Last Day of School

I am pretty sure this was the last day of school. I feel like my memory has gotten so bad that I can't even remember if we were all in the same class, or if we all had this class, but at different times. I'm pretty sure that Me, Britt, and Danica at least wer in the same class together. I also remember really liking the class, but I will admit, I was scared of Mrs. Comer-Miller! :)

Gallery wall update

So I finally got some frames bought and hung them up to see what they'd look like. I have to say that I LOVE them. At first I wasn't sure how I felt about how it all came together but the more I looked at it and every time I walked by I just fell in love with it. Now I've got to get all of the frames painted black and figure out what pictures I want hung up. I have feeling this is going to be the hard part.

Flashback Friday!

Anybody recognize this baby?

Well I hope at least Shan does...because its Ethan. :)
I think it is so cool that Brinley and Ethan share a birthday!! I was also super excited that we happened to be visiting UT when he was born so we could meet him. I remember thinking, "He is such an adorable "little man". When did you get to meet him for the first time Britt?

Time to Catch Up with Les

"ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE!!!!!"-er...I mean, read my catch up post? :)

What did you do last weekend?
Well last weekend, as in today and yesterday, weren't too exciting for the Brown family. I'll go ahead and tell you about what we did 2 weekends ago instead. We had just rounded up our month long visit in UT & needed to leave on Wed so that we could be back in KS by Fri night. (because Matt's boss is LAME & gave him some crap about needing to be "on call" it really ticked me off...anyway) I made a few too many trips to IKEA and yard sales while we were visiting and had to literally CRAM everything into the van!

This is a pic of us arriving in Denver, but what you can't see is that we have a whole other storage container on top of the van FULL of stuff, plus the jogging stroller! Our drive from Lehi to Denver was smooth, we left at about 2:30 am & got there about 10:30 am. I slept pretty well, but was still tired from staying up that late packing! So, we hung out with friends all day & planned on doing the same thing that night. Matt napped for a few hours in the afternoon, and we left Denver at about 10:00pm. (oh, and I managed to squeeze some new carpet remminants into the van too!) Everything was going according to plan until Matt realized that his nap wasn't going to cut it. We stopped at a rest stop for him to take a power nap & instead of just sitting there I decided to take a turn driving. (I'm not a huge fan of driving at night & it didn't take long for me to remember why) I had driven about an hour & was feeling SO SO sleepy! I knew that Matt was too tired too, so I stopped the first chance I got and looked for the nearest hotel. To make an already long story a little shorter...we ended up spending $80 bucks for all 6 of us to sleep in a room with 2 full beds & no crib! Good thing Pase was zonked & slept on the make-shift bed I made her on the floor! We left the next morning at 9:30 am feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the remaining 5 hours of our drive.

What's new with your kids? (list each kid)

Trinity-Is losing more teeth by the minute & is very excited to meet her new 1st grade teacher tomorrow, Mrs. Noe, at the back to school night. She is so super helpful & capable of doing so many "adult" things that I forget to treat her like the 6 year old little girl she really is. She is driven, determined, persistant, and persuasive...just like me...so we are either a great team, or arch enemies :) I love her to bits and will really miss having her around during the day time.

Brinley-Has really taken a 180 from the quiet "little girl" she was a year ago. She is so full of spunk and fire that is fully illuminated when she is in her comfort zone. She has a wild imagination and is always putting on shows for us where she is a dancer or singer (in full costume. Wig, hat, glasses, jewelry, etc.) I'll have to post a video sometime. She can always make me laugh & loves all the attention she gets. It will be interesting to see how she reacts around her peers when she starts Joy School next month.

Grayden-Is NOT my baby anymore! "I don't need any help" is his favorite thing to say & he often uses his fists rather than his words to remind everyone of that:( However, he is a lover at heart and is constantly looking Matt or I in the eye & saying, "Mom(or Dad)...I LOVE YOU!" I am going to see if he is interested in becoming potty trained after Matt has been on deployment for a while. All the books say its never a good time to start when a life changing event has occured recently. I'm pretty sure deployment falls in that category :)

Pasynne, Paysenn, Paisynn-My mistaken identity child...the poor thing will grow up with a story of how her name never had a consistant spelling. LOL She will be ONE on thursday & I really don't know where that year went! She really took off walking while we were in UT and is all over the place! Going from crawling to walking just opens up a whole new plethora of things for her to get into. Her favorite new discovery is the trash...in every room...GROSS.

Any fun summer plans coming up?

Nope :) Our only plans were to go to UT & we really had a fun time. I have SO many pics of things we did while we were there & I am really really REALLY going to try and update my own blog with them! One of the high lights was going to "Foam Day" with all the grandkids, but there were so many other things we all enjoyed. Parades, camping in the back yard, Trafalga, Pinata, game nights, swimming, & more.

Anything else you wanna share?
Nothing super exciting comes to mind?? Matt leaves on Tues Night (wed morning really, but 3:30am on Wed seems more like Tues night to me) & it hit me pretty hard today that he really is leaving :( I had a good cry with Matt (well, I was the only one crying) and spent some quality time together talking about how it would go by fast. I just don't know who it will be harder on, me or the kids?

I don't want to end on a "downer" so I guess I'll end by telling you about Matt's surprise going away gift to me. He completely surprised me by getting a super duper new camera lens for my Nikon!! It hasn't come yet, but it should be here ANY DAY & I can't wait!!! Right now my camera just has the one lens it came with, which is a 18-55M, and the new one is a 18-200M!! I am so excited...I'm gonna feel like a proffesional. Hahaha

Catch up with Shan

Okay ladies here's my catch up.

What did you do last weekend?

Oh man last weekend was crazy busy for us. Saturday was Madelyn’s birthday party. It was a ton of work but turned out great. We were up late Friday getting all of the last minute stuff done and then up early on Saturday for my nephew’s baptism. Then after his baptism we had our party. We didn’t reserve a park because we didn’t want to pay $35 so we took our chances at finding a park. And wouldn’t you know it that all but one park was taken. It was not my favorite park but it worked out. We were just a little crazy in the beginning trying to get everything set up. I’ll be posting all about her party on my blog so you can read about it there. But here's a fun picture...

 

My SIL made this photo booth and I think it turned out great! I actually think this was my favorite part and wish I would have spent more time over here and got more people to take their pictures. 

Then Saturday night Ethan woke up crying cuz he had to go potty so I took him to the bathroom thinking why is he crying about going potty…and then he threw up everywhere. And then I got sick. So Sunday was spent just sitting around watching lots of movies. But we are all better now.

What's new with your kids? (list each kid)

Ethan-What’s new with Ethan…well he starts pre-school in Sept. I’m so excited for him. A little nervous and not looking forward to all of the driving that I’ll be doing. The school is actually close but it’s 2 days a week and no one in my neighborhood is going to this school so I don’t get to carpool. So I’ll be taking him and picking him up every Tuesday and Thursday. But I know it will be worth it. He is so excited to start school. I hope that he does well.

Madelyn-Well my little peanut turned one and I can’t believe it’s been a year already. She has grown so much and especially the last month or so. She seems so much taller to me. Her babyness is almost gone and soon she’ll be walking. It’s a love hate thing cuz I’m excited for her to grow up but that means I no longer have my sweet baby. Jared doesn’t getting it. He always thinks I’m crazy when I say I’m sad our kids are growing up.

Any fun summer plans coming up?

Can you believe that it’s August already? School is only a few weeks away. CRAZY! The summer has flown by for us. We have a busy Sept. though. Jared will be running in the red rock relay, I’m going to Time Out For Women (so excited btw) and then we’ll be spending a weekend in St. George with Jared’s parents. 3 out of the 4 weekends in Sept are already booked.

Anything else you wanna share?

Well…I really want to get my stupid house decorated. But why does it have to cost so much money? I really want to get my gallery wall up in my front room but frames are expensive. At least nice ones. So now I’m on the hunt for either cheap ones from walmart, clearance ones or maybe I’ll start checking the D.I. for some. I also need to finish my kids rooms. I only have one wall done LOL! I’m terrible about decorating my house. 


Oh I almost forgot! We are going to Disneyland!!! Yeah! Jared's family is going again in Dec. but we really don't have any extra money. And last time we were able to go because I was babysitting my neighbor's kids and earning some extra money.  So I pretty much gave up on the idea of us going. But then one day Jared called me from work and said do you want to go to Disneyland? Of course I do! But how? Well we are just putting it on the credit card and paying it off with our tax return. Ha! I'm good with that if he is :) So Disneyland here we come. Ethan is so excited. He keeps asking me when we are going. I told him not until there is snow on the ground. So every other day he asks me if there is snow on the ground. Silly boy!

Flashback Friday: Rose Parade

OK - I'm going to ignore the fact that NEITHER of you did my "let's catch up" game, or even commented about it, and post a friendly flashback friday! :) hehe jk

I know out of the three of us, I'm the only one in this photo, but I know it'll bring back memories for you guys too! Flashback with me to New Years Day 1998. Rose Parade!!! Wasn't that fun?! Hot, long, tiring, but super fun.



Remember after we finished all we wanted was a drink of water, but instead we got shuffled into a line to get In & Out burgers and Dr. Peppers? Weird!!! Why didn't they give us water?!!

Anyway - what memories do you have of that morning??

OH MY HECK!! I just realized - this photo was taken backstage at Disneyland the day AFTER the Rose Parade!! I was wondering why none of us had our hair and make up done. HAHAH!! That's funny. Ok - so my memory was of the Rose Parade, but this was before our performance at Disneyland. FUNNY!!!!

Love ya ladies!

let's catch up!

So what has everyone been doing? I feel disconnected. Let's fill out these questions and catch up:

What did you do last weekend?

We had a FUN weekend!! It was Josh's birthday on Friday, so I took him away to Park City for the weekend. We stayed at this NICE resort. We had a one bedroom suite - it was sort of like a little condo. It had a fireplace, a kitchenette, a king bed, and our own private hot tub on the balcony!!! It was incredible! We totally loved every minute of our little get-away. We went shopping at the outlets, ate at some yummy restaurants. And the baby did great!! She just went along for the ride. She woke up a little confused in the middle of the night on her first night, but after that it was pretty much smooth sailin'. We were sad when the weekend came to an end. We had a GREAT time. One of those fun things we'll always look back on with VERY fond memories.


What's new with your kids? (list each kid)

Well, Scarlett is almost 4 months old now (not quite). She's 17 weeks tomorrow. She's growing and growing and growing. Sometimes I tell her to slow down and be my tiny baby for a little bit longer. But other times I LOVE to see her learning new things. Just in the last week and a half or so she's really started holding onto toy and sort of playing with them. She has started getting "bored" too. She isn't as content to just sit and chill as she used to be. She laughs a little when she's in the mood and she makes the cutest babbles and coos and LOVES to blow raspberries and bubbles and get drool all over herself.

She's a pretty great sleeper! She sleeps through the night from about 9 to 5:30 or 6 and then eats and goes right back to sleep for another 2.5 - 3 hours. So Mom's getting plenty of sleep, which is a HUGE blessing!! She's an ok napper. She still wakes up every 45 minutes during her naps, but she's getting better about going right back to sleep once I go in and put her pooty (her binkie) back in. I REALLY hope she learns to sleep through that dang 45 minute sleep cycle soon! But at least she's not crying and fussing to get herself back to sleep anymore.

I swear as soon as I feel like I have her schedule down, she changes! But everyone tells me that's just how it is.


Any fun summer plans coming up?

Only thing for us is Bear Lake. That's during the first week of August. It will be Scarlett's first year and I'm excited and nervous. Camping with a baby will be a lot tougher. But I'm sure it'll be great. Josh has Scout Camp next week (he's the Varsity Scout Leader in our ward). So I'll be on my own for a few days. I'm going to miss him like CRAZY. :*( But I feel like a JERK complaining about him being gone for a few days when I think about you Les and how you do it on your own. So I'm not going to complain! :)


Anything else you wanna share?

Hmm. Not really. I'm loving being a mom!! I love that I finally feel like I'm in the "club" with you two! haha It's definitely challenging. For some reason we still can't figure out Scarlett screamed BLOODY MURDER for a couple minutes twice last night. Louder and harder than we have EVER seen her scream. We are pretty sure she was just CRAZY tired but it shocked us and brought us to tears. And then all the rest of the night after she was in bed I could still see and hear that scream in my head and once I went to bed I just broke down and bawled about it. It broke my heart. But I know she's fine and she was just tired or something. But its crazy how much you worry as a mom. It's hard sometimes to stop worrying and have faith that angels are protecting your little ones and that they'll be ok. (3 Ne 17:23-24) Josh shared this scripture with me last night and it made me feel much better.

Anyway - I LOVE you girls. Write your own 'catch up' posts ok?? I wanna hear the latest.

LOVE YOU!!!

xoxo,

Britt

Flash Back Friday

I thought I had posted these pics but I can't find them on the blog. So if this is a repeat sorry...

This post is for you Britt, way back to the day when we first were roomies :)

Flashback Friday!

I looked it up and its been a year and 4 months since we've had a Flashback Friday!  Whoa!!!  

So, lets flash back to May 28, 1999. I dug around in my box of photos and found this one!  I just went to Cameron's HS graduation a few weeks ago. Can you believe Cameron is graduated?  He was SIX YEARS OLD when we graduated!!!  We are old!


(click to enlarge)

Poor Kristy didn't get to walk with us. Doesn't she look sorta sad? :( Aww. Don't you love how we're all looking at like 4 different cameras? Oh dear.

Did you know that the girls at AF now have red caps and gowns and the boys wear black? When we graduated the girls wore white (duh, obviously) and the boys wore read. I think I like red and white better than red and black. Black caps and gowns are pretty boring. And Cam didn't walk through the giant A. Scotty did when he graduated, but Cameron just walked past a giant AF. It was definitely not as cool.

Here are a couple pictures from Cam's graduation. And yes, I did make Scarlett a CAM shirt to wear. Needless to say, Cameron LOVED it! haha!! It was fun.





Ok, so I went back and edited all the Flashback Friday posts, so they all have the Flashback Friday label. So if you click on the label at the bottom of this post you can see all the Flashback Fridays that we've done. And if you write a Flashback Friday post, make sure to label it. That way we can find them all easily.

LOVE YOU GIRLS!

Gallery style wall

So after living in my home for 4 years I'm finally getting around to decorating it. I want to do a gallery style photo wall in my front room. As of right now this is all I have...

What is your take on gallery style walls? Do you like all of the frames to be the same or do you like different styles of frames? What about color? Do you think the frames should all be the same color? How about the pictures themselves. Do you think I should do all of the photos from one moment in time like our family photo shoot with Britt or do some of our favorite memories?

Just a few of the many thoughts that have been running through my mind. I'd love your input as I have very little home decor talent :)

Kuwait?!

Les,
I just read on facebook that Matt will be in Kuwait for a year? What?! When is he leaving? Will you be ok in Kansas by yourself? What's going on? (Do you like how nose-y I am? Sorry. Just thinking about you and wish I lived close by to help you.)

A sad moment

So today I was looking through some old photos of Ethan and I ended up watching all of the videos I have of him. After about the 10th one I started to cry because my boy is so big now. I'm so sad that time has slipped away from me so quickly. I've heard for many years now that I need to cherish each moment but I'm just now realizing how true that is. Maybe it's cuz I've spent most of the day yelling at him cuz my patients is very short or maybe it's cuz I just got done registering him for preschool (which is so surreal!) I miss my sweet baby boy. What am I going to do when Madelyn gets older. I already feel like she's growing way too fast.

This is the one that made me cry and realize how blessed I am.

Hug your kids extra tight today and give them one more kiss.