Flashback Friday -- flashing all the way back to 1978

I'm doing Flashback Friday a little early this week, because I'm heading up to Flagstaff tomorrow right after work with a few friends. I couldn't miss FF because I found some AWESOME old pictures at my parent's house this week. My dad has taken some of his parents' boxes filled with old photos and memorabilia and scanned them in to the computer. Among the wonderful items was a program from the original showing of Gone with the Wind and some great photos.

This weeks FF comes from some photos taken in 1978 at what appears to be a Schaub family picnic. Now I've decided to play a little game. In the final photo I would like the help of my blog visitors (among whom I believe are enough family members, that I can piece together this mystery) in identifying the kids in the photo. I've numbered each person and so you can submit your guess for each of the numbered individuals. I will admit that I can not identify them all. I can only assume that they are all my cousins, and I can hazard a guess as to who they are based on the 1978 year. Anyways, the first two photos come from the same activity and may help in identifying the kids in the final photo.
I loved seeing how much we've all changed in 30 years. Oh my gosh, did I just write 30 years! Man where have all the years gone.

So send me in your guesses as to who's who (you can try to leave in the comments, or just email me). I'll give you a hint. I'm number 9.

Airline Spoof

My friend forwarded me this great video. I just had to share it. Unfortunately, I don't think that it's too far off of what is actually happening right now in the airline industry.



Have a great week!

Flashback Friday -- The Value of Work

It's that time again...Flashback Friday. The subject of this week's flashback is one that has become near and dear to my heart, especially this week -- Work! I am sooooo grateful to have a new job. I don't think I could have imagined how much I missed working. It's not that I was sitting at home doing nothing (anyone who knows me knows that I am not an idle person, I've got too many hobbies to be idle). It is that I missed feeling like I was "earning my keep". Part of my personality is a desire to contribute -- whether it's contributing to a church committee, a family activity, an outing with friends, or the work force. I need to feel like I'm making a difference somewhere, and for a while there I didn't feel like I was making much of a difference.

Anywho...I think this enjoyment (for lack of a better word) of work was instilled in me by my parents. We've always been a family where everyone was expected to pitch in and do their part to make our family run smoothly and make our home a better place -- Saturday morning chores, weekly chores, and extra projects just for fun.

Today's flash back pictures are from one of our earliest family projects. The top photo is of my dad, the twins (we called them "twin" at this time), and Justin and the picture at the right is of Kiki. We were living in our old house at 1642 W. Plana, in Mesa when my parents decided to put new flooring in. I think a major flood due to a washing machine problem was the inspiration for this project (but mom can correct me if my memory is faulty). As with all home improvement projects, it was a family affair.
I am so grateful for parents who, though it was probably more work than help, allowed us as children to participate in these types of activities. Here's what I learned about work:

• Planning is an important stage in undertaking a new task. Good planning can mitigating future problems.
• Everyone can contribute something, and should.
• You can do anything. Just checkout a book at the library on it.
  
• Work is not always easy and often not fun, but it needs to be done.
• The job is not done until everything is cleaned up and put away nicely.

These are things that I will hopefully pass on to my own family someday.

My First Day on the Job

I survived my first day on the new job and here's the picture to prove it (I took this shot as soon as I got home -- btw: forgot how NOT fun traffic is). Actually there really wasn't much to "survive". I think that I'm really going to like Pinnacle Education. The people there were very friendly and helpful. It became clear today that, I've been hired mostly as the assistant to the President of Pinnacle. He's heading up a new marketing department related to their online high school program, and apparently they needed some help keeping things organized. Sounds as if it's right up my alley. Because my "boss" was out of the office for most of the day (wooing new clients on the golf course), I really didn't have much to do. I'm hoping tomorrow I'll have a bit more to keep me busy.

Flashback Friday -- Handy Father

My cousin Natalie always has the coolest ideas, so I'm going to copy her (again). Every Friday on her blog she does a "Flashback Friday" where she posts some old pictures and writes about her memories. It's really fun to flashback with her. So I've decided I'm going to do Flashback Friday as well. So here's my flashback...

My Father - Mr. Build-It
My father is multi-talented. Not only is he a great provider, but he is extremely smart (as in nuclear science smart), spiritually strong, fun, interesting, helpful, and multi-talented. One of his MANY talents is his ability to build and fix things. My whole life my father has been a do-it-yourselfer. He's built it, remodeled it, fixed it or designed it. He did so many neat things for our family, especially when we were young.

Here are a few examples...

• Our playhouse in the backyard -- This wasn't always a playhouse (don't get too distracted by my lovely pink leg-warmers, you know you had some just like them). It started out as a sandbox, but my dad covered it with our playhouse cuz the neighborhood cats kept using the sand. We LOVED this playhouse. In fact, the entire neighborhood of kids loved this playhouse. I remember many days dragging out tables and chairs, electric cords for fans, boxes, food, and toys out to play in the playhouse. In fact when we moved, I think we all missed the playhouse more than we missed our real house.
• My dollhouse - I must have been about 5 or 6 when my dad and mom put together this dollhouse for me. Dad built it and mom decorated it and I LOVED it. For years it was home to all of my dolls.
• Stilts -- I can't find a picture of them, but when I was about 8 or 9 my dad built a pair of stilts for us kids. They couldn't have raised us more than 12 inches of the ground, but we thought they were AWESOME. Again, another toy that my dad built which the entire neighborhood enjoyed.

These are just a few of the things my father has built or put together. He is absolutely amazing. Whenever I need help he's always there, no matter what. I love him for that and for so many other reasons.

Irony

i·ro·ny –noun, plural -nies.
1. the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.
2. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.

Yesterday morning, I officially accepted the administrative position with Pinnacle Education.

This morning at 8:30am I received a call from the hiring department of the Mesa Police offering me the position of 911 operator. I had to tell them that I had already accepted a position elsewhere. Talk about ironic!

I GOT A JOB!!!!

I just accepted an employment offer this morning with Pinnacle Education. As many of you are aware, I've been unemployed since February. It's been a whole new experience for me, as I have never gone this long with out a job AND I've never actually had to do the whole "job search" thing before -- all my other jobs have "come" to me. Apparently, My Heavenly Father understood that I needed to learn something about patience, trust, and faith. And let me tell you it's been a hard learned lesson. I have been blessed with AMAZING family and friends whose prayers and words of encouragement have helped me immensely through this trial. I really could not have done it with out them. THANK YOU to everyone who remembered me in their prayers. I am again blessed with this new employment opportunity.

Here's the story...I was contacted last Wed. by one of the job placement companies I had interviewed at about 4 months ago (I had not heard a peep from them in the 4 months since). They said they had a job they'd like to submit my resume for and wanted to know if I was interested. I said sure, because at this point I was keeping my options wide open. So they arranged for me to have an interview with Pinnacle Education on Monday morning at 10am. I checked out the company's website over the weekend and found out a little more about their company.

• Pinnacle Education is a company that owns 6 brick-and-mortar charter high schools in AZ.
• PE also owns one virtual/online high school which has approximately 1,200 enrolled AZ students.
• PE's district office is in Tempe, AZ.
• PE is developing online high school classes/programs to be sold to various school districts across the country.

On Monday, I actually ended up having 3 different job interviews (go figure). So I went to my 10am appointment with PE. I met with one gentlemen and we talked about my employment history and experience. He also explained that the position they were looking to fill was an administrative admin for the Marketing Department which was in charge of the new online high school programs which were being sold to school districts across the country. It was a relatively brief 10 minute discussion. He then asked me if I had some time to stay and fill out a general application and meet with Kurt so he could interview me. I said that I had the time and so I filled out their forms and waited to speak with Kurt.

Anyways to make this long story short…turns out that Kurt’s the President of the company. We had a good discussion and then he tells me that he was impressed with our meeting, but they had a few more people to interview this week. He said that he would probably be contacting me at the end of the week to give me their final decision.

So I left the interview filling pretty positive, but keeping an open mind because I had 2 more interviews that day. Those interviews went OK, but I wasn’t really sold on either of the positions. However, after the last interview at 3pm I was in my car on my way home and I got a phone call from Kurt. He said that they wanted to offer me the position, at the salary I requested, with a $4K signing bonus, and they wanted me to start on Monday. We’ll you could have knocked me over with a feather. I was NOT expecting call from them so soon. I told him that the offer sounded great, but I would need 24 hours to think it over.

So after much prayer last night, I called Kurt at Pinnacle Education this morning and accepted their employment offer. Yahoo!!! I am leaving the ranks of the unemployed and joining the ranks of the gainfully employed. I am so grateful for this wonderful blessing. And boy am I going to enjoy my last week of “vacation”.

The Day That Changed My Life Forever

I'm sure most of us can look back on our lives and pinpoint a day or activity or occasion that changed our life forever -- a marriage, a birth of a child, a death of a friend or family member. Well my cousin Natalie, on her blog today, challenged my cousins and I to remember (and produce photographic evidence of) one of My LIFE CHANGING MOMENTS and it involved a swimming pool. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my most life changing event to-date, involves an empty swimming pool. For those of you who may not know the story, here's the Cliff-notes version (AND I win Natalie's challenge with my photographic log of events, yahoo! -- although we are still missing THE picture of the actual deed, which I would love to find).

In March of 1996 I went up to UT with my cousin Natalie to visit my sister Kiki and our other cousin Kimber who were attending BYU. It was my last hurrah before I was to enter the MTC to go on my mission to CA. While in UT we spent time with Kimber's sister Melanie and her "new" husband Kevin, as well as hanging out with Kiki's awesome roommate Aimee (she would also be my roomate 4 years later). Here are some of the shots...

Breakfast at the Golden Coral in Provo with Aimee, Me, Natalie, Kimber and Kiki.

A little shopping in Park city with Natalie, Kiki, and I.

Hanging Out with Melanie, Kimber, Natalie, Kevin, Me and Kiki.As you can tell from the photos, we liked to "ham-it-up" in front of the camera. Little did we know that this would lead to my near demise. Anyways, on the last day of our trip - March 11, 1996 - we went out to lunch at the Training Table and decided to take some photos along the Provo River behind the restaurant. Here's what some of those photos looked like...


Well, had we stuck to the bridge over the Provo River we would have faired much better. However, being the adventurous and suffering from terminal naivete of youth, we headed over to the Raintree Apartments where we found an empty swimming pool. I'm sure most of you are now thinking what we were thinking at the time..."What a great setting for a photo shoot. We should do the "Toyota Jump" into the swimming pool and have someone take our picture." Agghhh!!! This is the moment I wish I could travel back in time to and smack myself up side the head!!!! Anyways, back to the story, my sister, Kimber and I gathered around the pool to do our big jump into the shallow end of the swimming pool (just FYI, my ankle is hurting as I'm remembering this). I believe that my cousin Natalie was taking the picture. So, we jumped up and I remember distinctly as I was coming down thinking "I don't think my legs are supposed to land that way". I came down from my "Toyota Jump" with my feet perfectly planted on the ground and my knees and upper body came straight down too. There was no give, no rolling of the upper body, nothing. So essentially my right ankle just snapped and I tore all the tendons and ligaments in my left ankle. After impact (now all of this is kind of fuzzy, cause I apparently was going into shock)...I laid back and tried to push my legs out from underneath me and couldn't. I had to grab my thighs and drag my legs out...I think I leave the rest to your imagination, because it gets a little graphic from here.

Needless to say I ended the UT trip in the hospital undergoing major surgery. I was the recipient of 1 metal plate and 9 metal screws in my right ankle. And here are the cheery photos as proof...
I was in the hospital for about 3 days, my cousins, sister, and Aimee, kept me company the whole time. Eventually I was wheeled on to an airplane for one of the most excruciating flights of my life back to AZ.

The one little "jump" has changed my life. After the surgery, I did not walk for 2 months because one leg was in a cast and the other was immobile due to the torn ligaments and tendons. I was either flat on a recliner or in a wheel chair. My mission was postponed, and I went through 3 months of physical therapy. I was forced to ice my ankle every night for the entire first year of my mission, as the "swelling" from my injury took that long to go away. To this day I still have ankle problems and am now dealing with arthritis.

I'm now a strong advocate for NO JUMPING INTO, OFF-OF, or FROM ANYTHING and I stay away from all empty swimming pools.

AZ Weather

It would seem that the monsoon season is upon us. For those of you who may not know, every year around the end of July through the end of August AZ suffers from monsoons. That means that not only is it 110 degrees outside, but we also get humidity, with the occasional rain STORM -- including thunder, lightening, and dust clouds (we're talking dust clouds like the one from the Mummy movie). This is a picture I took in 2006 outside my front door during one of the dust storms. The temperature today is only going to get to a balmy 108 degrees. There is a huge difference in the feel of the weather when it's monsoon season as opposed to when it's a "dry heat". I've included a few photos of the varied AZ weather with this post. This one I took on the way to work during January of 2006. We actually had snow down into the valley as far as Phoenix and Scottsdale. In Mesa we just had a TON of hail and freezing cold rain. The snow covered the Superstition Mountains for over a week.

It's days like this that I miss AZ winters. There's nothing better than throwing open your doors and windows and letting the cool evening breeze blow through your house. Oh well only 5 more months and hopefully the winds of change will blow through.

Another fun online toy

So I was checking out my cousin Natalie's blog and found this really fun toy. I made my own little slide show about one of my favorite topics...FOOD! Check it out. I've included only my favorite eats.

SHE'S BAAAACK!!!

Yes, I am back from my 5 day family reunion in Red River, NM. Let me tell you, the blast of hot air that hit me when I climbed out of my dad's truck in front of my apartment, made me want to climb right back in and spend another 10 hours in the car getting back to Red River. When we left NM yesterday morning it was 48 degrees, when I arrived in Mesa, AZ 10 hours later it was 110 degrees. Aggghhhhh!!!! However, it was nice to sleep in my own bed last night.

As you will notice I only posted on the first day, that was because it was just too much trouble trying to upload photos onto my brother's lap top each day. When I finally sat down to upload my photos last night, I had 690 pictures about 15 short video clips. Needless to say it took a while to get everything uploaded. Now, I know you're probably thinking "Oh, I sure hope she's not planning on posting all 690 photos!" No worries there, I'm just going to give you the highlights. So sit back and get comfortable, because it's going to be a long one...

Day 1 - Wednesday: We arrived at the Copper King Lodge in Red River, NM, which is located about 45 minutes north of Taos and situated at about 8,500 ft. It's a cute little OLD ski town. We got there in time for some food on the green behind the lodge. As everyone had been traveling that day, we called it quits early.

Day 2 - Thursday: PHOTO day! Started the day at Millet Park having family photos, which took almost 2 hours, cuz there were some many of us. We actually looked like blue locust descending upon the unsuspecting population. Did I tell you that there were 63 of us?!? After the photo shoot we just hung out in Red River for the rest of the day (please refer to the previous post, as I'm too lazy to re write anything).
Day 3 - Friday: Family Fun Day! That's right an entire day spent elbow-to-elbow with fellow Johnson clan members. My mother had to rent a portion of the Red River Convention Center in order to get enough room for all of us to convene. The days festivities started off with the "Three Piggy Opera" as performed by all my nieces and nephews and a few of my brothers. My sister-in-law video taped the program and as soon as I get a copy of the video I'll post it because it's a production that can't be missed. The rest of the morning was filled with kid games, a candy hunt (for roughly 11 pounds of candy -- and I'm not kidding you should see the loot the kids got), and a family jeopardy game.
We had lunch and then started back in with the fun. I prepared a family history mini-scrapbook album for everyone to make and then my cousin Adele and her husband Matt handed out a FABULOUS family cookbook which they had compiled. If you're lucky I'll post some the secret family recipes. Finally we of course had the Johnson Family Talent Show. It's actually weird how much talent this family has! Agghh!! So we had some dancing, original songs, hula, and more dancing. Wow! The day ended with a ukulele/guitar jam session in Auntie Andi's cabin. There were about 12 of us on ukuleles, at least 1 guitar and a harmonica. Fun, fun, fun!



Day 4 - Saturday: This may have been the funnest day! We went white water rafting down the Rio Grande! It was a total blast. It was a relatively short trip, but tons of funs and the pictures tell the story.
Back Row: Uncle Reed, Justin, Megan, Jared, Kiki and Ryan. Front Row: Jeff, Ellie, Dennis, Reed and Jamie.

I rode in a boat with my Dad, Kiki, Jared and Justin. Our guide was "Rojo".

After rafting we just played games and hung out with family until dinner. For dinner we went to a place that puts on a cowboy dinner including a barbeque, cowboy music, and some great photo ops. It was a lot of fun, too.

Day 5 -- Sunday: My Uncle Steven prepared a wonderful short church service for the family. I love having testimony meeting with my family. It's such a wonderful experience and confirmation of the amazing blessings the Gospel brings into my life. After the service it was time to hang out with the family and do some site seeing around town. I watched a munchkin or two while my siblings took the ski lift to the top of the mountain. Later I helped Reed and Jamie pedal their kids around the town in a Surrey bike for 8 and I ALMOST DIED! AGGGHHH!!! I don't know that I've ever done anything as hard as pedaling that stupid bike at 8,500 ft -- I was sucking wind like there was no tomorrow. It was ridiculous! But the kids seemed to enjoy it.

We spent most of the rest of the day eating and playing games. We taught our cousins how to play "speed scrabble" which is a ton of fun and then we also got everyone hooked on POP 5 (a game by Cranium co.), another AWESOME game! We stopped playing games long enough to eat a ton of food for dinner, pack up for departing on Monday, and then we played Pop 5 again until 10:30pm ("Is it a J or an L??"). I love playing games with my family.Day 6 - Monday: Everyone had to hit the road relatively early. Fortunately the drive was uneventful. I did finish 2 books -- Fablehaven and Goose Girl. I LOVED them both and will be checking out their sequels today at the library.

Anyways, a huge hug and thank you goes out to all the Johnson Family members. I love you all!! It was a blast and I can't wait till 2011! I'll post my pictures to Picasa and send out the link for those that are interested in seeing the other 645 photos. :)