Christmas Card

We hope this letter finds you well and enjoying the holiday season. This year added four new nieces, and one new sister missionary (Destinee).

In March we went to St. George for a recreation conference for Desirée and stopped at Zion’s on the way home to hike Angel’s landing.

Kurt began his own contracting company “Lone Pine Construction, LLC” in April and is enjoying it. He’s mostly finishing basements and is doing great.
We had a fun summer fishing the Price River, Current Creek, and American Fork Canyon with Gooch. Kurt even caught a few in the Uintahs on our short backpacking trip to Brown Duck Lake.

Kurt had a goal to hike Lone Peak. It was a definitely a “Man’s Mountain” with some rock scrambling at the top. I was glad to reach the car 10 hours later. Kurt is doing his best to keep me in shape.

In October we went to Baltimore for the National Recreation and Parks Association Congress. We had fun visiting family out east and seeing Orioles Stadium, Babe Ruth’s birthplace, Fort McHenry, the aquarium, Little Italy, and eating yummy food, but we realized how much we really love the quiet out west.

We celebrated Gooch’s second birthday by inviting all the neighbor and family dogs over for cake, games and costume contests. It was quite the experience. We’re so glad to have such a fun and obedient dog in our family.

In November, after another ward split, Desirée was called as the YW President and Kurt was called as the Deacon’s Quorum Advisor/Assistant Scout Master. We really enjoy the youth and are happy with our callings, but will need a little more time to figure them out.

We finally got to put up a Christmas tree this year. It was fun decorating the house together. We love this time of year and are now just waiting for the snow.

Happy Holidays!
Love Kurt, Desirée and Gooch

Gooch turns 2

Any couple with pets as kids can understand why it would be so important to celebrate their birthday. This year Kurt allowed me to throw a doggie birthday party for Gooch's second birthday. I was really excited to treat him to something "special." Since we don't know the exact day Gooch was born we've been celebrating his day on Halloween.

I sent out invitations to the neighbor dogs, neighbor kids that play with Gooch, and Gooch's "cousins" (other dogs in the family).

I didn't get the best pictures of the event since my camera girl showed up late, so this is the best I could do being so frazzled.

We started the party off with a Costume Contest. Gooch, dressed as a skunk, and friend Keyri

friend Skip the pirate
cousin Rascal as Batman

cousin Braxton with Aunt Becky

friend Alexa and Max (was dressed as Santa)
friend Morgan


cousin Tex the cowboy
After cousin Rocky the superman (see below) won the costume contest we started a dog treat hunt. I had all the kiddos hide a couple treats each and then the dogs got to find them all.

We sang happy birthday to Gooch and then served cake to all the dogs. I have never seen them down something so fast. It was made with Peanut Butter, Carrots, Honey, Flour and a couple other things. Yummy.

All in all I think Gooch had a very fun time and loves all the fun squeaky toys he received.

Being off the leash was Gooch's favorite part of the party.

Balmer, Hon

About two weeks ago Kurt got called by the stake presidency asking him to meet with the stake president the next evening and to bring me along. Our ward was just about to be split and so we expected a big calling for Kurt. I was so nervous the whole next day and thought I must just be nervous for Kurt. When we finally got to meet with the stake president he told us who our new bishopric would be in the new ward (that's when Kurt started breathing). He then said he was giving our new bishop the authority to give a calling and asked him to come in. Our new bishop is our neighbor who we asked to watch Gooch while we went to Baltimore. He continued to extend a calling to me to be the YW President. I was in shock that the calling could be for me and kept saying "no, no, no .... are you serious?" thinking he was just teasing me. I've wanted to serve in YW, but never as the president. I pray that I am the leader needed at this time.

Kurt and I just got back from a week long trip to Baltimore. I had a recreation conference there. Luckily we were able to spend time with Kurt's brother, Bret, and family in Virginia. They took us to a really fun place called Cox Farms where we meet up with a bunch of other fun Johnson cousins. I milked a cow, slid down lots of fun slides, rode on a hay ride, got dizzy in a cornudrum (corn maze) and drank lots of cold apple cider.

After a fun couple of days in Virginia with Bret, Shannon, Marissa and Derek we headed back up to Baltimore for the conference. Besides going to classes I got to see Ft. McHenry, Babe Ruth's birthplace, Orioles Stadium, the ESPN zone, the Italian section of town (yummy), Baltimore Aquarium, Science Center, Loony's Bar (to watch BYU lose to TCU), and the Inner Harbor.

Although we had such a great time. I'm very glad to be home and grateful not to live in such a crazy place as Baltimore. I was in culture shock the whole time.

Kitchen Up Do

Well thanks to my dear Aunt Kim, who came to my house in July and gave me the interior design tip, Kurt and I painted around the kitchen window to match the wall in the dining room. I love it and think it balances everything out. Thanks Kim!

Before......

(Gooch wants to help too!)

..... and after.

Backpacking Fun

I just had to put a couple funny clips of my awesome wife on here. These were taken as we were hiking back out of the Brown Duck Lake area in the Uintahs this summer.





In this one we just got done going up the loose steep part. Good thing we had Gooch the backpacking pooch to pull us up.




We had fun and caught some fish, but it was hard to beat the scenery from last years trip to the Wind River Range in Wyoming...

-Kurt

Are you ready for some football?

It's football season again at home and at work.
Kurt spends all the free time he has reading BYU blogs and articles and listening to pretty much anything having to do with football. He's my football fanatic.
Kurt and I have a 'bet' going each Monday to see who can guess right the winner on Monday Night Football. I'm up by one so far and because I have less biases I should win. I suppose all the reading Kurt's doing isn't helping too much.
At work I've had to put in long hours getting our Flag Football program ready for games beginning September 22. Because we have so many teams this season I will most likely be reffing 2 out of the 4 days (M-Th). Kurt said he would ref again to pay for the cable we get during football. I've got 36 high school teams. That schedule took me 5 hours to complete!