Christmas caroling with the Cub Scouts at the retirement home was a success!
Well, if you don’t count the boy who dropped the cookies.
Or the one who almost threw up. 
Otherwise, we were The Spirit of Christmas Incarnate.
My Ugly Sweater Coming Out Party
December 17, 2014 By
For years, I have wanted to go to an Ugly Sweater Party so imagine how delighted I was when I was invited to 9News’ fete. I mean, to debut my first first ugly sweater on television is quite the coming out party!
The problem came when I tried to track down an ugly Christmas sweater at the local thrift store. The selection had been picked through so I opted for the most gaudy sweater I could find but tread very carefully. After all, one woman’s ugly sweater is another’s treasure. I bought some tacky ornaments to glue gun onto the sweater but crafts and textiles aren’t exactly my forté so I hesitatingly asked my husband if he thought I could pull it off.
“If anyone call make an ugly sweater, it’s you, Amber.”
He was joking. I think.
And yes, I find it ironic that the photographer completely cut out my ugly sweater in this photograph.
How Elves on the Shelves are Actually Messengers from God
December 16, 2014 By
Nice title, right?
I hate Elves on the Shelf as much as the next mom and I really regret ever starting the tradition. I hoped the kids would forget about them and Bode certainly did because I think they creeped him out.
How would you like to wake up to an elf staring at you all night and reporting your misdeeds to Santa?
Hadley has been unrelentlessly bugging me to bring them out so I finally caved two days ago. To show her who was really in charge, I dressed the elves up in the kids’ underwear for their first appearance. For day 2 I had them hanging out at Fat Kitty’s littler box passed out covering their noses from the stench. I don’t think Fat Kitty was too thrilled about them, either. How would you like to poop to an audience?
Oh wait, every mom of young children knows exactly what that feels like.
We all have colds and I actually think Hadley has Strep so I am taking her to the doctor shortly (because her two week-stint with pneumonia wasn’t enough). I was lying in bed last night feeling crummy when I remembered I had to move those blasted elves.
Mumbling, I dragged myself out of bed and started trudging down the stairs. As I passed Bode’s room, I heard him sobbing. I stopped in my tracks and started to go in but heard him talking. As I listened, I realized he was praying. As he poured his heart out to Heavenly Father, my heart melted.
When he was finished, I tip-toed into his room, scooped him up into my arms and asked him what was wrong. My little overachiever was agonizing over a third grade in-class writing assignment that is due today.
“My teacher was helping me on it but now I’m behind everyone in the class and don’t know if I’ll finish,” he wailed.
The mom in me wanted to blow it off and say, “Dude, you’re in third grade, lighten up a bit,” especially when I heard the paper was about how to grow giant pumpkins (the horror!) But I validated his concerns and consoled him as we talked through his options for getting it done. Comforted, he rolled over and went to sleep. Even as a toddler, Bode has been a very sensitive, spiritual kid (remember Aslan the lion when Bode was 3?)
As I walked downstairs to move those elves, I had to ask myself when was the last time I really poured my heart out to the Lord with all my soul? I’ve had quite the week on top of all the holiday chaos. We’ve had major stresses with Hadley’s teacher and school that resulted in 10 parents meeting with the principal yesterday about our concerns. Now she’s sick and missing even more school.
And my mom is back in the hospital, worse than ever. She had a code 66 (she lost consciousness,) her hemo dropped to 68 (normal is 120-140), her stomach is bleeding and they have no answers.
If there’s anytime for me to pour out my heart and soul to the Lord it is now.
And I’m so thankful to my sweet Bode for reminding me of that during this Christmas season.
How the Johnsons do gratitude
November 27, 2014 By
I’ll admit it: Our house is 90 percent decorated for Christmas. The reason is, in part, that we already celebrated Thanksgiving and will be hitting the slopes today. And the other reason is the American invention “not until after Thanksgiving” drives me bonkers when the rest of the Christian world is already celebrating. Ever wonder why Christmas is so stressful? Because in the U.S., we have only three weeks to cram in parties, shopping, sales and recitals.
Plus, if I go through all the effort to decorate my house for Christmas, you’d better believe I want to keep it up for a while.
Jamie (being American) falls into his people’s mentality but greater love hath no man than he who surprises his Canadian wife by putting up the lights early.
Bonus: He did not fall off the roof and die.
We had our good friends over for Family Home Evening and I asked my friend Jennie to prepare a short lesson on Thanksmas (a cross between Thanksgiving and Christmas). She did a great job and started out the lesson by asking us what each of us is grateful for.
“I’m grateful for Fat Kitty.” -Bode
“You stole my answer! I’m grateful for Fat Kitty.” -Hadley
“I’m grateful for Amber.” -Jamie, my sweet husband, setting it up perfectly for me to reciprocate his profession of gratitude.
“I’m grateful for Fat Kitty.” -Rude Wife
“Can I change my answer?” -Jamie
An Early Thanksgiving of Spoons, Scum and Pumpkin Dictators
November 18, 2014 By
Since my parents are in town and we’re all heading different directions for Thanksgiving, we opted to do a premature Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday. I’m not a huge fan of the traditional meal but I figure I can suck it up once a year.
Plus, we added some really delicious offerings to our feast: smoked turkey and gravy, spiced cranberry and pear chutney, orange rolls, Jello-fruit salad, homemade apple and pumpkin pies, garlic mashed potatoes and my new favorite: Kelsey Nixon’s Sausage, Apple and Pear Stuffing with Cranberries.
Sorry, Jamie. Your jalapeno stuffing has been R-E-P-L-A-C-E-D.
Highlight: Dinner was, indeed served when the smoke alarm went off. No, nothing was burned but the timing was impeccable.
I blame it on all those turkey drippings.
We also introduced Jamie’s brother and sister to our Borowski family traditions of Spoons and Scum, which is notoriously competitive and borderline violine.
There were tears–like when Jamie wrestled his own son to the ground as they fought over a spoon.
There was stealing as I swooped in and triumphantly grabbed all the spoons, only to drop them back on the table as they dove in like a littler of ravenous puppies.
There were unbenevolent dictators, like when Jamie was the “King” in Scum and made the rule that anytime someone played a 6, they needed to proclaim “I love pumpkins.”
We all groaned as we collected our cards and I realized I didn’t have even one 6 in my hand.
It was like God was watching out for me that day.
Halloween in Denver and the skeleton’s slow, painful death
November 5, 2014 By
I shudder to think of the day when these kids of mine are too big to enjoy Halloween’s revelries. Then again, I’m practically ancient and whenever October rolls around, I’m like a kid again.
With gorgeous weather and many adventures, we had an absolute blast this October.
We had a “ball” at Heritage Square’s “Bootown.”
The zipline was fun but the kids deemed their new Rocky Mountain Ropes Course not-so fun.
American Ninja Warrior contenders they are not.
We spent an entire day at Elitch Gardens’ Fright Fest and took both kids to the scary haunted houses for the first time.
Fun fact from their marketing department: At least one creepy zombie “actor” gets punched every day from freaked-out patrons.
My good friend Jennie and her husband have been staying with us as they finalize their move to Colorado. Not only did they help us with the Giant Gourd of Horror as Jamie scared trick-or-treaters all night, Jennie did a bang-up job on Bode’s skeleton make-up. He was delighted no one recognized him!
Hadley went as the White Lady from The Hobbit and the kids had a blast hanging out with friends.
My favorite moment of the night (apart from The Pumpkin Man traumatizing the neighbors) was during the parade. Our neighborhood fire station generously hosts a party with loads of treas and a fire-truck-led parade. Last year, Bode raced off with his friends but found himself alone at the end of it.
The kid has serious abandonment issues so you can imagine how well that turned out despite the fact he easily found his way home.
This year, I cautioned him to stay close to us but despite our best attempts, we couldn’t track down any of his buddies.
Enter: Witch Ashlee. I suspect she has had a crush on Bode since kindergarten because she positively melts when he’s around. She glommed onto him during the parade and would not let him leave her side. 
I could tell he was dying inside to be walking next to a girl during the parade but being the nice guy that he is, he didn’t ditch her. I knew the moment that parade was over, he’d be outta there like a skeleton out of the closet.
As we were parting, Ashlee took a bold approach. Instead of going to Bode (which would have resulted in a blatant rejection), she very sweetly asked ME if he wanted to go trick-or-treating with her.
I gently turned her down by saying he’d rather die a slow, painful death he was already going with his friends.
But you’d better believe when he’s 16, I won’t be so nice.
The Halloween Party of Death
October 28, 2014 By
When the kids were younger, I threw blowout Halloween parties. Just look at these cuties back in 2006 (Hadley is the Broncos cheerleader, bottom right).
And yes, she’d DIE now to ever be dressed as one of those “silly girls.”
My kids loved those parties but since we implemented the Giant Pumpkin Party four years ago, I disbanded those Halloween bashes because there was no way I was going to throw two of them in October.
So, what’s the first thing my opportunistic kids begged me to do when the Pumpkin Party was canceled?
See below.
The coolest hosts ever (before we lost our minds)
Hanging doughnuts (30 doughnuts were eaten in 30 seconds flat)
Bode’s make-up artist, Alex. Pumpkin Man photobomb.
I knew we were in trouble during the invitation stage. I didn’t want anyone to feel left out but when people started asking if siblings could come, I kindly told them “yes” if the parent would come help. A couple did, most didn’t and I ended up with waaaaaaaay too many kids. They are all well-behaved, awesome kids but the sheer number (25 of ‘em) about did us in.
We had plenty of fun games to keep them occupied, like a candy corn relay I made up. Essentially, they had to put a spoon in their mouth, scoop up candy corn with it and race to the other side of the yard and deposit the candy into a jar. On the way back, they had to do silly challenges like “Pretend you are Elsa and sing ‘Let it Go’ at the top of your lungs as you skate back.”
As you can imagine, there was a whole lotta silliness.
The excessive amounts of sugar certainly helped.
My friend Julie outdid herself by making “Poison Punch” and personalizing a cup for each kid.
She is what I call a “Pinterest Overachiever” and the kids loved it!
Out of everyone, I am most indebted to my friend “Witch Terry” who made a surprise appearance halfway through the party. I had asked her to pull together some magical science experiments and we got together during the week to practice.
Overachiever that she is (it runs in my circles), she went above-and-beyond with some awesome tricks but the mere chaos almost sent us to our graves. Fortunately, the kids were AWED by every single one.
Fun with dry ice
Witch Terry in her element
Baking soda+vinegar+balloons+water bottle= an awesome Fizz Inflator
This is my favorite picture of the evening: seeing the children’s awed faces at our successful dry ice crystal ball! (Find out how to make it here; our ghostly screaming balloons were another hit).
As kids were arriving at the party, we had our disco light swirling and fog making machine chugging. And the fire alarm going off.
It started with chaos, it ended with chaos, and according to the party goers, it was “the best Halloween party ever.”
At least someone had a good time. Remind me of this post the next time they beg me for an over-the-top party.
Our New Tradition: Labor Day Pancake Contest Eating Party!
September 7, 2014 By
I love throwing parties. It really started years ago with our annual pumpkin party and has grown to dinner groups, 4th of July bashes and then a few weeks ago, Hadley and Bode convinced me to invite a bunch of their church friends over for a night of movies, pizza and ghosts in the graveyard.
For Labor Day, the kids and I thought it would be fun to get some people together to do a pancake-eating-contest-breakfast so sent an email to some families to see if they were in town. Most of them were and so our house was flooded with eight Mormon families. If you’ve seen ‘em you know they have a lot of kids, which translates into a lot of fun.
Pancake Par-tay
Some of the men-folk
The women-folk
Last fall, the kids participated in their first pie-eating contest. Though the experience was hilarious, eating an entire pie was over-the-top so we thought doing the same challenge with a few pancakes would be a lot more feasible.
Here’s my sordid history with pancake-eating. When I was a wee Canadian lassie, my two brothers and I were very competitive. Oh wait, nothing has changed. So, one Saturday we challenged each other to a contest to see who could the most pancakes. For once in my life, I dominated, even beating out my brother who was four years my senior. I don’t remember how many I ate.
But I do remember how many I threw up afterward and it was All. Of. Them.
No lie: I couldn’t eat pancakes for 10 years after that.
For our First Annual Labor Day Pancake Contest Eating Party, the ladies went first. Yes, you will note my daughter is the only one who chose not to cover up her clothes.
Apparently, her strategy worked because she won.
Though I’m not sure if she looked like a winner.#She’sGonnaBlow
I had high hopes for the boys. Bode has an awesome group of friends so imagine my shock/dismay when I learned several of them had already started eating and didn’t want to participate.
“I prefer to eat with a fork,” said his friend Noah. What 8-year-old boy even says that?
I practically had to drag the few remaining boys down there but they sure loved it once they dove in.
Though Bode put in a good effort, his friend Carson barely beat him and even had a smile on his face doing it.
We had an all-you can-eat category and my friend Eva’s teen Rory dominated by eating something like 17 pancakes. Sadly, I did not photograph the evidence, probably because he was passed out in a corner somewhere.
We have invited a new family in our ward to several of our recent fetes and the father Craig commented to me how cool it was that we regularly open up our home as a place for all these people to come together for fun and chaos. “The party people” he called us, which kind of took me aback because it’s what we’ve always done. Growing up, my parents made our home into the place where our friends would congregate and it’s funny because Jamie once received a similar blessing that our home would be a “happy place, where our children love to bring their friends.”
I responded to Craig that it was important for me to have my kids build relationships with their church friends and I wanted to provide many extracurricular opportunities for them to have good, clean fun. I had fabulous neighborhood friends growing up and I’m still close with all of them. But during the teenager years, like many teens, they experimented with a lot of wild things and being the designated driver grew tiresome. Of course, I want my kids to have friends in all walks of life but there’s nothing like having friends who share your same morals and values.
Like stuffing your face with pancakes.
A quiet, chocolate- and bunny-ear-filled Easter
April 26, 2014 By
After spending recent years in Utah for Easter and Spring Bring, out celebrations in Denver were decidedly low-key. There was the requisite Easter egg hunt where I bought chocolates I don’t really like.
It didn’t work; I poached the candy anyway.
Easter dinner was delicious with Uncle Chris’ smoked ham, Aunt Lisa’s funeral potatoes and my famous Lion House rolls.
Lion house rolls before being baked.
Perhaps most notable is the Easter apron my mom sent me with (brace yourself) bunny ear apron strings.
These two appear devious because I repeatedly busted them for trying to do bunny ears in the picture. On Easter. Well played, children.
And if you think they look like model siblings, think again. On the drive to church, Bode started planning all the fun things we’ll do as a family once Hadley goes away to college.
Because it’s never too early to start planning.
How to up the level of difficulty at the community Easter egg hunt
April 10, 2014 By
Our community Easter Egg hunt has always been a seasonal highlight. There was the year when I was overzealous about finding the golden egg and face-planted Hadley (as I lovingly documented in the Denver Post) or when she was a toddler and kept mistaking the eggs for balls, yelling “BALL, THROW!” and launched them in the air.
We were on Spring Break last year in Utah so missed the hunt but we were committed to make this hunt our best year ever.
Until we showed up and saw the oldest age group was 6-8. Hadley is 9. Dismayed, we did what any Easter egg loving family did: we pretended she was 8. Too bad she’s really tall for her age.
As Jamie likes to repeatedly remind me: she does not get that from my side of the family.
The one advantage of Hadley sneaking into the 6-8-year-old division (along with a lot of older kids, I might add) is this was the first time they were together during the hunt. They settled in behind the taped-off area. Intensely, Bode looked down the line and spotted our neighbor Maddie. As the countdown began, he shouted, “IT’S ON!”
Now that is something he gets from me.
At the signal, they raced out and pillaged the eggs and it was over a minute later. Afterward, we hung out with friends, played games and traumatized Hadley with the Easter bunny (he is kind of creepy with that Joker-like permagrin).
We had a fun morning but if we’re being honest here, it’s kind of a lame hunt. All the eggs are laid out before them on a field so it’s way too easy. As we were walking down a hill to the fields, I commented, “Now this hill would be the place to hold the hunt. There are trees where you could hide eggs, ditches to up the level of difficulty and divots everywhere for the fear factor.”
You’d have kids crying, skinned knees and a whole lot of excitement. Heck, in some of the eggs you could even have band-aids. How’s that for some excellent planning?
Now that, my friends, is an Easter egg hunt.
I totally hope they put me in charge next year.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 