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.

A houseful of firsts

Sorry, but this post is going to be long and have a lot of pictures. This weekend has been very eventful for us and I had to document all of it. First, our neighbor was getting rid of his swing set and asked if we wanted it. I, of course, jumped at the idea. Annabelle loves playing with the neighbors on it. Michael, however, was more realistic about how the swing set would affect our new grass. But after much persuasion, we moved it over to our yard. It has been a huge hit. Annabelle loves it. Another new activity Annabelle did was paint. I can't believe I've gone this long without ever having Annabelle paint. What a poor deprived child. Anyway, we are involved in a summer reading program at the library where you get prizes for reading. Her prize last week was a picture with paints on it. Annabelle was so excited to paint it even though she had no idea what it meant to paint. Here's her working on her masterpiece. Michael had a first this weekend, too. We bought a new lawn mower, equipped with a Honda motor. Michael enjoyed his first time mowing his own lawn. As you can see from the picture, it was made even more enjoyable by the use of his beloved iPhone, as he listened to music on it with his headphones while he mowed. Our grass looks so good now that it has had its first hair cut.









Lastly, we took Annabelle to the county fair, where we enjoyed listening to some chareoke, seeing (and smelling) lots of different animals, and watching a rodeo, where kids would ride (hang on for dear life is more like it) sheep and calves as they were released from their pens and go galloping across the arena. It was pretty entertaining. We got some video of the rodeo, but it wasn't very clear.

Another tennis video

This video is from a few weeks ago, but Annabelle does so well hitting the tennis ball and looks so promising, it had to go on the blog.

Fun at Bear Lake

This weekend, we were invited to spend some time with Michael's sister and her family at Bear Lake. It was so nice to get away for a weekend, even though the weather was not conducive to the kinds of activities you would typically do at the lake. That said, it didn't stop us from being outside or enjoying the water. Michael's sister's husband was kind enough to bring up some jet skis that his family owns and we enjoyed some time on the water, Annabelle included. Although her first ride on the jet ski was not all that fun (it was really windy and the water was choppy, so we were just boucing up and down and freezing from the wind), she went out with Michael the next day and things went a little better. But I think her favorite water activity was relaxing in the hot tub. She got in several times and would even go underwater for a few seconds. If you can't tell, this is of Annabelle on Michael's shoulders on their way out to the jet ski.

It was so fun to see our little niece who is not so little anymore. She is getting older and bigger ans is still so smiley. She loved watching Annabelle and Annabelle was very fond of trying to get her to laugh. The company was wonderful, the weekend was relaxing, and we had a great time. Thanks Lauren and Dallas!

New friends

Last week, I dropped Annabelle off at a neighbor's house while I went to the doctor and she had a blast playing with the 5 kids. I know the parents, but had never met the kids, which meant Annabelle didn't know them either. Anyway, after the hour and a half she spent with them, she only referred to them as "friends" and couldn't stop talking about them. She'd see them outside riding their bikes and get excited and scream, "My friends, my friends!". A few days later, I pulled out a little inflatable kiddie sprinkler for Annabelle, but she didn't want to play in it without her friends. So, we ran across the street and invited them all over. It was so fun to see Annabelle playing with other kids. She doesn't get enough of that.

Family Pictures

This weekend, we had Michael's parents come and visit us and they were kind enough to take some family pictures. Currently, we have a family photo hanging in our wall that was taken Dec. 2007 when Annabelle wasn't even a year old. So you can see we were in serious need of updated pictures. Here are a few of my favorites. (And yes, I did get a drastic hair cut the day before these were taken.)After pictures, we traveled to historic Mesa Falls and saw some awesome waterfalls and then Michael and Annabelle spent some time swimming in the nearby river. As you can imagine, it was pretty cold, but although Annabelle was shivering, through chattering teeth, she said she wasn't ready to get out. Finally, we forced her out for hear of her contracting hypothermia. We had to do some quick thinking when we got to the river. Annabelle's swim bottoms are too big for her and I have to put a rubber band around them to keep them from falling off. Well, I messed up and forgot the rubber band and there was nothing in the car we could use as a substitute. So, after a moment, a light bulb went off in my head and I grabbed a long weed growing along the bank of the river and asked Michael's dad if he could use some of his amazing boy scout skills and tie it around her swim bottoms. I didn't think the weed would actually hold, but it stayed knotted around the fabric the entire time. Here's a picture.