Jessica gave birth to twin girls at 3:09 a.m. this morning, Mother’s Day (11 May 08).

On Wednesday, May 7, 2008, the day of her baby shower (and the day after Karl and Jessica’s 3rd anniversary), Jessica went into labor. The next several days were spent in relative boredom at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, trying to avoid giving birth at just 30 weeks.

But Jess got sick, and Saturday night her coughing may have triggered things because her water broke. Before long, a foot appeared!

Both babies were breech, so a “c-section” was performed, and at 3:09 (then again at 3:10 a.m.), Karl and Jess were parents.

Camille was born first (3:09 a.m.). She weighed 3 lbs., 8 oz (1605 grams), and was 16 inches long (40 cm).

Shaylee was born second (3:10 a.m.). She weighed 3 lbs., 4 oz (1480 grams), and was 16.5 inches long (42 cm).

Mom is fine but very tired.

The twins are in intensive care right now. They are so skinny but are doing well.

At a time like this, it is hard not to be so grateful for our Heavenly Father’s goodness to us. What a blessing to live in a time and place where our granddaughters can have such assistance as they start off their new lives here on earth. They were born 11 weeks early.

That makes May a busy party month for the Johnsons: Karl’s birthday, their anniversary, Mother’s Day, and now the twins’ birthday.

Thanks to everyone worldwide for your prayers and kind words.

I’m not saying Tom was excited, but he wore two signs (one in the front, one in the back) all through church.

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You know how kids can’t vote i think they should be able to vote. I think the world needs a kids opinion.We need a fun world but things just have to be the way they are. SO I think that we need to have kids run for president ( wait no they would just kill us in war):). So adults should be president but kids should vote. We think that it is not fair,but then again they might just vote for some one bad because another kid is voting for this. And again to all the adults don’t vote for some one because another adult is vote is voting for this person :)!!!!!

be a good person make the world better

It was one month past our first wedding anniversary and Christmas morning. As struggling college students, we had spent our year together literally banking on the saying, “Two can live as cheaply as one,” and now that we had a new, one month old baby, we were hoping to stretch that to three. While I was growing up my mom always used to say, “We’re so poor, we can’t pay attention.” Starting my own little family, we were that poor too.

Most couples had gone home for the holidays, or at least to relatives nearby, but being from Alaska, we made a Christmas for our little family in our apartment. Having little to give others, we decided to give our Christmas dinner away to the only young couple we knew of who was poorer than we were. However, making this delivery anonymously was going to require planning, luck, and athleticism. Their apartment was in a building where the front door opened into a long hallway.

With my wife waiting outside in the getaway car, I carefully set the box of food in front of their door, knocked very loudly, then shot down the hall in a flat out run. As I reached the stairs at the end of the hall, I heard their door open. I knew my only chance to not be seen was to leap the entire flight of stairs, so I did a weird jump — crouched over so as to be as low as I could be as I took to the air.

I almost made it.

My right foot hit the last step and I rolled my ankle and crashed in a heap on the landing below the stairs. I popped up and hopped at hyper speed for the outside door, crossed the icy sidewalk and dove into the car and my wife sped off for home.

I hobbled up the stairs to our apartment thinking to myself, “It is amazing how good you can feel with a severely sprained ankle.”

We could hear the telephone ringing as we unlocked the door. It was this couple. “Rats!” I thought. “He saw me!“

“Merry Christmas, Tom,” he said.

My wife looked at me as if to ask, “Who is it?” I pantomimed that it was this couple. She gasped.

“Are you enjoying your Christmas dinner?” he asked.

“Why would he ask that?” I thought to myself.

We were so busted, but I tried to play it cool. “Actually, we haven’t had dinner yet,” I said.

“That’s what I thought,” he replied.

My wife whispered to me, “Do they know?” I nodded yes.

“Guess what?” He continued. “Someone just left a whole Christmas dinner at our door, all cooked up, turkey and everything!”

“Really?” I said, wiping the sweat from my palms.

“Yeah, that’s why we’re calling you. You guys are the only couple we know of that is poorer than we are, so we were wondering if you wanted to come over and have dinner with us.”

As we entered their apartment bearing the apple pie we held back for ourselves and still unsure if they suspected us, he asked me, “Tom, what happened to your leg?!”

“I cut myself shaving,” I joked.

That was exactly 20 years ago this Christmas. I don’t remember many of the Christmas gifts I’ve received since then, but I know I will never forget what we gave that Christmas day, and how it felt.

This morning my four sons and I picked up some other Aaronic Priesthood holders and we set up chairs at the stake center before General Conference. We finished early and the guys wanted to play a quick game of football on the church lawn before going home to watch Conference on TV. They were short a guy and asked me to play. I told them I’m sick and can’t breath well, I have an injured knee, injured shoulder and an injured back, so they agreed to take it easy on me, besides it was just two hand touch football.

They first play of the game was a pass to me. I caught it and ran moderately because of my health. On the play, Tommy touched me with just one hand, not understanding it had to be two. A couple of plays later, the quarterback under threw the pass and I had to charge in hard to get it. Tommy, who is exactly my height now by the way, came running directly at me.

In other words, we were both running full speed directly at each other.

I guess Tommy wasn’t going to take any chances of a missed tackle this time because he hit me hard in the chest with both arms while I was catching the ball and he knocked me backwards so hard that I landed on my head. The last thing I remember was a voice saying, “Wow, that was a GREAT catch! That was a GREAT CATCH!” and another voice said, “He hit his head pretty hard.”

Apparently, although I have no recollection of this, I tried to get up and fell over, then tried again to get up and fell over again. I am told they walked me to a picnic table, where I sat a few minutes.

I guess they ended the game right there and Tommy drove Josh, Sam and I home … I don’t remember any of it. What I do remember is standing in the entry way of the house and the boys yelling out that I have been hurt. Nicky and the girls came running to the entry way.

I asked them, “Where are we?” and they said that we were home. That answer confused me because I’d never seen this place before. The next several minutes were spent with the kids trying to tell me this was our home and me wanting them to quit kidding around and tell me why we were here.

When someone said that we had moved to Utah, I was incredulous. “There was NO WAY I would ever move to Utah,” I told them, but they all were so convincing in insisting we’d moved to Utah, I was even more confused. Why would they play a prank on me like this when they know I’m not feeling well?

Then I saw tears well up in Nicky’s eyes. That convinced me that this was no prank.

Then I remembered: Caleb is in Indiana! I still didn’t know if I should believe that we were in Utah, but I reasoned out loud that if Caleb was in Indiana and not with us in Alaska, then I probably would move to Utah.

Nicky insisted we go to the hospital right away. I heard the music for general conference in the background, and I suggested that we watch conference and keep an eye on me, and bring me in after if we still feel I should go.

During one of the hymns, our phone rang. It was someone from our ward. He asked if I was okay and I told him that I am really confused, but I seem to be alright. Then he thanked me for teaching for him and said he’d drop by some stuff later.

When I got off the phone, I asked Nicky if I agreed to teach the Priests Quorum. I couldn’t remember doing so, but then I knew I had memory loss too. The thing is, I didn’t when I was supposed to teach them.

That is when Josh told me that after I hit my head, they sat me at a picnic table and I visited with this ward member, who is the Assistant Dean of the School of Engineering and Technology, Apparently I agreed to teach a BYU graduate class for him! [Laughing]

When the conference session ended, I called him and left a voicemail explaining that apparently I have memory loss and asked him to get back with me because my son says I talked with him and I don’t remember it. Instead, he dropped off a book, and a note telling me to do chapter 8 on Thursday!

I am not quite sure what to think of all this.

I think I remember everything now, however I was thrilled to walk into my bedroom and see I have a 6-string F bass, and a 4-string Victor Wooten Fodera Yin Yang bass. When I spotted them, I was just giddy. I thought Nicky just got them as a surprise for me, but no, they tell me I’ve had them awhile now and that we moved them down to Utah with us.

I think it is really interesting that I didn’t forget Caleb is in Indiana, and that I didn’t forget any of the kids or Nicky.

At any rate, I think I’m going to read chapter 8 and see if it is something I can teach, and if I can, then I’m going to give it a shot. I think it would be really cool to teach at BYU, don’t you?

What would you do if you were walking around in your house and you came face to face with a bear? I can tell you what Nicky would do, because it just happened to her!

We had just arrived home from bringing our puppy to the vet when I got a call informing me Emily needed to be picked up. As the family got out of the car, I walked over to another car and drove back into town to get Em. While driving, my mobile phone rang and I began speaking to Nicky. Suddenly she gasped. The sound of her gasp sparked instant alarm inside me.

I asked what was wrong but Nicky didn’t answer. Then she blurted, “Oh! OH! Oh my GOODNESS!” I kept asking her if she was alright, but she didn’t say anything. Then she muttered, “Bear.”

“Did she just say ‘bear?’” I puzzled.

“Bear. Oh my goodness, there is a bear — a bear in our garage! Kids! There is a bear in our garage!”

While talking with me on the telephone, Nicky opened the door from the utility room to the garage, and found herself eye to eye with an Alaskan black bear! She was so close to it, she could have reached out and stroked it, and she would have hit it with the door had the bear not jumped back when the door started to open. The two of them stared at each other for a moment, then Nicky went back into the utility room.

“What do I do?!” Nicky asked.

I told her to have the kids get their cameras and wait at the window for the bear to come out. I didn’t say what I thought was obvious … like, “And don’t let them go outdoors.” I guess I should have though. Some of the boys climbed out on to the roof of the house to see the bear and take photos. After a few minutes they figured they missed the bear and gave up. When 10 minutes or so had passed, Nicky went into the garage again, supposing the bear had long since left. Once again, Nicky unexpectedly found herself face to face with a bear. The bear looked up from eating our puppy’s dog food (from the bag) and stared at Nicky.

When the bear finally left, Nicky and Tommy went out to the car to get the puppy out of the kennel. Nicky banged pans together to scare off the bear if it was still close. The dog is usually quite keen to leave the kennel, but they couldn’t coax the dog out of the kennel. Then they looked up our driveway and saw the bear. The bear saw them too and went at them. They grabbed the dog and ran for the front door where Sam was standing with the door open, and promptly shut it behind them.

Gemma was sitting on the couch taking photos of the bear when the bear went onto our porch and pressed its face against our window, about 8 inches from Gemma’s face, leaving snot on the glass. The kids got some great photos and Josh camcorded it, but he accidentally put the camcorder in night vision mode and left it on, so most of the tape is in green and white. Nicky called 911, and I called a nearby neighbor who is a police officer, and he got there first and shot the bear with special cartridges that have bean bags in them. The bear looked annoyed and walked away. We have seen the bear back around our house in the the days since.

While the whole thing ended up to be a fun adventure, it was actually quite dangerous. This is what is known as a “nuisance bear.” It isn’t properly afraid of people. Had the bear bumped the glass harder, it could have broken through and harmed the family.

While I am tempted to turn this story into a life lesson here in this blog, I think I’ll just leave it at this for awhile, and thank my Father in Heaven that my wife has such a great head on her shoulders.

It’s winter. It’s Alaska. To my frustration, my boss made me work late and we were playing a private dance that night. Although we had set up the night before, I still had to drive home to change clothes before I went to the gig and I was running so late the band was going to kill me. Adding to my aggravation, the road conditions were not good making the drive to my house was so slow I was almost ready to pop out of my skin.When I finally got home, I couldn’t get the car up our road, so I left it at the bottom of the hill and ran up to the house. I quickly changed and being a certifiable idiot, I grabbed my beautiful, perfect, 1977 Fender Jazz Bass by the neck and decided to save a second or two and not bother to put it in its case … and took off down the hill.

Now, if the driveway was too slick for a 4-wheel drive car with studded snow tires to make it up, why on earth didn’t I realize it was also too slick for a person in dress shoes to run down?

I take that back: I DID realize it was too slick to run down in dress shoes … the instant I felt my feet were no longer under me.

I started to fall hard, and I was falling on top of my bass. All I could think of was, “Tom, you can heal. The bass can’t.” While falling, I tried to lift the bass as high as I could and rolled hard to try to make it so it would land on me, instead of me on it.

When I got to the gig, the band was all on stage stalling as best they could — praying I was alright with one face and cursing me with the other. As I came up on stage three of them started to lay into me at once. I just raised my right hand and showed them the open, still-bleeding gash on my palm, and my broken pinky finger pointing 90-degrees in a direction it shouldn’t. That shut them all up instantly and I grabbed my tuned and waiting Ric and we went right into our first set. Someone from the floor saw my distress and got me a towel to wipe up blood. I set the broken finger myself on our first break.

I still have that bass, my beautiful, still-perfect 1977 Fender Jazz bass. And if I had that night to do over again, I wouldn’t hesitate to take one for the gear. After all, I DID heal. I would, however, do one thing different: take the extra minute or two to put the bass in its case.