4th of July week

Every 4th of July we spend it with my family up on the compound. I think that there was just a couple of years that we didn't because it was after my mom died and it was just hard for a while. Well we started going back up there because the kids really like it and Larry and I love it up there. There is always something going on around the property there that keeps us busy and the kids busy of some sorts. Madison has a friend there that she plays with and Zach and Carson hang out with us or with my nephew's and cousin's. I love it when they are there because all they do is play outside everyday, we have beach fires and try and swim in the bay if it isn't too cold and play on the beach.

This year we left on the 3rd for Bellingham and we camped in our regular spot right behind my grandma's house and right in front of my sisters house. It is the best camping spot ever.

This is the kids in the morning of the 4th of July. We are getting ready to go have breakfast. My aunt and uncle do a big breakfast on their deck and invite neighbors and their ward to come have a pancake breakfast. We had pancakes, bacon, eggs sausage, whip cream and fresh strawberries from my aunts garden.

Zach waiting patiently or else just waiting for his cousins.

My grandma, she has to make sure that she doesn't have any skin that can see the sun or she has a really bad reaction. That is because of her kemo pill she has to take, so everytime she goes outside she puts this hat on with a bandana on the inside of it and then she puts gloves on her hands and a coat. I love her so much.

She never misses out on a good party

The view from my aunt and uncle's deck.

This is my aunts artichoke plant that she grew. It is super tall.

My aunt and cousin have goats and she breeds them and sells them and then she also keeps some and my cousin takes them to the fair. One of her goats had babies not to long ago so my aunt took all the kids that were there to see the goats and pet them. They are not easy to catch.

Zach and Carson waiting patiently to see if a goat will get close enough for them to catch.

Carson took the camer from me and so these next pictures are of what Carson took.

After evryone had left a good friend and neighbor of the family came over with her face painting things and painted some of the kids face.

Zach wanted a shark.

I don't know what Carson is but he kept on calling himself the ice man.

I never get tired of this view. My grandma's house is the one on the right.

Our family picture for the 4th of July. We always seem to face the sun.

We have started setting off fireworks. Carson didn't like it so he was up at my grandma's with Larry.

Zach loves the 4th of July, he loves to light off fireworks.

Mt Baker

One of the kids smoke bombs that they lit.

Me and Zach

We got one of those lanterns like you see in the movie Tangled and so it took my brother in law and sister  and myself to get it started.

The moon rose right over the tree's and it looked amazing over the water.

Fireworks

The next day we had a beach fire. This is Zach, my niece Jordin and my cousin Taylor.

Good Morning on day 3 of being their. Madison and her friend slept in the tent there.

We played on the beach that day because it was so nice. It is nice to have the beach right across the road.

We had a beach fire on the next day as well. But this time my uncle got his boat out and took some of the kids out to go tubing. Zach wanted to go too.

I wish this picture was better because I love it how you can see Bellingham right behind the boat.

It is Zach's turn and my uncle is helping him on the tube.

Here they go, will it work.

He is on and going but they had to go super slow because everytime they would speed up Zach would start to go head first into the water and I think it is because he was just too light.

Summer Break Begins

Well summer break has officially begun and the weather has not been very good. It is june and still cold and raining. What is going on. I need the sun. I just hope that it is nice for the 4th of July because we are going up to Bellingham.

The kids are excited to be out of school and moving up to the next grade. Zach is going to be in 3rd and Madison will be in 6th, next year she will be in middle school, I can't believe it. It is nice having an almost 12 year old although she can give an attitude at times. Carson will be going to pre-school for 3 days this next year and then the following year he will go to kindergarten.

Well we started off summer break just staying at home because we had planned to go to Bellingham the week of the 4th of July because we love it up on the compound. The kids are excited to be able to see the Conlins and hang out with them.

Here are a few pictures of what we have been doing before we left for Bellingham.

Here is Zach before Larry decided he wanted to show him how to mow the lawn. Zach was all for it.

There he is.

One friday while the kids were still in school Larry and I decided that we would take the boys to a Mariners game, Madison was spending the night at a friends house.  Well on the way home Carson got sick. He was not car sick he was flu sick. I don't know why but all my kids like to throw up in the car. I am just greatful that we had the weather tech mats in the suburban because all we had to do was take them out and wash them off. I fel so bad for Carson but out of my kids he is the one that does the best when he is sick, he makes it to the toilet and the doesn't really complain. He hates throwing up and he was up the whole night and then into the next morning throwing up. 

Larry and I made a path for him from his room to our room so that if he didn't make it to the toilet that at least it didn't get on the carpet. I actually ended up sleeping in his room on the floor during the night, but not once did he throw up on the the towels.

It is a good think he just across the hall from us.  I don't think I took the blankets off the floor until I knew he was better the next day.

I decided to make cookies one day and Carson came and asked me if he could have a cookie, I told him that he could and then he brought me the cookie and asked me if I wanted it. I told him no and asked him why he didn't want it. He said that he didn't want it because it only had one chocolate chip in it. Well if he would have kept on eating it he would have see that farther into the cookie there were more chocolate chips in it. Silly boy.

About a week after Carson was sick, we went to church and during church he started getting a rash on his face and it was red and bumpy and his eye started getting a little swollen. It wasn't to bad that day but I gave him some benadryl at bedtime and it looked like it was getting better. Well the next day he woke up and his eye and face was swollen. Poor thing. I took him to the dr and the dr said that it is a reaction from him being sick. I had never heard such a thing it was just weir. The dr said that it is a virus from being sick. He wasn't contagious and he said it would last about a week and it did.

We went to a beach one day in Edmonds with the kids, the Conlins, the Shevitz, the Bujnowski's and us.

Josh got burried in the sand.

Jen, Colleen, and Adam

Madison and Zach Conlin

Tommy Conlin in the wood fort the kids found

On the 2nd of July we were invited to go to the Conlin's cabin on the Lake. I am not going to even try to spell the lakes name. I had my nieces that day and my younger sister was visiting as well so we all went to the lake, even though it was cloudy and not quite as warm and we all would have liked it to be. The kids had a great time though. Thank you Adam and Colleen for inviting us.

My younger sister Haley and my niece Kenzie

Kenzie eating an orange

I love these next two pictures.

Dave and Jakob

Dave and Max

Time Fly's when your having fun.

Thirteen years ago today Larry and I got married. I remember that day very good, I was so excited and couldn't wait to be married to him. I we got married at my parents house on the back deck, the wedding part wasn't that big because we only invited a few people to it and then invited everyone else to the reception. It was a great day and I remember that days before I was so nervous about the weather because we got married outside, all I could think about was "what if it rained", we couldn't go to the church building because it was being used for something else. My dad had told me that if it rained that we would just move it to inside. I did not want that and prayed for nice weather. It was beautiful that day and the weather was perfect I was so happy.

I would post more pictures of our wedding but I don't have them on the computer because it was back when we didn't use digital camera's and the one below is one of those pictures but I took a picture of it with my better camera. Time sure does fly when you are having fun.

June 11, 1999  Larry and Beth Brown

 For our honeymoon we went to disneyland. Unfortunately I don't have any of those pictures on the computer either but when we went there we looked like we did above but not all dressed up :). It was my first time ever going to disneyland and we had a blast. Well in April we took the kids to disneyland for spring break and it brought back some good memories. Disneyland is one of our most favorite places and one day Larry and I going to go again by ourselves and not tell the kids because they would be mad. Here are some pictures of us .

I still have not figured out how to fix the pictures when they are turned like that.

 13 years and 3 kids later

 Waiting for the parade to start

 Family picture and no Madison and I did not plan for us to dress alike.

When we were on our honeymoon we went and saw a baseball game and so since the kids are into baseball we thought that we would go and see the Angel's play. It was such a great day and the weather was nice and hot. :)

 Once again we have a picture of us kind of like this on our honeymoon and so I had to get another one as well.

A long Time Gone

Oh my gosh, it has been along time since I have blogged. I always mean to but we are so busy lately that at the end of the day I just don't want to sit at the computer. We have done alot of things that go all the way back to spring break. I had started a blog about spring break and all the things we did then but I gave up on it because blogger had changed their way of downloading pictures and I had alot of pictures that I wanted downloaded and didn't have the patience to download them one at a time. So I am starting off with what has happened in the last couple of weeks.

First I will tell you that I did post pictures of our spring break on facebook so probably everyone who reads my blog saw them on facebook. We went to Disneyland for spring break this year and had a blast. It was so nice and warm and it had been a long time since we had been there. Disneyland is the place where Larry and I went on our honeymoon so it brings back good memories and we love the excitement in the kids when we took them there. We had planned for the Disneyland trip since the summer and kep it from the kids because we wanted to surprise them and the day before we left we told them and they were so excited, Madison cried and the boys were just excited.

So that is what we did on spring break and then since then it has been alot of baseball for us. Madison and Zach are both playing and then we signed Carson up for t-ball because he said he wanted to and it just started so you will see pictures of that later. The kids are loving baseball and madison has found out that she really wants to be a pitcher.  She still has a long ways to go but I think we might get her with a pitching coach to help her, only if she decides that she wants to continue with softball. Zach loves baseball and can really hit the ball. Sometimes I think it is to slow paced for him but he says that he likes it wants to continue playing it.

We have this week left for softball and baseball and then it will be nice to get a little break for the summer. We love it when the kids are involved in their things but it is also nice to get that little break as well.

This is a picture of what happens when a bored four year old gets a hold of the camera at one of their siblings baseball/softball games.

 Zach getting ready to hit the ball.

 My camera was about to die and we were really far away from everyone and so this is kind of a fuzzy picture. Larry by the way is Madison's coach.

 And this is what happens when Carson wants to get in the picture. I actually kind of like this picture.

 Once again he is trying to entertain himself at a game.

 This picture I took just because one day when I was watching Kenzie she was playing with the bubbles and I thought it was a cute picture.

 Oh I forgot to mention above that we also celebrated two birthdays in the month of May. Zach turned 8 on the 7th of May and Carson turned 4 on the 2nd of May. Zach was so excited to turn 8 because he got to be baptized. For Zach's birthday Larry and I decided to not do a big party for him and instead got some good seats to a Mariners game and took him to that. He loved it. He got a baseball signed by two of the Mariners players and then he got to play catch with one of them too and then the player gave Zach one of the game balls. Zach was pretty excited about that.  We also had more baseball in the month of May as well.

Here is Zach and Larry on the day of Zach's baptism on June 2nd.

 Family picture, Carson never wants to be in the picture.

 Zach and my dad. Larry did the baptism and my dad did the confirmation, it was a great baptism.

After the baptism we went to Alfy's and had pizza with the family and then Larry and Madison had to leave from their because Madison had a game they had to be at and then me and boys had to go home and change because Zach had a game at 3 so we had a busy day on Saturday.

Zach being catcher at his game.

 This is what happens when he gets bored out on the field. He doesn't do this all the time I think I just got a picture of him waiting for the inning to start.

Oh did I mention that not only did we have a baptism and two baseball games on the 2nd but later that night we had Madison's piano recital at 7. It was a long day.

I really love Madison's piano teacher I think that she is great. She does some fantastic things with the kids and this year she started a music class for 3 and four year olds and Carson has been going to it and he LOVES it. She teaches them some basic pre-school things and then she does music thing with them as well. They get to play on piano and they talk about music and the sounds and the notes. So Carson has gotten to play the piano and loves to, she has said that he really has a nack for it and Carson actually got to play a song at Madison's piano recital. He did such a good job. We got both Madison and Carson on video but I will have to video Carson again because I was in it and I would rather have it be just him and I don't know how to download video on my blog so be looking for it on facebook.

Carson got a little certificate and candy. The teacher only chose two boys from her music class to play and so Carson and another little boy got to play and got a certificate.

Today, June 3rd, Carson came up to me before church and said he wanted his nails painted like a rainbow. So I though what is the harm in it he is only four and so what. He asked me and so I did it. He loved it. After I did it he went and showed Larry and Larry said "where is your mom?" I went down stairs and he just looked at me. I told him that I would take it off before we went to church but I never did so he went to church with it on, in fact he still has it on. He is only four.

Remembering

Today is a day that my family will never forget. First of all it is my niece Adelines birthday and it is also the day that my mom passed away. This won't be a long post but I just wanted to post this. It won't be sad.

It has now been three years since she has passed away. It seems like it was just yesterday though and I don't know if that is normal or not. I think about her all the time and just wish that I could talk to her and have her tell me what she is doing. My mom had a very strong testimony of the church and when she had made the decision to stop taking kemo she was o.k with what was going to happen. My mom was a great women. She had the chance to go to Italy before she died and I am so glad that she got to do that. I regret everyday not going with but that is o.k. If you guys every wonder where I got my love for the sun, well it was her. She loved to be outstide in the sun and do things. In the summer you would find her out on her back deck laying in her lounge chair in the sun. My mom came up with Carson's nick name CW. She thought it sounded like a cowboy name and that is what she used to call him. My family still calls Carson that. I wish all the time that Carson could have known her and I glad though that she got to spend the time with him when she did. I think that he does know her just in a different way.

So another year goes by but that is o.k. I know that my mom is doing great work where she is at right now. I can't help but wish though that she will come and talk to me. :)

Love you Mom