Three Weddings and a Funeral – Year in Review: 2006

So we fell a wedding short from duplicating the Mike Newell film but it’s the best way to describe the year that was 2006 for the Johnson’s.

It was a busy year for the Johnson’s. Other than attending three weddings and one very depressing funeral, I watched Lukas grow about as much as Lisy’s hair. She entered 2006 with peach fuzz and left it with a mop on her head. Lukas meanwhile grew from being a clumsy walking baby to a quick moving toddler. We took a couple of trips to SoCal, I sucked badly at all three of my fantasy football pay leagues (Lis cringes), and we had another horrible April.

Though I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions there are some things that I will continue to look forward to this year. I’ll continue to watch Lisy’s hair grow (it’s my way of basing how well her health is) and her health to progressively get better. I will watch as my son gets bigger, becomes more of a pain in the butt, learns how to speak more words in Portugu-glish, and love him more and more. I hope to continue to go to church week-after-week (we ended 2006 by attending church five weeks in a row and seven of the last eight weeks of the year, yes I keep stats on everything) and become a bigger part of the church family. And lastly, I hope for the entire family to get through the month of April without any news of cancer (Lis in 2005) or deaths (UJ in 2006).

With all that said, here is a mini-highlight reel of 2006 for the Johnson’s (I do hope to finish a photo slideshow to accompany this).

First we’ll start with the highlights:

Force Does Good

We began our year by throwing our annual New Year’s Eve Casino Night and two days later helped my co-worker move her stuff from storage near the ocean to herapartment 3-hours away. It felt good to help someone though the muscle I pulled in my chest didn’t.

Our First Vacation Alone

In February Lis, Lukas and I took our very first vacation together – alone – by going down to California to visit my brother Randy, my good friend Dennis and his then-pregnant wife Allie and of course, Mickey and Minnie Mouse. We had gotten a $1500 travel voucher from a local radio station (Warm 106.9) for Christmas and found a way to fly us all down toCalifornia for a few days. It was the first time we were able to take a break from life since Lis was diagnosed with leukemia in April 2005. We had a great time visiting everyone, taking Lukas to the beach for the first time and going to Disneyland and California Adventure.

Wedding No. 1

In March we went to our first wedding, Justin and Lindsey DeWitt. It was a beautiful wedding with a nice cake, free drinks and good food. That’s all that matters right?

My Buddy a Dad

On April 7 my good buddy Dennis became a proud papa of a baby girl named Ellena.

April Showers

Though it continued to rain (this is Washington State right?) the Johnson’s were able to go to the Mariners Opening Day, which I hope becomes a family tradition, spend many weekend afternoons riding bikes and saw Erik sell a few of his paintings to an old folks home.

Team Force Shines

We participated in our second consecutive American Cancer Society Relay for Life event and for Team Force it was a complete success. We raised $1500 ($1300 more than our 2005 output), and we finished second in the team spirit competition. This year we will go at it again in hopes to raise even more money for the ACS.

My Blog Featured Again

In late June I got an email from MSN saying that they wanted to feature my blog. It was the second time it was featured (May 2005 was the first) and it helped my total customers (hehe) reach over 100,000. I’m not at approximately 175,000 visitors, 173,000 of which are family and friends. Find all the featured Spaces, including mine here.

I Heart Brazil

In July, Lis, Lukas, Josh and I took a 2-week vacation in Brazil. It was my fourth visit to the beautiful country and I still don’t get tired of it. We had a good time hanging out with the family, especially the day we spent with her sisters, nephews, nieces and sorta-brother-in-laws. We went go-karting (ouch!), shopping and ate some meat that I didn’t really want to know what I was eating. I also got to watch my nephew Elton play with his band.

Milestone Anniversaries

While my parents quietly celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary we not-so-subtly celebrated my Grandparents 50th anniversary. We sent them to dinner at the Space Needle in their very first limousine ride together, and on the following day we had a barbecue and bombarded them with surprises. Their entire family came up from California and one-by-one we released them from my parent’s office in the backyard. My Grandparents didn’t know what hit them. Then my Uncle sur-prised them by driving in the van he gave them and out popped my Grandpa’s brother he hadn’t seen in years. For the last surprise we gave them an Alaskan cruise. It was a wonderful couple of days of celebrating. We saw family members we hadn’t seen in years, we took family photos and of course I presented the family with another tear-jerking slideshow celebrating their life together. All of this made it my favorite highlight of 2006.

Wedding No. 2 – A Goonie Gets Hitched

Our second wedding of the year was the marriage of the Aaron and Megan Gepner. Aaron is Randy’s best, good friend and their wedding was very nice. Randy did an excellent job on his speech (one of the better ones I have heard at a wedding) and they had plenty of dancing and champagne to keep the Johnson’s happy.

A Month of Birthdays

Josh turned 30, I inched closer to that mark and Lukas entered the terrible two’s all in the month of October. Lis, Lukas and I surprised Josh (with help from his Mom – thanks!) by throwing a birthday party for him and taking him to a Silvertips game. Two days later we had a barbecue for Lukas and my parent’s spoiled him with toys galore! We also took Lukas to the pumpkin patch which was a lot of fun for the three of us.

Chemo-free for a Year

In November we celebrated a year of remission for Lis. Okay, so maybe we didn’t throw her a huge party (like we should have done) but it had been a year since her last treatment and hadn’t had any sort of setback in her recovery from leukemia so we were all happy.

Wedding No. 3 – A Johnson Family Vacation

Our third wedding was one of my favorite weddings I’ve ever attended – the wedding of Chris and Andee Lake. It was an adult’s only occasion which we were disappointed about at first, but later realized it actually made the celebrating more fun. We were all able to drink, dance and not worry about Lukas getting tired. Another thing that made it enjoyable was that it was in Califor-nia, so we were able to make a mini-vacation out of it. We spent a day in Hollywood with Randy, visited with my friend Dennis, his wife Allie and their new baby Ellena, and got a nice surprise from my Uncle Steve, who drove over from Arizona and surprised my Mom big time. We also spent time with my cousin who babysat Lukas while we were at the wedding. Thanks Stephanie!

Randy’s Small Screen Debut

Though he didn’t have any speaking parts Randy did make his television debut in November on the CBS show “Jericho“. Randy played a deputy and did a mighty fine job of looking tough hold-ing a shotgun in the background of numerous scenes. It was fun watching it with him and excit-ing seeing him on the small screen.

Three Days of Christmas

Though I wanted to dedicate an entire blog entry to the Christmas weekend we recently had I’m going to resort to this mini-summary of the time we had. For the third time the Johnson’s loaded up in the motor home and drove to Seattle to spend a day walking around the city, having lunch and getting ourselves in the Christmas spirit. We all wore our Santa hats which people always comment on (the ladies at Starbucks thought we were cool!) and/or look oddly at. That evening we went to Erik’s friend’s house for a Christmas party, the following day we had our second annual Christmas Eve Pajama Pizza Party and on Christmas we opened gifts, did our Secret Santa game and had a nice dinner. The fun part of the day came in watching Lukas open his gifts. It had been two months since his birthday but he had quickly gotten the hang of it. He ripped through the wrapping paper staring intently at the toys and throwing aside the sweatpants and t-shirts. And my parents didn’t go overboard with their gift buying.

And now the lowlights:

A Little Scare

In late January we got our first (and only) scare of the year with Lis’ cancer. Her white blood cells and platelets were both low and she had a high amount of lymphocyte cells which is usually a good indication that the cancer could be returning. Everything was alright and there was no sign of cancer, but for a couple days in January things were tense around the house.

Super Screwed

In February the Seahawks were screwed by some very (extremely) questionable calls by the referees at the Super Bowl in Detroit. Final score: Steelers 21, Seahawks 10.

Brazil Chokes at World Cup

The stage was set. All Brazil needed to do was win their first two games in the World Cup tour-nament and I’d be able to experience the true feeling of watching a Brazilian World Cup soccer game in Brazil, I would also get to write an article for the paper I work with about the local scene in Brazil. Too bad for me and too bad for Brazil as France ousted them in the quarterfinals of Stage 2.

Garage TKOs Elisete

There was a lowlight hidden in our highlight trip to Brazil. My in-laws tank-size garage door broke landing partly on their car and partly on my sister-in-law. In fact, if the car wasn’t there she probably wouldn’t be here either. The garage split open her forehead and her cheek and gave her a nice shiner on the first day of her vacation.

Layover in Chicago

No trip to Brazil is complete without some sort of mishap. For the second time in a row (Delta lost our baggage in Dec 2004 and we didn’t get it until a week later) we had a problem while travel-ing to Brazil. This time we got a free night in Chicago, courtesy of United Airlines. Though they hooked us up with a room and a $5 voucher for food we still had to fly during the day which took up a day of vacation.

That Darn Funeral

The biggest lowlight of the year, and the thing that 2006 will forever be remembered by, was the death of our Uncle Jeff. UJ passed away on April 24 after having a heart attack while waiting in line to cross the border into Canada. I received a call sometime in the afternoon that there had been an accident and a couple hours later the news was confirmed when Erik, Lis, Lukas and I met up with my family at UJ’s house. The news came has a complete shock as UJ was just 45-years-old. He was our closest relative (not including my Grandparents) and had lived with us throughout our lives, having lived with us in California, Hawaii and here in Washington.

It was the first death my brothers and I had to deal with up close and personal. I almost fainted at the viewing, we all gave a eulogy, the three of us were all pallbearers (along with Uncle Steve, Cousin Butch and Grandpa), and I helped write the Order of Service. We all, along with Uncle Steve, also created a very nice slideshow looking back at UJ’s life.

The death of UJ has been very hard on the family. If you’ve read my blog you know that we’re a tight-knit family and that comes from my Mom’s side of the family. My Mom and her two brothers are very close and losing their baby bro has been very tough on them and extremely tough on my Grandparents.

We’ve visited him quite a bit this past year. We went to an emotional service on Memorial’s Day, visited on his birthday and before the Grandparent’s 50th Anniversary and we more recently we went the day before Christmas Eve. He will forever be missed and in our hearts. We miss you UJ and thanks for continuing to look out for us!

Only to make their year worse, my Grandparents dog, Crisco passed away in mid-December, he was 14, and their car was stolen while my Grandpa visited the VA hospital in Seattle. Things can only get better in 2007 – we hope.