Dad was one lucky guy to get to go out to BYU this weekend to see Will and Andrew! If there had just been one more day, he would have been off to Idaho to see Pencie and Madelyn(maybe Rachel and Robert, too....). Friday evening got off to a late start, with I-15 shutdown north of Provo. But a trip to The Malt Shoppe for a world-famous milkshake topped off the night just fine!

After breakfast at Kneeders, we headed off the BYU Bookstore to get eveything we'd need to be appropriately attired for the big game. Before we could make it into the stadium, we had to stop and get a J-Dawg(with their secret recipe sauce) and watch AC take the Marine Corps challenge. The game was a nail-biter, but the mighty Cougars finally prevailed 42-35!

It was time to do some sight-seeing from high above the valley at Squaw Peak! Dad almost lost his grip and went over the edge. We managed to dodge some drunks and hunters at the top and made it back to Provo for a night of eating(Bar-B-Q!), bowling(who won?!?), and movie-going(Eagle Eye).

We had a blast! Special thanks to Momma for staying home with the other 7 boys!

Momma and I celebrated 27 years of married bliss this past week! There's no way it has really been that long, seems just like last week. Momma did promise to keep me at least another 27! Love is a many splendard thing! It all started at the Temple in Washington, D.C. and now we have 4 wonderful kids, 2 outstanding sons-in-law, and 3.5 incredible grandkids! We celebrated by going to the Orlando Temple Friday night(and of course, Cracker Barrel afterwards...the perfect evening). Families are Forever!

To fully know where you are going, its important to know where you have come from!

John Johnston, your great-great grandfather, was born in Ireland in June 1843, in the midst of one of the potato famines that ravaged Ireland in the 1840's and 1850's. Sometime between 1850 and 1852, the family immigrated to Southeastern Ontario, Canada. John, his brother Robert, and father John farmed the land and homesteaded in Huron County, north of the Great Lakes.

It was there that he met Sarah Jones, born in Ontario in 1851, whose family had immigrated from Wales several years before. They married in December 1875 in Seaforth, Ontario and initially settled near their families.

Many folks were moving to the United States, where there were new opposrtunities to aquire land. John and Sarah moved with several other families in the area to a settlement appropriately named "Canada Hill", near St. Paul, Nebraska in 1876. They homesteaded there and began a family. Between then and the early 1890's they farmed and John also worked by shipping horses for the U.S. Government. The horses would be taken by train from the Great Plains to points in the eastern U.S. On one of the trips, he visited Central Florida, at the end of the railroad line, a new town named Kissimmee. The entire family moved there in the early 1890's and settled near the railroad tracks and also farmed a large piece of land on Boggy Creek.

The family remained in Osceola County, following John's death in 1915. His wife moved to Avon Park(in Highlands County), where she lived until her death in 1931.

This is the family of your great grandfather, Joseph E. Johnston.