BIG Annoucement!!!

One of my favorite holidays is Independence Day!  I love the fireworks, the food, and I love my Country! So.... like any other holiday.... I thought, 

"This would be a great excuse to dress the girls up!" ....and boy girl did I!!!! 

This time of year was also exciting for us for another reason and the girls want to tell you about it!!!

See how happy they are to share the news...

Maycee...

and Lydia...

Are going to be.....

The best "sisters" too....

Get ready.... Here it comes!!!

remove your hats... and drum roll please....

Girl #3 is on the way!!! Maycee is excited! Mommy is super excited!  Lydia has no idea whats going on and Daddy is.... happy.... could be more happy.... but is happy....

So lately I have been working on little projects around the house. Ya know, just like some little spring cleaning things.  The junk drawer has needed some attention for sometime.  I believe that a junk drawer is ABSOLUTELY crucial in any home, preferably the kitchen... I don't know why, they are just soooo handy.

I have also been trying to finish up some crafts that I have had sitting around for a while that I guess I have been saving to do for a raining day... and since it doesn't rain here... I have been doing them to stay inside out of the heat.  Just little odds and ends crafts, i'll try to show you some pics in the next post.

The girls are just as cute as ever and really enjoying the summer.  They swim in the little kiddy pool or play in the sprinkler most every day, sometimes more than once a day.  A few days ago they were hanging out in my room while I was folding clothes or something.  A few of the chickens had gotten out and they wanted to see...

Lydia naps for about 2 hours during the day and Maycee has been getting pretty bored during this time.  I had an epiphany the other night to fix the problem.  Maycee knows the ABC song and can count to 10 but doesn't recognize the numbers or letters or know the sounds they make.  I decided I would start having "school" time with her.  This is what we have started as of Wednesday of last week. We add a few numbers and letters each day to are wall of learning.

We talk about each letter.  Then we draw a picture to help her remember the sound it makes.  I draw one and she draws the same one.  She is doing really well.

And then for the numbers we talk about it and she gets to glue on the amount of sparkles that go with that number.

She has really enjoyed her "school" time and looks forward to it each day.  I like it cause its time I get to spend with just her.

My girls love to sit on the kitchen counter and do whatever I am doing.... dishes, cleaning, cooking, anything.  Some moms don't allow their children on the counter but I think it is a great way for them to learn!  I remember growing up on the counter working with my mom, I cherish those memories.  

Lydia was helping me the other day.  I turned around for just a second and turned back to find this!

She did this all on her own, no prompting.  I don't know if "Minute to Win It" is still around but she would make a great contestant!

Don't know about you guys but I am getting super excited for the July holidays!!!  I have cute red white and blue outfits for the girls and I have some special plans for the outfits.  It will involve a special announcement :) (should have a for sure answer by Friday)

Brown Family Reunion

My mom is a Brown. Daughter of Karl and Ruth Brown.  Karl's parents are Granny and Pa pa Brown... So sad but there first names are not coming to mind. (Mom when you leave a comment tell us what those are. I feel stupid for not knowing)

This last week were had the chance to go to a reunion for this entire Brown Family.  It was so fun to meet new people and run into old ones.  Last time I went to one of these I was a very young little girl.

The 5 days in between our ALB trip and the reunion I was able to get a lot done.

These two kept me busy of course but I also got to do this....

10 QUARTS BABY!!!

So back to the reunion... It was in Show Low. A little place called Owen's Creekside.  I had heard about this place before, but I have to say when I got there I was pleasantly surprised.  There was alot to do, I felt like anyway.  They had a large pond with paddle boats, kyacks, and cannons to use at our leisure.  Here is Grandma, Maycee, and Aunt Rachel...

Maycee loved being on the water!  Any chance we had she was asking to go out on the water.  Grandma happily took her several times. Thanx Mom!  The pond was also great for swimming...

As you can see there is the dock to get on and off the boats from and then there is also a little further out a floating dock.  The guys OF COURSE turned that into...

KING OF THE MOUTAIN!!!

Blake was showing my high school aged cousins how to win. That is until.....

My Uncle Kelly decided to join the game...

As you can see Uncle Kelly is much bigger than the rest of the guys and after that it was really a competition but everyone still had A LOT of fun!

My Uncle Kelly is a great guy.  He lived with me growing up for a bout a full year right before he left on his mission.  I have fond memories of playing cards (skip*bo and scum mostly) with him and having him throw me literally across the pool.  He really is a big teddy bear. So sweet and so fun.  And he doesn't like to lose! In fact, he doesn't lose. (that was show again during the weekend and the card games we played)

Here are the horses they have on the property. An electric fence separated us. Maycee found that out the hard way :( But they like carrots!

 Also several swings...

 (please excuse the silly hat, but it was nice to wear)

One way the family helps to of-set the cost of the reunion to have an auction! The auction was fun!  I brought 2 different "vinyl" related pieces. They both went for a total of $75. I was really happy about that.  made me think I could start charging a little more for the stuff I do, but I wont. To soft.  Blake and i bid on several things and we got a good amount I thought.  Two of the items were tutu's... my mom actually got those.  The girls LOVED them.  Lydia wears hers everyday!

 (I had to put this pic in. Its a classic finger shot!)

This was just after they had won the bid on the two tutu's.

 We also won a awesome griddle, that fits nicely on our 3 burner camping stove :)  That was a happy fathers day to Blake :)  We also won a blancket that was crochetted by my moms first cousin, Brenda.  She has an amazing skill!  Wish I had a pic of the blanket to show you.  Also a doll with clothes also crocketted by Brenda. We made out good.

funny side story:

So one of the items auctioned off were a couple of "bunny catchers".  All over the property there were bunnies.  I don't quite know if they were wild or not, never got the scoop on it.  But the kids had been trying so hard to grab one.  So some smart person put the "bunny catchers" together for the reunion.  They were just simple little ziploc sandwhich bags with a few things inside you would need to catch a bunny... ei, about 6ft of twine, some bird seed and a couple of carrots.  (In my mind I was thinking, "Really guys? Those bags would have gone to better use somewhere else. The carrots would have been nice with dinner and the bird seed was a waste of money")  As soon as they were auctioned off the kids went to work.....  About 15 minutes later....

 Here come the kids walking into the auction saying, "They worked!"  We put a hold on the auction and just laughed for a few minutes.  Never again will I under estimate the power of what a ziploc bag combined with a few other crucial items can do!

 The Brown Reunion was a success!  So glad we made the drive to go!

 Aren't they great!?!  Blake is the best girl dad I know!

Albuquerque

Close your eyes.... now try to spell.... Albuquerque!

Its HARD!!! How many "qu"s can there be in one word!?!

Since Blake got a new job... well internship... we decided it would be a good chance to go on a family vacation!  (He purposely told the golf course the last day he could work was a Wednesday so that we could take the weekend and go)  So we have heard that the zoo in ALB (for short) is awesome! We decided to check it out...

Just so my family knows we DID start the morning off with breakfast and I let Blake hear the entire 10 minute song titled, "Albuquerque" by Weird Al. Larry I thought you would appreciate that the most :)

Others: If you haven't heard it, it might just be worth listening to but you HAVE to listen to the whole thing if you do.  You can find it on youtube.

We arrived in ALB on Thursday afternoon, got some lunch, and checked into our hotel.  Checked out a little of the town and a near by park.  We also, before dinner, made sure to pick up some redbox movies.  We stayed that night in the hotel. Of course the girls did those "normal things" kids do in a hotel room... 

Jump on the beds!

The next morning we made sure we were at the zoo before they opened. We were there 10 min. early and it was like a ghost town. We had the park to ourselves!

We all loved it! There were so many animals to see and we could "see" them all!  They weren't off hiding like they are at some of the other zoo's.  The zoo was very well priced too.  With our entrance fee we also were able to ride 2 different trains as much as we pleased. One went around the zoo and the other took you to the Botanical Garden/Aquarium.

 

Here we are on the zoo train!

Through out the day there were different feeding times for different animals it was really fun to watch. Here we are at the Seal and Sea Lions home. They did some fun tricks to get their food.  These were Lydia's favorite!

 Anything that was swimming in the water Lydia was enthralled with (can't tell from this pic). This cat fish was HUGE!

Maycee really enjoyed all of the animals.  She didn't really seem to have a "favorite", she was so excited about each one!  This giraffe was really close for a bit, that was neat.

looking back through the pictures, they really don't shown you how close we really were to all most of the animals. This giraffe was just feet away.

Another cool feature this zoo had were the FREE RANGE PEACOCKS!

 They had about half a dozen males that just hung around the middle of the park (where all the eating takes place)  and these guys were not shy at all.  Any chance they had they would open up there beautiful tails and let you take a look.  They were very domestic, some people would even touch them and it didn't really seem to bother the birds one bit.

We weren't able to do all we wanted in one day so we came back the next day too!

One attraction Maycee did get a kick out of was the dessert tortoise. This guy was big! Can you see him in the back, he kinda blends in.

One of the animals I was impressed with (impressed that they had it) was the Polar Bear!

Can you see it?

 Here is a better shot.

Train ride to the Garden/ Aquarium

Bad pic. The aquarium was super neat! 

They had several HUGE viewing areas.  They also had some different things on display you don't get to see to often like a sea horse and a school of jelly fish.

The trip was definitely worth the money we spent and we said we would do it again. Lots of fun!