November 2009

Wow, I have been really behind in our blog updates. I am really sorry. I blame it all on the Twilight Saga that has taken away a lot of my free time. Now that I have read the Saga twice and watched the first movie enough times to memorize all the lines, and have seen New Moon, I finally have found the time to put together all the past blogs.

November was the month of visitors. My parents came up and stayed for one week. Then they left to go see my sister and while they were gone, Phil's parents came for their first visit. My parents then came back for another week before they flew back home to Florida.

My parents came in right after our biggest snow storm and luckily, the weather warmed up very quickly, melting almost all the snow right away.

Of course, we took this opportunity to hit the golf course. 6 of the 18 holes still had snow on the course. I was glad that we were able to play golf at least one time, especially at my favorite course.

Phil's parents came right before another big snow storm.

We took them to a teppanyaki place for dinner. The chef was really funny and the food was very delicious. We had a great time. Take a look at some of the great action pics we took!


It was also mom Johnson's birthday, and to celebrate we all went to see the broadway show "Wicked".

Don't they look so much alike? Phil says when dad didn't have any gray hair, people thought they were brothers.

We all really enjoyed this show, and would highly recommend it to everyone. We had so much fun. Mom Johnson liked it so much she bought all kinds of Wicked stuff!

My parents came back just when all the snow had melted. They could not have planned out their trip any better.

We went out to eat at the best Korean bbq restaurant in Denver (according to us), called Seoul BBQ. We were so hungry, that we totally forgot to take a picture of the food before we ate it all! It's hard to tell in this picture, but there is a grill right in the middle of the table, where we grill the meat (or meats) of our choice. We also get unlimited side dishes, about 10-12 different kinds of fun stuff. If you love Korean food, this restaurant should definitely be on your list of places to visit in Denver.

All the visitors left us just before Thanksgiving, and I was not motivated to do a big Thanksgiving dinner for just the two of us.

It took us no more than an hour to prepare our meal, yet it was one of the most delicious meals we've had on Thanksgiving. Thanks to Honeybaked Ham store, we had the most yummy ham and turkey. We finished this meal just in time for the highlight of the night.

The Broncos Game!!!
This was our first Broncos game at Invesco field at Mile High and my first NFL game I have ever been to!!! It was so exciting, especially because we won!

Here is our new young coach, Josh McDaniels, in his two sizes too big sweat shirt. :)

Here is the final score board.

Thanks for visiting our blog. I'll make sure to update the next blog on time.

October 2009

We had a very mellow month of October. Week days are usually uneventful with our normal routine with work and coming home to our cutest little dogs.

On the weekends...

This is usually how you would have found me, on a couch with my Twilight book.

This is how I usually found Phil on Sundays, eyes fixed on NFL football. Thanks to Direct TV's red zone channel, Phil doesn't need to change channels between games. It constantly shows football, with no commercial breaks, jumping from game to game.

Of course, on Saturdays, we continue to cheer for the Gators. All wins so far this year!

This month, we decided to dress up our garage a little bit. Our neighbor talked us into this garage floor coating. This is suppose to help it keep it nice, and to help keep it clean.

It does look really nice. It is too bad that we don't spend more time in the garage.

I came to realize that Halloween doesn't mean a whole lot unless you have young children. However, this year we had an excuse to dress up for Halloween. An event coordinator from Aspen Grove Mall asked my office if we could put up a booth for the "trick or treat street".

I dressed up as a tooth fairy and Phil was a ghost buster. We handed out more than 1000 tooth brushes and toothpastes. Many parents appreciated receiving something other than candy.

To end the month, we had the biggest snow storm of the year and the biggest snow storm I've seen yet. It is really pretty to watch it snow, but it is the opposite of fun to drive in it.


The best thing about Denver is that right after the snow storms, it is back to blue skies with sunny weather. It is the most beautiful place I've lived in.

September

Both Phil and I celebrated our birthdays this month and I was not too thrilled about turning 30, but I got over it.

We visited our family in Salt Lake City over Labor Day weekend. It always feels like too short of a visit since there are so many family members, and so little time! We had fun meeting up with some of our family at Hogle Zoo and having a bbq at Jenny and Dan's new house.

Here are some pictures from the trip. All the pictures were taken by Dad Johnson. Phil got me this really nice camera for my birthday, but I didn't remember to put the memory card in before taking it to SLC.

It was a great way to see all the kids and check out all the animals too.

The guys went out to play golf after the zoo.

The next day, we got to visit Jen and Dan's brand new house. You can't see through the big window, but if you could, you would see the golf course.
We had a bbq dinner and celebrated our birthdays.

We came back to Denver to find out that Gator had struggled a little bit again while we were gone. He apparently started to have bloody diarrhea at his babysitter's house. My co-worker told me to give him some canned pumpkin and that really did the trick. No vet visit this time. Yeah!
This is happy Gator, chewing on his raw hide. Can you see the little dry red spot on the top of his nose? We think he might have been dehydrated while we were gone. It took about two weeks for this spot to completely disappear.

Every Saturday, we faithfully wore our Gator prefernalia and cheered for the Gator's victory. Everywhere we went, we attracted Gator fans. We are very surprised to see so many Gator fans are here in Denver.

We also had our first snow this month. It started to rain early in the morning and then turned into snow flurries by mid morning. I called my parents to tell them of this strange phenomenon that I had never encountered before. Snow in September? no way.

Last, of the three series of golf tournaments, was held in September. Troy was able to fly out to play on our scramble team. The tournament was held at my favorite golf course, the Ridge at Castle Pines.

We played really well and came in at 11 under par, but still could not bring home the trophy.

We found out that there was a Dachshund race at the October Fest in our neighborhood. We got our kiddies all dressed up in matching outfits, but when we got there, they told us that they took the last participant's registration right before us. We were very disappointed on not being able to do the race, but we watched and took mental notes to prepare us for next year's event.


Phil celebrated his birthday on the 26th. We went to one of our newest favorite restaurants called, J. Alexanders. To this day, Phil would say that he had the best steak ever on his birthday.

We leave you with a picture of our cutest little kiddies. I wonder if they really are that cute, or it's because they are ours?

Dentistry from the Heart

I'm so sorry that it took me so long to post the August update, it's been a busy time.

This August marked 1 year of us residing here in Denver, CO and also our 2nd year of participating in "Dentistry from the Heart".
When we got here last year, before we even moved into our house or started our new jobs, we participated in an event that was hosted by my office called "Dentistry from the Heart". It is an annual event held on the 4th Saturday of August at my practice where we provide free dental work to people who cannot afford dental treatments on regular basis.
If you are interested in the event, you can check out the website: www.dentistryfromtheheart.com.

One week before the event, my practice set up a booth at a community event called "Western Welcome Week". I took Ali with me and she enjoyed all the attention she got from all sorts of people.

One week later, here are pictures from the "Dentistry from the Heart" event.
This is about 6:30 in the morning. Patients were already lined up to register. We started to see patients at 8 am.

This is the picture of all of us who volunteered for the event. We had three doctors (Dr. W (my boss), Phil, and myself), ten hygienists, eight assistants, six front desk staff, and more than fifteen hospitality people. Some volunteers were friends of our staff members, and some were our actual patients.

Here is us three doctors getting prepped by Lisa.

Here is Phil working hard.

Here is me working hard.

Here is us eating some food to get some energy to see more patients. We had unbelievable community support for this event. All the food that you see on the table was donated and what you see is only half of what we had. We had donations from Olive Garden, Starbucks, Einstein Bagels, Safeway, King Soopers, and more. I can safely say that no one who was working went hungry that day.

Every patient got a t-shirt that says "My Dentist has a Big Heart" after their treatment. From 8am to 5pm, we saw 125 patients and provided close to $30,000 worth of free dentistry. Most importantly, we had so much fun and it is an event that we look forward to now every year.

Our next year's date is already set. Let me know if you would like to participate!

Other than that, we really didn't do a whole lot this month.
We did play in another golf tournament, this time we won 2nd place as well as winning both the men and women's closest to the pins!!
We didn't take any pictures during the tournament, but this is taken right before we tee'd up on our first hole.

Hope everyone is doing good and enjoyed the short blog this month, next month's will include our final golf tourney of the summer, a trip to Utah to see family and more!!!

Thank you again for visiting our blog!

July in Denver

This was the first month in awhile that we spent the entire month here in Denver.
We kicked off the month by celebrating July 4th at the Rockies game.

This was our first time at the Rockies game and as you can see, there are tons of people here waiting to get in. This was a 100% sold out game due to their traditional fireworks show they have at the end of the game.

People seated in a couple of the sections far ahead in the picture were able to come down on the field to watch the fireworks. The little children were loving this.

The fireworks were awesome. This was by far the best fireworks show I've ever seen.

Here is a short video clip of the finale. Let us know if you want to join us next year at the Rockies game! We are going to make it a Johnson family tradition.



This month has been the hottest month. There were some days that the high temperature reached 100 degrees. There is a water park here in Denver called "Waterworld". It is supposed to be the largest water park in the nation. Phil and I quickly became season pass holders and have splashed around in the cool water a couple of times. I thought I took my camera with me, but for some reason, I can't seem to find any pictures of us at the water park.

We also played lots of golf this month. We have this golf tournament going on that started in July. The July tournament was a two person best ball, and there is one in August which is a two person scramble, and the last tournament in September is a four person scramble. We played in the July tournament and even though we didn't win anything both of us played really well and we are very excited for the next two tourneys.

This was at the course where we are going to play the September tournament in. We wanted to go scope it out first. It is by far the best course we've played in Colorado. It is absolutely beautiful and the best part is the ladies tee box is placed with a good advantage.

This pic was taken at the 18th hole "gold" tee box. Luckily, I don't have to tee off from this one. The fairway is about 200 yards over this rock croppings.

This month, we spent some time planting some new trees around our house. Well, we wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for the letter we got from the HOA about replacing dead shrubs in the front of the house. But the thing is, when we start a project, we really start a project.

It turns out that we don't own anything that has to do with gardening. We went and got small and large shovels, peat moss to mix with the soil, mulch to put around it afterwards and our new trees. Here is Phil, removing all the small little weedy grass even in our next door neighbors area. This is the back of the house where our garage is, and even though there was no letter from the HOA about this area, we found some shrubs that were dying, so we got some cute little trees to go here as well.

Here is the final product. We named them "Burt and Ernie". Aren't they so cute? They were called "Little Gems" at the nursery.

These are Japanese Pines. They went in the front of the house. We hope some day we will have a really nice Japanese garden.

These are my struggling daisies. I am determined to revive them. This is an area that gets lots of sun all day long and I think they were dehydrated. Within few days of us planting them, they started to wilt. I have since given them miracle grow supplements and water them almost daily, so hopefully they will survive. These were the first ones that we planted, so I will be really sad if they die on me.

I also have been cooking more lately. Most of the stuff that I make is very simple and ordinary that doesn't deserve any camera time, but I made some that I did take pictures of.

Phil and I both get one Monday off a month and this month we didn't have any plans for that weekend, so I had plenty of time on my hands to make something yummy. The bowls are called "chicken donburi" and the round dish with dividers have different little Korean side dishes. There is a special sauce that goes into the "donburi" and I still can't make that sauce like my mom. When she was here last month, she made the sauce in a large jar for us and promised us that she will come back before the sauce runs out. :)

My schedule has changed and now I work from 1 to 7 three days a week, so again I have plenty of time in the morning to make some yummy breakfast. Phil loves Mexican food. He thinks he could eat Mexican food everyday and not get tired of it. So, I made him this breakfast burrito. Phil dove into it before I could get a picture, so I stopped him before he could take another bite.

The last weekend of the month was spent again at the Rockies game. This time we were up in the "Rockhenge" suite with all of my work people. My boss decided to have our work party at the Rockies game and I would have to say that it was the best idea ever. We had buffet style food, drinks, and the best of all were the seats.

As you can see, we are very happy!!!

We are not sure now if we can go back to regular seats after this. My boss says it's like flying first class. Once you have flown in first class, it's very hard to go back to the economy seats.

These are all of our hygienists and me. This is the inside of the suite.

Thank you for visiting our blog. I'll leave you with a picture of Gator. He is doing much better. He even runs around these days. His check-up is in August, so I'll let you know what I hear from his doctor. See you again in one month!