High heels

Over the weekend, my grandma found some old dress up shoes that aren't being used by anyone so she was kind enough to give them to Annabelle. She loves them and wants to where everywhere. I'm not quite sure how I feel about them. I thought we'd have a few more years before Annabelle was in heels. =)

Weekend with lawyers

This past week seems to have gone by so fast. After I had a day of recovery from being sick last week, Annabelle then got sick. She had more flu-like symptoms, but nonetheless, it was hard day for me because I was still feeling a little sick and tired and especially tough for her. Anyway, we were all feeling well enough to make the trip to Utah Wed. night. We stayed with Michael's grandparents in No. Ogden, where Annabelle got some quality playtime with her great-grandfather.

Thursday, we continued on to Salt Lake where Michael attended a retreat put on by the law firm. The wives of all the attorneys got to be pretty involved and I enjoyed hanging out with a bunch of lawyers for most of the weekend. I especially enjoyed meeting all the wives. We all spent Friday afternoon at Park City and then enjoyed a nice dinner. Thank you, Grandma and Marv, for watching Annabelle.

Saturday, my brother volunteered to watch Annabelle so Michael and I could go a BYU football game, which was so kind, since I don't think I'll be able to go to anymore for a while. And thankfully we had a pretty quick and easy drive home. Annabelle has been getting motion sickness when we've gone on trips lately, but she made it home without any incidents.

Small acts = BIG HELP

Yesterday morning, I woke up at 4:45 am with the sudden urge to throw up. I had been feeling completely fine the night before, but something bad hit that morning. After that, I continued throwing up about every 15-30 minutes until just after 10 am, when I was finally able to get about an hour and a half of somewhat restful sleep. But things continued to be bad pretty much the rest of the day. I had to miss a 3 hour piano workshop and cancel a much-anticipated girls night out. And the worst part was that Michael was in Utah for the BYU football game (which we lost horribly, darn it). Since I was so sick, there was no way I was going to be able to pay much, if any, attention to Annabelle on my own.

Thankfully, I have the most wonderful neighbors. Around 8 am, I thought it might be early enough to call some neighbors and see if they had some 7Up. I called my back yard neighbor first, who said she'd check and call me back. The next thing I know, she calls me back and says she's in the car picking some up for me and to send Annabelle over to her house as soon she's ready. They ended up watching Annabelle until about 1 pm.

At this point, I had called my home teachers to come and give me a blessing (thank goodness we have hone teachers that are willing to drop everything and do that small service for me), and one of them insisted on taking Annabelle back to his house until my other friend came over to help. She was so kind to stay until about 7:30 and play with Annabelle while I tried to sleep some more. She even went the extra mile and did a little bit of cleaning around the house.

Although to some, these simple acts may seem trivial and small, they were a lifesaver and meant a great deal to me. I am so grateful for good neighbors and friends, and hope that I can be as good to my neighbors as they have been to me.

Announcing...

We are so excited to welcome another little girl into our family at the end of January! Yea, we're halfway there!

Great mother/daughter pictures

Annabelle updates

Lately, Annabelle has really been into wearing these two hats she has, sometimes at the same time. One of the hats was one that my brother made while on his mission. It fits Annabelle's head perfectly, even though it's made to be worn in the winter time. The other is a fireman's hat that I can't remember where she acquired it. She loves to wear usually both of them around the house all the time. Isn't she so cute?
This next video is from a few weeks ago, but Annabelle has really perfected riding her bike. She used to have problems turning and going up small hills. But now, she's able to cruise down the street and around the corner with no problems at all.
And lastly, here is a video of her relearning how to do a somersault. We taught her several months ago, but she had since forgotten. She caught on very quickly and then couldn't stop doing them. She also loved to take a bow at then end of most of them.

And if that's not enough somersaulting for you, click here to see another video taken on Michael's beloved iPhone.

Safety helmets

Last night, Michael and I had the unexpected opportunity to take a tour of a new building that is being constructed at the college. It will be used as an auditorium that seats just over 15, 000 people as well as a gymnasium with space for 10 basketball courts. The building will not be completed for at least another year, but it was still spectacular to see the progress they've made inside, since we've only been able to view it from the outside. We even got to wear safety helmets, which made the whole experience even cooler.

Some good videos

Here are a few videos of our trip this weekend.



This is one of Annabelle learning to do a "knee drop". She's already an expert on the "elbow drop", but this is even better. Make sure you don't have the volume on too loud for this video. I started laughing really hard and since I was holding the camera relatively close to me, my laugh sounds extremely loud. If you're unfamiliar with a knee drop or an elbow drop, click here.

Labor Day weekend

We traveled to Michael's parents' house this weekend and had a great time with them. Annabelle is now at the age where she is very fun to play with and she absolutely loved all the attention she got from her grandparents. We arrived at their house about 1 am Friday morning and had to wake Annabelle up. After brushing her teeth and getting her ready for the rest of the night, we introduced her to what would be her room for the duration of our stay, which included a water bed for her to sleep in. It took a while to coax her into the bed. She was pretty nervous to see the mattress actually moving and hear the sound of water coming from the bed. But finally, she got in and slept well every night after. After that initial uncertainty, Annabelle came to love the waterbed.
The adults enjoyed some good pickleball, bacce ball, and just sitting around talking. All Annabelle wanted to do was jump on the trampoline. There's no way I was going to get on with her and jump around, but both her grandparents did, as well as her dad.
Here's a video of Michael showing off his trampoline skills. Sorry the video is sideways. I would fix it if I could.
Perhaps the highlight of the weekend was watching BYU's first football game of the season against the Oklahoma sooners. Although we initially thought that perhaps BYU wouldn't be able to pull out a win, once the game started, that quickly turned into thinking that BYU had a chance to win at after all. Once they did, the Brown household become one of great celebration. GO COUGARS!!

We left yesterday around 1:45 pm, hoping we could have a very uneventful 7 hours in the car back to Rexburg. It started out nice with Annabelle almost immediately falling asleep for an hour. About halfway home is when we had problems. Annabelle started complaining about not feeling well, and soon after that, she threw up. I had a Walmart sack ready, but it had holes in it and it leaked all over Annabelle, me, her car seat, and my seat. It was pretty bad. Fortunately, it happened right on the outskirts of a large town, and after cleaning up enough that we could continue on to the Walmart in town, we did. We stopped for a few cleaning supplies and by than, Annabelle was behaving quite normally, so we stopped somewhere else for some dinner. Annabelle eagerly ate her chicken nuggets, and wasn't sick again for the rest of the trip. Michael and I decided that it must have just been motion sickness that made her throw up.

Now we are back home and getting back into our routine. Thanks Robert and Cythnia for a great weekend!

Dresser pains

After 2 1/2 years of Annabelle going without a dresser, I finally convinced Michael that it was time she get one. For the first year of her life, she didn't have her own room and there was no room for her to have her own dresser, nor a need since I would just put her clothes in our closet or dresser. However, I felt that it was time to get her one of her own to go in her own room. I have been looking for a dresser for several months on craigslist and stores in town. We finally saw an ad for a dresser we liked at KMart on sale, so we bought it.
A few days later, Michal and I planned to put it together after he got home from work. In order to make the process easier, I unpacked all the parts out of the box ahead of time and looked to make sure we had the gazillion screws it needed and found that we were missing just under half of the needed screws. I went back to the store and told a worker about the problem and he gave me the needed bag of parts.
That night, Michael and I began what we thought would be a pretty easy job. Almost 2 hours and a huge mess later, we were stuck, not even halfway through putting it together. We had come to spot where the screws I had been given at the store earlier were absolutely not fitting in the assigned spots on the dresser. We looked at the instructions over and over again to make sure we had put it together correctly so far and having no idea what we could have messed up on, we were about to give up, when Michael came up with one last desperate thought. Maybe the store had given us parts for a different dresser and that's why they weren't fitting. So, with 10 minutes to spare before the store closed, I raced back to K-Mart once again a 9:50 pm to see if they could tell me why the screws weren't fitting. It turns out that the person who had helped me earlier had given the screws of an older model of the dresser we bought. They were finally able to figure this out and give me the correct screws. As soon as I came home, we looked to see if our problem really was solved and behold, the screw was a perfect fit.
We finally finished the dresser at around 11:30 that night. I am so glad that Annabelle now has a dresser. Her closet is much more organized and we are able to put some nice pictures on top of the dresser. I had no idea that getting this dresser would cause such a headache and lots of stress, but now that it's over, we can enjoy seeing our hard work being put to good use.