Winter fun and news!

What a fun season it is … and it’s only just begun!!

We thought winter would be a time to slow down, but November and December just buzzed right along.

Bend Soap Company celebrated it’s official 1-year anniversary in December!  WOW!  What a year it was!  Starting from scratch, to this fun growing business … so exciting!  We are glad to keep producing wonderful, quality, natural products that you and your SKIN love.  The holiday scents were a HIT — Cinnamon Sugar and Apple Pie being the top sellers.  We also sold out of the festive Sleigh Baskets which we hope to bring back next year.  November and December were full of shipping out Bend Soap Company orders and restocking all our awesome retail stores in Central Oregon.  Bend Soap Company products were given as gifts all over the country this season!  So much fun! 

The boys have been helping out with Bend Soap, too. Burnell and Orin are champion milkers, while Chance and Ty have had the job of taking care of the younger goats.  In the office, Burnell loves to help pull orders for Kara.  And Wyatt loves to help restock the shelves.  Everyone else gets to help carry out boxes of orders each day. :-)  We love this fun family business.  We've had fun with pictures this season, too.  Right: Quint "smelling" a bar of soap.  He's so cute!  And, our little curly poster boy, Wyatt is now on our web and brochures.

Aside from that, they have been working on their school work, music (fiddle and piano), spanish lessons (Rosetta Stone rocks!), typing lessons, and other educational activities.  There’s always something to learn.  We have enjoyed this special time together as a family.  Summers often spread us out all over the farm, but in winter ... we're all cooped up together. :-)  Lots of time for games, our favorites including puzzles, cards, Battleship, Rummicub, Treasure Mountain, etc.

I'm in my 9th month, expecting another little Johnson baby in January.  We haven’t checked via ultrasound, so this little one will be a real surprise!  A 7th boy??  Or our very 1st girl??  The anticipation is quite high at the moment.  Quint is the only one who thinks it's a girl.  Everyone else is rooting for a boy.  Can't wait to see...  I've been pretty wiped out with this pregnancy and have found myself on more bedrest than I would have hoped.  Apparently I've overdone it all summer long. :-)  Super glad that Dwight has been around to help out.  He's amazing!!  He gets the troops up, makes breakfast, gets them on task, does dishes, goes shopping, changes diapers, reads stories, etc ... all while still handling business decisions, milking goats, making phone calls, attending his weekly 6am men's bible study.  He does it all ... so well!  The boys LOVE their awesome Daddy, and I couldn't be more blessed to have such a great leader at the helm.  Go Dwight!  Thank you for taking care of us so well.

On beautiful winter mornings after a fresh SNOW, you can find the boys bundling up before breakfast and racing outside to play in the snow.  I love their eager, enthusiastic, adventuresome spirits!  Building snowmen, sledding down the awesome hill behind the house, eating icicles, bouncing on a snow-laden trampoline, or having Daddy pull them behind the quad (the ultimate fun!).  They've also been little workers when it comes to stacking firewood.  Burnell and his crew drive the golf cart back and forth to stack the wood Daddy has split.  Growing into little workin' men!  

Next post should be baby news ... :-)