THE NEWTON'S

In January of 2019 Angela was busy with her color guard.  She learned so much and had a great time and made lots of great friends.  Their team won every competition that they went to. I wound up co-chairing the program that runs the concessions program for the Band Boosters.  I didn't quite realize when I was talked into it, how much time I'd spend working on it, but it definitely took a lot of my time that year. Alex was called to be an assistant Priest Quorum Leader and got to attend activities with the Young Men's program.  It was a much better fit for him than attending the adult sunday school classes.  This is the year also that church changed to 2 hours instead of 3 hours.  I was called as an assistant ward camp leader and we spent a lot of time working on plans and fundraising for our ward girls camp.  Camp that year was in a beach house down in Galveston, and we had to raise money to help pay for the rental.   ...

As soon as we made it back home from Utah, Alyssa dove into summer band camp, and Ashley and I worked on getting her ready to move into the dorms at UTSA for her first year of College.  Alex decided living away from home for college didn't work well, so he started school at the local Community college- Lone Star.  It was a busy few weeks to start the school year, but it all worked out.  Ashley spent some extra time on an airplane flying from San Antonio to Phoenix to help out David and Amanda for a week- they were diverted to Las Vegas and sat on the Tarmac for hours before they turned around and finally made it to Phoenix.  :) When school started I realized I would be spending a lot of time in my car with three different school schedules to plan around- dropping off Alyssa, Angela and Alex at their different schools which were not anywhere close to each other... My time management was put into play, and we made it through the year.  I also spent many hours ...

Summer 2018 was the Johnson Family Reunion.  Julie, Alex, Alyssa and Angela drove out to Utah and Ashley and Rich flew out to join us for part of the time we were out there so they didn't miss as much work.   We stopped in Colorado to visit Rich's Sister Sharon and her family.    And found the Swig drive through before we even made it to the reunion! :) There were a "few" grandkids... :)   After the reunion we went down to Zion National Park to spend a couple days exploring.  As we got to Zions National Park... there was flash flooding... the Narrow's hike was closed due to flash flooding.  We were able to still see some other area's and checked back the next day to see if they had opened the narrow's.  We were able to get up to the start of the narrows soon after they reopened it the following day.  There was another storm on the way so we had a limited amount of time to hike it, but it wasn't ver...

Angela was in 7th grade in the 2017-2018 school year and decided she wanted to try the color guard program out.  She was selected to be an alternate on the competition team, and then was moved to a regular spot after the 2nd performance.  It was a new thing for us to learn about and she quickly discovered how much she loved it.  Ashley's senior Prom, Senior Band Banquet,  and Graduation.

Here's a video of Ashley and Alyssa's marching band show at finals... 

In August Hurricane Harvey wrecked some havoc on our area.  Our home was fine with zero damage or even power loss, but many homes nearby were damaged and flooded.  The girls and I escaped the weather to visit friends in Oklahoma, but Rich and Alex stayed home to take care of things.  They participated in clean up efforts with the Mormon helping hands groups.  The next week Alex and I flew out of Dallas instead of Houston and took him out to get situated at BYU Idaho.  I was able to take him out and my dad drove up with us to get him settled in his apartment.  Getting back home, I found myself pulled into the marching band boosters organization more.  I was chaperoning and helping out with whatever things came up that needed to be dealt with.  I was able to travel with the band when they went to Indianapolis that November to participate in the Grand National Competition.  It was a huge eye opening exerience that year as i h...

So the last post before the long break was in June of 2017.  I showed the pictures of the house that we had remodeled.  What I didn't mention on that post was we had put it on the market and we sold it in less than a week.  We had 30 days to find a new house to buy, and get a contract on it, and pack and move... it was busy...  We found a new house in the same ward, and through some crazy weeks, we managed to make the move.  The new house had 5 bedrooms, and 4 full bathrooms, and an office, and a pool.  Alex no longer had to use an office with no closet... and we had a pool to help cool off in during the hot summer months in Houston. We also decided it was time to add a new member to the family, and got a puppy!  Daisy is a half poodle, half cocker spaniel- a Cock-a-poo.  She was definitely a puppy and we had to puppy proof the house much more than we had with our previous dog- Jojo...  We got creative until we were able to get a...