Blessing My Husband...Activity 2 and 3!

Activity 2 and 3 in our 25 Days of Blessing Your Husband were so wonderful and rewarding! Nothing like spending time with the love of your life while enjoying the season of Christmas!

Activity 2: Ice Skating in Sunriver!

Chris and I drove out to Sunriver for our second activity...ICE SKATING! We had passes for free ice skating out at our nearby resort, which was very handy to have during this season where money seems more and more tight. And let me tell you, we had a BLAST! We did multiple laps around the ice skating rink, and my handsome hubby even paused for a moment to let me take a pic!

After some time in the rink, which may I add we managed to leave injury-free, we spent some time looking at the cute local shops and even scored a few Christmas presents! We then found our way to the resort where we looked at the plethora of gingerbread houses that had been made by business, schools, and individuals in the community. Here were my favorites:

Being a HUGE Beaver's fan, this Gingerbread Field had me all sorts of pumped up! 

What child doesn't know this movie?! Not to mention, the tree with the Christmas tree actually had a light shine through the hole...awesome? I think yes!

And MOST important, the true meaning of Christmas! So happy to see that someone made a Gingerbread Nativity to remind us what this season is really for!

Activity 3: Lights!

Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of this activity, but wish I had! We grabbed some drinks from Dutch Bros and headed out to enjoy the lights throughout the neighborhoods! We had a lot of fun seeing all the creative ways the community had decorated their houses! We did, however, have to cut the activity a little short as we had a very important date due to the midnight showing of The Hobbit. 

We had a great time spending time with each other, likewise it was enjoyable having a chance to bless my husband! Being able do things like these together provided another way for us to celebrate the season in which God gave us the best gift anyone ever could, His Son.

"For unto us a child is born,

to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder;

and his name shall be called 

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." 

Isaiah 9:6

Welcome to our life Jonah!

On Friday, the lives of people all around the world were affected and hurt by the Connecticut shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The shooting caused many emotions, thoughts, and choices. One of the things it caused many of us to do is come to appreciate those in our lives.

Chris and I are very thankful for all of our family and friends. We are so blessed to have so many wonderful people in our life. We already have a big family but we could not be happier to now have another addition to our own Johnson family. We are happy to announce the addition of our sponsorship of our beautiful boy Jerry. Now, we are happy to add Jonah to our family! Jonah lives in Zambia as well and is friends with Jerry! We are so happy to have our boys be together in Zambia while we love them from afar! 

Jonah came into our lives when my parents  started sponsoring a gorgeous girl, Doreen.

At this point in time, my parents discovered that Doreen had an older brother, Jonah. What amazing news! Now that we knew about Jonah, he was instantly part of our family. So my husband and I, along with my parents, have taken Jonah into our families!

We are so excited to have this beautiful addition in our family! We are also excited to be part of the amazing organization that makes this possible, Every Orphan's Hope. Anyone looking to sponsor a child should definitely look into Every Orphan's Hope! Our lives, and family, has been so blessed by this organization, we are so thankful to them!

Welcome to our family Jonah! We look forward to getting to know you better and watching/helping you grow in the Lord!

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this:

to visit orphans and widows in their affliction..."

James 1:27

Activity #1...SUCCESS!

In my last post, I posted about 25 Days of Blessing Your Husband. This consists of 25 envelopes, 17 of which are filled with thanks/gratitude/appreciation, 4 are filled with services and 4 are filled with activities for the hubby and I to do. We FINALLY got to do our first activity on Day 4, and what a blast it was!

Chris' envelope on Day 4 read: Prepare to become messy, but the end result will be tasty". Any ideas what we did for our activity?

A night of baking! We baked all sorts of Christmas goodies and even learned how to bake one that neither of us had baked before! I had Chris tell me last month what his favorite Christmas time goodies were. His answer, snicker doodles and peanut brittle. So, naturally, those two were on our "To Make" list. As well as we also added sugar cookies and peppermint bark!

The recipes I found from:
snicker doodles
Peanut Brittle
Sugar Cookies and Peppermint Bark I found from the free eBook offered on goodmorninggirls.org. The eBook is called: Advent Study: Keeping Our Hearts Focused on Jesus. *On a side note, anyone looking for an Advent study to do during these holiday times, I have really enjoyed this one so far!*

We first, went and saw our brand new baby Niece  Paige (CONGRATS Jessica and Jeremy!) and also visited with the now older sister (our other 3 year old niece), Emmy. After this fun early afternoon, we were lucky enough to see our only other niece Maddy (wow does God bless us!) and took her for a fun time at the grocery store! We had fun buying all of the ingredients for our Christmastime goodies! Then headed home to start cooking!

Maddy assisted Chris and I with our first goody... snicker doodles! We turned on the Christmas music in the kitchen and sipped on our peppermint hot chocolate from Dutch Bros. *On another side note, those who have not had the peppermint hot chocolate from Dutch Bros, it is a must during this holiday season.* We soon had a system of me rolling the dough balls, Maddy placing them in sugar, and Chris placing them on the pan. Only one ball of sugar managed to find its way to the floor but otherwise our cooking experience with children went well! Here's the end result:

Sadly, Maddy left after this, but that did not stop the cooking fun! Next up, peanut brittle! Now, Chris and I had never cooked peanut brittle before, not to mention we had no idea how long it takes. As a result, we now have learned a new skill of becoming peanut brittle masters, as well as we also now know if we cook it, it takes about two hours. Yet, it was two hours of tons of fun! We got to see our peanut brittle go from this:

To this:

(Chris was very happy with the outcome, if you cannot tell from his thumb)!

While waiting on our peanut brittle to cook, we made the peppermint bark as well. This is one of my all time favorite Christmas time treats as well as it is so simple! Nothing says easier to make than peppermint bark!

Unfortunately, the sugar cookie dough had to wait, since the dough had to refrigerate 2 hours. We have yet to get to it, but believe that it is on our list!!!

Of course, no baking experience would be complete without the cinnamon challenge. Chris and capitalized on the Buy 2 Get 1 Free on spices at Safeway. We ended up with two big jars of ground cinnamon so Chris put it to good use. 

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope everyone is having a great month and keeping Jesus in mind has His birthday approaches!

25 Days of Blessing Your Husband

For almost a month now I have been so STOKED to show Chris my latest Christmas project. Finally, I was able to show him on Friday. Now, I received the idea from Pinterest (yes...I am a pinner and Pinterest is a weakness of mine...no...a hobby of mine is more like it!). The idea, however, had been pinned from another website.

I must stop real quick and clarify some lingo. For those unfamiliar with Pinterest, "pinned" means an idea/article/picture was copy and pasted onto a virtual "board". This provides a one-stop shop for great ideas on almost any category!

Now, this awesome idea actually came from a website called The Dating Divas. This website has a lot of fun ideas to do for/with your spouse, but the one that first caught my attention was "The Spouse Christmas". Now, BEFORE you click the link above, I must warn you that if you look at what The Dating Divas designed and then what I did, mine looks like a let a 5 year old do it (That's about the extent of my artistic ability). So, if you look at the website before seeing how my Spouse Christmas turned out, just keep in mind that it is the thought that counts! :)

So, how to do the 25 Days of Christmas is quite easy, a bunch of fun, and makes your husband feel great! You do not need to invest a lot of money in the project either! Here is what I used:

Christmas colored envelopes - I got mine at Target but any colored envelope works great.
Computer and printer - This was to print off my activities, services, and gratitude notes, but you can always hand write yours.
Christmas Ribbon
Clothespins
Christmas colored construction paper - Not necessary.

Next, I typed up 4 Christmas activities to surprise my husband with, 4 services to surprise him with, and 17 things I am grateful, thankful, and/or appreciative for. These account for 25 days worth of items. For ideas on what to write for your 25 days, I suggest checking The Dating Divas website. I would give you suggestions myself, but that would give away some of my surprises for Chris, so you will have to wait until December 25th!

After I typed all of these up, I pasted them onto slips of Christmas colored construction paper and then slipped them into envelopes. All of the envelopes were numbered by day number. I then sealed the envelopes!

Then, on Friday, November 30th, I clothes pinned all of the envelopes on ribbon that I hung on the wall.

I did this before Chris came home that way he could walk in and be surprised...and because I could not wait another day not telling him! I left him a note on the bed that said "Read Me First". In there were instructions as to what the envelopes were about/for as well as a clear rule not to open the envelopes but instead save them for each day in December. If this had not been specified, I would have walked in to all 25 envelopes open...I know my husband.

 And now, the 25 Days of Blessings begin! I hope you enjoy this as much as we have/are! It truly is an amazing way to bless and honor your husband!