Christmas Eve

Lots of baking, 

making tamales with the Morales,

decorating a ginger bread house,

and

 Reading Luke 2 and Twas The Night Before Christmas

WITH FAMILY.

Thats Christmas Eve.

Random

This is why I love this girl.......

Full of life

and 

Very Individual.

What do You think this is?

If you guessed SNOW you are right!!!

It began to snow and we ran out and took pictures.

Who ever thought it would keep snowing.

SNOW in Houston, TEXAS

This is amazing. We had a fun time tonight with snowball fights,

snowmen and snow angels.

And what better way to end the snowy night than the hot tub.

Valiant Children

Today a sweet family in our ward let Heavenly Father take their beautiful little 2 year old daughter back to live with him. 

This has been a very humbling experience for our family. 

For Marshall because her father has been his YM leader. 

For Victoria because she has help provide some service for the other children in the family. 

And Rob and I for obvious reasons of being parents. 

Time like these are hard to explain because we know that she is in such a wonderful place. However, we have our mortal grief and pain. Which is actually us being selfish because we have lost something we love, but yet very natural and normal.

I just know that I have shed countless tears and many prayers for this family over the last several months and today. And countless more for my own family and children. 

I am grateful for a loving Heavenly Father that knows how special our "valiant children" are and still allows us and trusts us to be their parents.

So, tonight I will hug and kiss my own precious children, Marshall, Victoria, and Isabella and offer a prayer in behalf of this family and for my own children who are also "valiant" but must live in this awful world.

I love my Family!

This has been one of those crazy weeks at the Johnston's. (you know, I seem to say that a lot. Maybe that is all we ever have. Oh well, I love it that way)

We have been a sick house this last week. But no rest for the weary, with decorating and a 3 day swim meet.

Yes it is finally looking like Christmas at the Johnston's.

Isabella had a great time hanging ornaments and Victoria sang about every Christmas song she could find.

Marshall did really well this week at the Gulf Fall Championship meet. He is actually wearing 6 medals but every time he moved it would shift his medals. So it looks like 5. 

He ended up with 4 golds (1st), 2 silver (2nd), a 4th and 5th place. 

You can tell by the pic he was totally exhausted. It was a long hard meet but not as hard or long as next weeks meet at Texas A&M will be.

However, he had fun using the line: "Like Mike" and adding his own twist about Michael Phelps. He got some good laughs. Thats my Marshall....