Vacation

Not really. There's something I've learned: there's no such thing as a vacation when you're carting along infants. It just doesn't happen. From screaming in the car to not sleeping at night, leaving town seems to be a whole lot less relaxing than just sticking around. As you can see from this first picture, the boys are extremely mobile now and keeping them away from the fireplace, out of the kitchen, and away from anything they could fit in their mouths is a full time job.

On the way home, we had to stop. Several times. But the most relaxing was dinner at Denny's in Tremonton. The boys were pretty good for that trip. It was also a good way to kill time while we waited for our food; we fed them! It was nice to get away, but it's great to be back.

Standing Tall

The boys are getting more use out of their legs and feet, and it's proving to be a challenge for us. They are really well behaved boys; usually when they cry it's only to get our attention, and as soon as they get it, they're smiling little guys. And the weird thing is, is that a lot of the time they seem to understand the concept of crying for attention. They will take turns a lot of the time, like if they're both awake from their naps, only one of them will cry, and he'll stop the moment the door opens and one of us goes in to meet their needs.

Anyhow, reality kicked me at about six this morning when I went in and saw the pictured scene. Mama's working today, so it looks like Daddy has a project to do: lower the crib mattresses.

Tonight we're planning on a trip to Temple Square to see the Christmas lights.

Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa

Grandma and Grandpa Ward came to play with us today! We don't see them very much so when we do it's tons of fun to play. They brought some of our Christmas presents to us early and even let us open one of them! It was an ornament with our picture in it for our very first Christmas. We think we're going to like this Christmas thing a lot! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa, we love you! Jack and Owen

Christmastime has come...

Last Sunday we spent a little while trying to get family pictures. First we went to the canyon, where we froze our cans off trying to get pictures. The boys didn't cry; I'm pretty sure they were frozen. The location we picked was pretty good I guess. Most of you will see that picture soon enough. After the canyon, we went to Springville and took some pictures at Grandma and Grandpa's house. What you see here is one of them. Jack and Owen's first Christmas.

Warm and Cozy

We're all ready for snow in Utah!

Help!

The boys need some of their cousin Eliza's belly to help them sit up better :)

Movers and Shakers

The boys think they are getting so smart by being able to move around more...and they definitely are! It's fun seeing them be able to go where they want and get to the toys around the room, I'm just not sure I would call it crawling!

This semester has been hard for all of us. I don't think I've gotten a single uninterrupted six hour night for four months. The other day I had this big project due by 9:00PM (turned in online), and Kara was working, so I had the boys to take care of while she was gone. They started crying the very minute she left. I tried everything. They didn't want to play with me, they didn't want to take a nap, their diapers were clean, so I tried feeding them. What you see in this picture is what I saw in real life. For three hours.

But I got my homework turned in anyway.

Pictures

Nick here. Some of you may know, that over the last couple of years I've had a pretty serious interest in photography. Getting a digital camera last year has helped tremendously. We've taken over 2200 pictures. Well, I would like to get more serious. I've already started by beginning the application process for istockphoto.com. It's a buy-and-sell website for photographers. It's fairly serious: you have to pass a quiz and then submit three pictures for review by the judges to see if your pictures are good enough. I've sent in two, not sure which of my pictures, if any, are good enough for the third. Anyhow, I'm thinking about making another blog with just picture submissions from me (and Kara-- she actually helps a lot), and you guys can comment on them, let me know what you like and don't like, any suggestions, etc. The picture you see with this article is one I sent my mom. I wasn't thrilled with it by any means, but one of her coworkers actually contacted me for permission to use it for something. Hope it isn't some sort of, "suckiest picture of the year," contest. Okay feel free to comment.

Little Swimmers!

The boys got to experience swimming for the first time and loved it! We all went swimming with Kara's family in Idaho, warm water and happy babies! We can't wait until summer when we can go swimming more often!

Presents??

More wrapping paper to play with??

Our boys

Daddy is watching the boys today, as Mom has to work. I put them in their high chairs and fed them a jar and a half of food (oatmeal with pears and apple-strawberry) and then turned them towards the TV so I could jump in the shower. When I turned the shower off, Owen was slumped over, just sleeping in his seat, and Jack was screaming. That's one huge advantage to having twins I've noticed-- they get so used to each other that one can sleep when the other is two feet away and being loud enough to wake the neighbors. Anyhow, they are good boys. We love them. Here's a recent picture of them. Happy Thanksgiving.

Mentality of BYU Staff

I'm taking this sociology class right now titled, "Research in Sociology." Basically it teaches you how to do surveys, how to interpret statistics, and other amazingly boring things. My instructor is big on doing surveys for the university here. He's been contracted (for some unknown amount of money) to contact thousands of students by phone and subject them to a 15-30 minute interview. So how does he creatively decide on how to effectively get this done? Why, requiring his students to do it for him. It's worth 20% of our grades. As he explains in an oh-so-convincing-way to us students, "Folks, I want you to get a feel for how phone interviews are done. One interview is not enough. You need to do ten to earn credit for it. Don't worry, the call-center will be open from 7-10 every night for the rest of the night, and I've even heard of a student who managed to get all ten calls done in just one shift!" Yes, we need to learn. This is the kind of mentality at BYU that rubs me the wrong way. I wonder if he believes that we actually bought that idea, that we're going to be learning from it. And you know how it works? You sit at a desk and read questions off the computer and mark their answer. Wow, what a great learning method. It's like at the MTC, where the missionaries, "do service," by scrubbing bathrooms once a week, or something else to maintain the grounds or facilities. Where I come from, that's considered work, and you pay people to do it. Here at BYU, just slap a different description on it and you don't have to cash out.

Ads

I just added Google Ads. It suggests you can earn a little money by advertising, based on the number of people who click the links. Personally, I've found Google Ads to be non-invasive, non-annoying, and from time to time, even useful. So while I can't, by the terms of the agreement, encourage anyone to click the links just to generate revenue for us, I think it's okay for me to ask you to go ahead and check out the links if they are relevant to you, and help us in the process. More than anything, I am curious to know if anything substantial will come of it. Also, if you have any ideas on this, please say so.

The Dark

So, for the past few days, we've had a hard time getting Owen to go to sleep at night. For months we've had a ritual of bathing, changing, feeding, and then putting them to bed. And 95% of the time, it's worked just fine. But over the past few days as soon as we'd close the bedroom door, Owen would start crying. And so we tried everything. Feed him more, change his diaper, let him play because maybe he wasn't tired, but none of those things helped. Last night Kara said, "Hey maybe he doesn't like the darkness." So we turned off the bedroom light but left the hall light on and kept the door open a couple of inches, and it worked perfectly. Then, later on when we were going to bed, we absent-mindedly turned off the hall light. Sure enough, Owen started crying again. The hall light went back on and he fell asleep again. So, for now we'll be leaving the hall light on at night and their bedroom door open a crack. I think Kara's going to look into getting a nightlight. But what's interesting is that, when I went to check on the boys this morning, Owen was laying in his crib and his body was exactly in line with the light coming through the crack in the door. I wonder why this sudden fear has suddenly arisen. Owen just hasn't had much good luck. We were at Uncle Harvey's house last night and they have a new puppy/dog. I think the dog bit Owen's foot, because both of them were just quiet and then Owen had this terrified look on his face and started crying. Then Jack was standing and the dog came over and licked his face and he thought it was hilarious. Anyhow, we'll see what happens with this darkness issue.

A quick explanation

Maybe you were wondering why this blog is titled, "Johnson Semya." Maybe you already know. Maybe you just don't care. Well, if you do, we figured "Family," would be pretty common, especially with Johnson. So we chose Semya, which is Russian for Family (In Russian: Семья). Also, cause semya sounds cooler than family.

Well I thought I already did a first post and uploaded a picture, but I can't seem to find it. So this is like the first post the second time. Here's us from a couple weeks ago on Squaw Peak. It was really cold outside and 30 yards from us a bunch of teenagers got busted for making dry ice bombs. Before the cop showed up, I thought about telling them one of the missionaries in my mission lost half his fingers playing with bombs, but then I figured that as college students, they should have known better. The coolest statement from the one kid, to the cop who came and ticketed them all, was, "This isn't illegal in Arizona where I'm from."

You've just got to wonder how stupid some people really are.

Anyway, for this picture we set up the tripod and we'd toss blankets off the boys and out of the picture for just a few seconds so they wouldn't freeze.