been driving the car with the oil light on and you say, "I can't remember." That huff. But before I tell you what was wrong this time, I need to back up...

The way Mike and Darbi work is that Darbi is in charge of all of the fun, the mess and the stress, and Mike is in charge of the logic, the peace and the cleaning up of all of my messes.

On December 5, 1998 we became man and wife and have had quite a ride getting to know each other through life's ups and downs. But if there's one thing we've learned over the last 10 years it is this: WE NEED A VACATION. We want to celebrate our marriage and what we have been through and are currently going through together. We will leave the kids with the grandparents, leave our computers and phones at home and lay on a beach for 6 days somewhere warm next week and we will LOVE IT. But where?

This is where it gets interesting. We consider ourselves "medium" people. We don't buy new cars or designer clothes. We get a lot of our stuff at garage sales and off of craigslist. Mike cuts the boys hair and his own and I get my hair done at a $15 place. We buy furniture at Ikea in the rare event that we DO buy it new, the rest is hand-me-downs. I've always wanted to go to Hawaii some day, but when we decided to go on this vacation we wanted to go to a "medium" kind of place so that we could do something cool with our money later (possibly a missions trip to New Orleans this summer).

Mrs. Fun (that's me!) got on the computer and found a great package deal for Puerta Viarta, Mike said "Book It!" and we were going! Woo hoo!

Then Mr. Logic (that's Mike) woke up this morning. "Hmmm. I wonder what you need to get across the border. " He thought. His huffing? Passports. Do we have them? No. Do we need them? Yep. Can we get them? Yep. But it'll cost us. Three HUNDRED to over one THOUSAND dollars to MAYBE get them in time for the trip. Mrs. Fun started doing a lot more than huffing. Mrs. Fun needed a drink with her Cheerios.

But friends, I don't want to drag you through my whole trip to the health department, Mike on the phone and computer, Blake and me locking ourselves out of the car at his school, sob story of a day. I want to get to the part where Mike called and said, "Guess what?"
"What?"

"I just talked to the travel agent and you know how the cheapest passport would be $300 and we only MIGHT get them in time?"

"Yeah,"

"Well, it's only $267 to switch our tickets to Waikiki, and you don't need a passport in Hawaii!"

One more word friends: ALOHA!!!!!

I got my mixing bowl back...

For those of you who know me well, one thing is I'm a great procrastinator. I'd rather play legos with my boys than do dishes, or watch 5 episodes of the office instead of folding laundry. Not something I'm proud of. So as far as adoption news goes, the good news is that our packet of paperwork has been sent to the foster agency (yeah!) but the bad news is that it should have only taken a couple of weeks to complete (Note: we got the paperwork in June). Considering the crazy summer and fall we've had, I think the timing has worked out perfectly. However, in order to prepare to add a member to our family and ADD to my responsibilities, I must now re prioritize my to-dos and make sure...REALLY make sure the things that take up time in my life are worth it. We need to be available for whatever foster child God places in our home and I don't want to be busy wasting my time. Got it?

So lets talk about family pets. We get them for our children. Yeah. And they're going to feed them and take care of them every day. Uh huh. So right now in the Johnson household lives Gus the girl cat, Mickey the tree frog, 30 crickets to feed to Mickey the tree frog (yes, they need a separate container, yes they need to also be fed) and thanks to the church carnival, 6 fish: Harry, Gary, Larry, Mary, Joseph and Airport.

I'm afraid to say this because I don't know if CPS checks blogs or not, but my own children are lucky to get a decent lunch on time some days, so you can imagine how often the fish water is clear enough for them to see outside the glass. And when Aunt Kathy comes over, she just gives me "the eyebrows" and says, "Darbi!" She then takes Blake and makes it a FUN project to clean out the fish bowl and feed them and talk to them and tell them about Jesus. (I added that last part to enrich the story).

Here's the thing...In my marital vows nor in discussing the building of a family did I ever promise to clean out three cages, a litterbox and a plethora of food and water dishes (you should SEE a crickets food dish. It's the cutest little thing...) and therefore when they are stinky and cloudy it should not be a reflection on who I am as a mother. Can I hear an amen?

So tonight I put the boys to bed early. Mike is at work so I could have some alone time. I went to check on the frog real quick and he doesn't look so hot. Gary and Airport have already passed away in the last week and I JUST bought 30 crickets. This frog was NOT going to die until he ate all $3 of those little guys. So, I set my freshly made peppermint coffee down, rolled up my sleeves and prepared to clean out frog filth. For an hour and a half I cleaned the frog cage and the cricket cage and all of the tiny parts. I put Mickey in his freshly cleaned home, fed the stinking crickets their yellow goup, and then looked at the fish bowl. Brown stinky water. I can't just leave them. As I walked closer, yep, there was another soldier down...or should I say up? I think it was Airport but I can't be certain. His tattoo was on the other side. And then a voice came from nowhere and said, "flush them all, Darbi. You are downsizing priorities. The fish are unappreciated and the boys will never notice. Besides, you've kept them in your really nice Pampered Chef mixing bowl for over a year now. Don't you want that back? You deserve it." In hindsight I'm pretty sure it was the voice of the devil, but it's too late. I flushed them all. And I got my mixing bowl back. I'm afraid for the morning, or next month when Tyler says, "Where are the fish?" What will I say. I'll tell them they went to see Jesus, but I just don't know if I'll let them know I helped take them there.

Now for the real question...Will I ever use my bowl again for making delicious meals for my family? Not a chance in heck. But I got it back...and I have one less job hanging over my head.

I'm finally a blogger!

We are beginning the exciting process of adoption, along with living a life full of joy with our two boys. It is finally time for me to start a blog. My favorite things to keep tabs on will be of course the progress we're making for baby Johnson #3, but also the funny things our kids say at just the right time that leave us in stiches. Hopefully this will be somewhat entertaining so that you'll want to come back again and again! Here goes nothing!