Birthday nails

For Jaycie's birthday, Grandma Brown treated her to professional finger and toe nail polishing. She felt like a princess and it was fun to watch her pick her colors, etc.

Happy Birthday Jaycie

We celebrated Jaycie's 5th birthday at the Little River Zoo September 26, 2009. We were happy to have lots of family and friends able to attend even though it was a little drive there...especially for our out of town families. We had great weather though and it was fun! We had a guide that showed us the animals, taught us, and let us touch some.

The group was hopping like kangaroos before we went into the kangaroo habitat.

The kangaroos were a highlight for sure. The kids got to feed them bread and walk through their habitat. Other favorite animals were monkeys, a bear, foxes, etc. The petting zoo was also fun.

We had hot dogs with chips and apples. Cake for dessert, of course.
Presents!!! Thanks to all for coming. It was a great time!

Date Night 9/12/09

The kids love to play with their friends. I am happy with the group that we have had for almost 4 years now to have a date night every once in a while. When it is our turn to have the group, it is always a party. We feed all of the kids and they play and make messes until clean up time. The kids think that date night is designed for them. Everyone benefits, Iguess!!

Here are classic pictures of the girls playing dolls and the boys watching a movie.

8th Anniversary

Tommy and the kids came and picked me up at the airport late the evening of our anniversary August 4th with pink roses. I was so excited to see my family. It had been a long day in the airport with 2 connecting flights. My kids were missing me..they told me on the phone many times. I missed them terribly too. It was too late to do anything for our anniversary, but I took a couple of pictures holding the camera out because we don't have hardly any together! It is amazing, but Tommy is smiling. It has been a great 8 years. I can't believe how time flies. I am so grateful for a wonderful husband that is a great daddy too!

California part 2

Mom and I had a day to go to the Oakland temple. It was a wonderful day and an adventure. We took the Bart by ourselves and we could see the temple on the side of a mountain from the Bart. We were glad that we got the right stops because we had to catch a connecting train to Oakland. When we got off at our stop we walked a bit toward where we saw the temple but we never found a taxi. We found a pastry shop in Fruitvale and had some breakfast. No one we came in contact with spoke English to direct us toward a taxi except for a boy in a group that was about 6 or 7. We had turned the wrong way from our stop. When we got to the taxi, we were in business. The driver knew where to go. We were amazed by the beautiful flowers and palm trees when we arrived on the grounds! We had lunch there in the cafeteria and went to the visitors center.

The view was amazing.

Another one of my favorite little trips was to the Redwoods. It was truly mesmerizing to see how tall and beautiful the trees are. I could never fully explain the feeling, so I really want Tommy and the kids to go there with me. There were campers there, and that would be my dream camping trip!!

We are standing by some of the redwood trees. You could get inside of the middle of the trees, the trunks are so huge and so tall.

This is the beach of Santa Cruz. We went for a walk along the beach and had lunch on a pier. There were shops selling fresh fish and crabs on the pier. We watched the sea lions and birds. It was beautiful but the water was very cold. Ryan went for a swim and was ok, but mom and I didn't.

Mary got to join us for a few evenings for dinner. We had some very nice and different foods. Argentenian food...Kobe mini burgers, brisket tacos, ceviche, etc. Of course we had to try In N Out burger. It was good and fresh. Mary took us to Palo Alto to see the campus at Stanford. It was very nice. Thanks Ryan and Mary for an amazing week!

California visit 8/1/09

I had a wonderful opportunity to meet my mom and visit my brother Ryan and sister-in-law at their home in Freemont, California. It was such fun and I really enjoyed visiting. Ryan was a great tour guide, and Mary stayed very busy with her Anesthesia work as she is knee deep in

her residency. They have several lime and fruit trees in their back yard. The weather was amazing there.

Our main source of transportation was the Bart railway transit system. This was (for good reason) very foreign to me. There were all types of people to watch on the Bart. Mom and I were a little scared of it all at first, but we got the hang of it. We took it to San Fransisco for my first day. Here is Alcatraz. It was very cool from a distance. That is a close as we got this time.

We walked all through main town San Fransisco. It was very windy, of course. We went to the Fisherman's Warf for lunch. We saw Pier 39 and all of the sail boats and sea lions on the way.

Ryan and mom are both seafood fans, but all who know me know that I am not! Here is one of the dishes that I ate (for documentation). We got crab legs, swordfish steak, and this seafood stew in the picture called ciopinni (sp?). It was acutally not bad. I avoided the tiny purple cuddlefish though. I was already out on a limb tasting everything. Those would have put me over the edge.

Chinatown was pretty cool. Mom got us sweatshirts and we got a smoothie. We drove through a small part of Castro (to catch mom off guard).

It was neat to see these famous things that I have only seen in movies or heard about. The streets are very steep!

Another day, we went back with their dogs and took the scenic tour. We walked across the Golden Gate bridge. It was very foggy and windy there!

We hiked some hill that had a great view of the bridge before we got on it. Kermit and Blakey had a nice walk.

The view from the bridge was awesome too, even though I am not sure exactly what it all is.

Where did 2009 go???

Oh my, my last post was in July. One friend (Tammy Jo) keeps reminding me of that, but other than that I haven't thought about my blog. (I almost forgot how to log in) I have been so out of touch because of it. I am excited to get back into my routine. It keeps me on track taking pictures and keeping record of the kids, etc. My only excuse for all of this time passed is ..........CHEMISTRY!! I have decided that if I am going to get my master's degree like I have always planned, I need to get to it. I feel like the timing is right with the kids starting school. So..I took Chem II with lab at OCCC with Dr. Zhu on Tues and Thurs evenings. There were moments through this past semester that I thought I was crazy! Some of those times were when Zhu said "remember from Chem I..." I realized that it has been 10 years, marriage, and 2 children since Chemistry I and there was no way I knew the remainder of his statement!! However, after lots of class and study time, frustration, and a horrible sickness on the day of my final.........I got an A. That makes it all good. So, now that it is over I am going to resume normal life and get back to blogging and I have a lot of time to make up!!