Hello

The Johnson Family is still alive and doing well.

I have been reading lots of books in my (non-existent) spare time, and so I have not made time for blogging.  Some for pleasure, and some for my children's school.

I made a major change in Julie's (12th grade) English plans, and that has required even more reading for me.  (It's a good change…..I'll share about that later).

We miss Olivia.  Missing her does not mean that her being far away at college is the wrong thing, but it just means that we miss her!  A lot.  I am still trying to send her some sort of mail--a letter, card, or package on most days.  And of course we talk, email, and text daily.

I ran the Tupelo 13.1 Miler last weekend.  It was a fun race, and Leanna and I were very happy with our time.  We got a very cool shirt and an even cooler medal.  I have tried to maintain 30 miles per week for the last month, and our official marathon training (my 6th time to train!) begins next Monday. I am crazy for training for another marathon, but I am crazy anyway, and at least I will be crazy and fit.

My swimming pool water is as green as our grass.  I have never in had water this color for so long.  I have done everything I know to do to it, but without any success.  If I can ever find/make the time to go to town, I will take a pool sample to the pool place and let them diagnose my water.  Yuk!

Chemistry is hard.  Clay is doing chemistry this year, and it is hard!  Jimmy has volunteered to be his tutor, and he spent a good bit of time last weekend studying the first two modules and teaching and explaining all the concepts and math portions to Clay.  Clay told me that he spent 7 hours practicing the math problems for the test!  And he made an A!

I cooked spaghetti squash for the first time last night.  It was good.  I just halved it, scraped out the seeds and pulp, sprayed a little olive oil mist on it, salted it, and baked in on 375 degrees convection for about 40 minutes.  Then Julie scraped it out into strands with a fork.  Delicious.

That sums it up.  We have finished several read aloud books over the last weeks, and we began reading Farmer Boy last night.  That is one of my favorites!

One more thing.  I bought a Smash Book.  Its theme is the months of the year.  I am not sure what I am going to put in it, or if I will ever even put anything in it, but I have wanted one for a while.  So I saw this one on clearance at JoAnn's last week, and I bought it.