The terrible two's begin:)

Well, Mr. Braxton Johnson turned 2 this past Friday. Wow does time fly! We had quite the party for him on Sunday with all of our closest friends and family. It entailed swimming and sliding, kids and dogs EVERYWHERE, good food, lots of presents, and a great cake! The best part was that the black frosting from batman turned everyone's tongues black and their poop green!(Bj told me to say that)

I guess it's time for me to introduce Braxton's Birthday present 'Thumper'. We picked up this little gem at the airport Thursday night, she came all the way from Mississippi! She is extremely small and loves to hover around feet and bite toes. Besides that, she is doing quite well on potty training for an 8 week old and we are trying to get our other dogs to befriend her!

Happy Birthday to YOU!!!! Don't judge me if I look a little stressed:) Hope everyone is doing well:)xoxo

Master of the Board

This past weekend we went over to our friends house to swim...we share this awesome blow up slide-pool with them. Braxton obviously had a blast on the slides and Bj taught him how to jump off the diving board! I was a little nervous at first because he tends to jump straight up and land on his buns, but he caught on right away. Here are a few pics. The first picture is the lifeguard, I interrupted him during his tanning session! :)

Here is a little video, I CANNOT begin to tell you how many times he went off this diving board!

A Love for Water

Oh summer days... it's always a great morning when Braxton finds out he gets to go to the pool in the afternoon. We usually go to the Country Club because it's only 2 mintues away and they have a great little kiddie pool where Bubba can go crazy, and a big pool where we can practice swimming! He has such a blast. He loves running and then face planting, and basically anything that causes the life guards to look at me like I'm crazy and he must be drowning! After being there week after week I think they are learning that he can hold his breath and is just a good swimmer for his age! Another great thing about these days is the long afternoon naps for Braxton (3-4 hours), and some time for me:) I wish this pool was open year round!

Here and Now

Well now that I'm all caught up on introducing our life, I can start my daily or weekly blogs. I'm so excited! I have found this is a much better idea than facebook or myspace when it comes to really staying in touch with people. So I hope you all enjoy reading this blog. As you can see, our summer has been very full of boat rides and camping. My Dad gave us his pop-up camper and we have used it almost every weekend! It has been fun to get away and enjoy the weather and water, but it's exhausting packing the camper on Friday and unpacking on Sunday. This last weekend we took a break and hosted a UFC fight party at our house. It was sooo much fun making appetizers and getting together with all of our friends. It doesn't happen near enough these day with all of our busy lives. Here is a picture of us...of course Bj is being crazy:) I'm also excited for further posts because Bj got a video camera for father's day! It has been awesome to use so far. We have such a nice camera for great pics but when we found out it didn't do video we were bummed. I thought that it would be a great gift for Bj so we can look back on all our fun times and literally watch Braxton grow up. Here is him opening his presies!

So this is Braxton's first time camping. It was a little strange for him to see this 'thing' pop up and then have to sleep in it! He did really well until he heard us starting a fire at about midnight and woke up. What do you do?? you let hime get up and sit on Dad's lap! We grabbed his blankies and hat and sat by the fire until he got sleepy again. He learned the words spark and flames and of course didn't want to go to bed! I love waking up in this camper after a good camp fire and smelling like smoke:)

On Father's Day, we went to Yellowtail River to go boating with our friends. On our car ride there Bj was trying out the new video camera when Braxton was trying to song 'twinkle twinkle little star'. When he usually sings this song, like the whole way there, it is mixed with counting and the ABC's. Which of course will sound nothing like that to you!

Woof Woof

I thought I would go ahead and talk about our dogs since as of late we are discussing getting another! When I met BJ, he bred his dogs. Now, they are too old...or one of them is. So we are thinking of getting a girl so we can try to have puppies again. They are sooooo much fun! Braxton has been around these dogs since he was born. I put up 2 cute pics of him with the puppies. We are thinking what I better time than his second birthday next week to get a new puppy! (Plus I don't want to house train in the winter:)

Here is Tonka. He is the Dad. He is very sensitive and prissy. If you can see, he is sitting in the car seat...not because he has to but because it was in the way!

Here is our Thule mama. She has had about 6 litters of puppies and is a fat little girl. She is very motherly. I hope she doesn't take offense to the new girlfriend Tonka might be getting!

Summer 08

When Braxton was a baby, we started turning down the hot tub so he could practice his swimming skills. He has grown to love water and now we need to teach him to have a little fear too! Braxton had quite the Birthday parties for his first Birthday. He had one at his mom's and two at our house! Our good friends Audrey, Roger, and their little boy Patrick weren't going to be able to make it, so we had a party at Chuck E Cheese with them and a pool party as well for everyone else! It was a busy week, here is Braxton at home after his pool party digging to a small portion of the famous 'Cyrus O' Leary's' pie!

Here are the best buds Patrick and Braxton at Chuck E Cheese. They had pizza and soda and played games for hours! Jk. They funny thing is Bj and Roger had all the fun...we found them up in the tubes before this picture!

Braxton's Great Grandpa passed away this last summer. Bj and some of his family traveled out of town for his funeral. Braxton had his first ride on a plane and spent time with family members he had never met. Despite the circumstances, I think everyone had a good time enjoying the family and time together.

Winter 2008

Here are a few fun pictures to introduce some of you to our friends/family/ and to share with you our past daily adventures! Here is Braxton helping Dad shovel, he could hardly walk in all his snow gear! This is our little man on Halloween 2008. Grandma Johnson made all her Grandsons matching pirate outfits for the special day! I think the sword was his favorite part!

Thanksgiving 2008. We all spent the day at my mom and her husband's home. It was a beautiful day and we had great food, and of course Braxton tried out the trusty trampoline for the first time.

Last November, Bj's sister and her family(husband and 2 boys) shared our home with us while they were looking for one of their own here in Billings. We had many great dinners and lots of crazy kids running around! On this day, Braxton and Simon helped Bj decorate the Christmas tree.

After Bj's sister and her family found a home, they got us a gift certificate to Fairmont Hotsprings right outside Butte, Mt. We used it almost immediately! Fairmont is a place where I grew up and I could not wait to go and hopefully continue the family tradition. There is nothing better than swimming all day, eating circus animal crackers from the vending machine, and running up six flights of stairs only to do a 1 minute long slide! Braxton also had the time of his life! We are so lucky that he loves the water!

The begining

Little Braxton came into our lives on July 24th, 2007. Braxton is Bj's son, and I am something similar to a step-mom! We have 3 to 4 days a week with him and try to make his life as normal and as fun as possible. Life has had it's ups and downs dealing with a broken home and a BM(nice term for baby mama) but things have been getting better and better every day. Bj and I deal with all of these struggles, it is challenging but makes us a stronger couple.

Life these days, as Braxton is almost 2, is going by way to fast! I was looking for a picture to post up top and ran across some videos of Braxton just trying to roll over! Now we are working on potty training, listening to Dad and Lalo(that's me), getting down those tricky words to 'twinkle twinkle little star', and holding hands in the street! It's funny how when Bubba(Braxton's nick-name) came along, our lives never drastically changed as far as getting used to having a baby in our lives. He has been awesome! Here is the video...