4 years

One monkey, three apartments, three jobs, two graduations, graduate school, some minor frustrations, so much fun, and I'm still the luckiest woman alive.

August is a very busy month for us!

Jared and Kaity at the reception

Dad and his siblings

Great Aunt Cyndi

The entire Heber Brown crew (minus missionary Chris)

The Kevin Brown crew (minus missionary Chris)

The newlyweds and Grandparents Brown

August is normally pretty busy in our family.   We have 4 birthdays, 2 anniversaries, and then there's back to school preparations.  Well, this year was double-time.  At the beginning of August we drove to Boise for Chris' farewell.  It was so much fun to see our family and Chris did a great job!  On the 18th Chris flew into Salt Lake, we picked him up, had lunch, and dropped him off at the MTC.  Can I just say I LOVE the new drive through drop off?  Before there was so much crying and people herding.  This is so much quicker, like a band-aid.  Anyway, that night we drove up to my parent's house for Kaitlyn's real birthday.  She even had a princess cake (which I made).  She loved it!  The next morning, my parents dropped us off at the airport and we flew to Sacramento, California.  I hate flying.  It makes me motion sick.  Having a 1 year old bouncing around does not help, either.  Anyway, we arrived in Sacramento and Grandpa picked us up.  We became part of the wedding-decorating party and ensuing festivities. When the Browns do a wedding, it's big.  When Cyndi does anything, it's big.  When both are combined: monumental.  When we got back it was time for Jared's birthday.  We went out to dinner and had a fun time with family.  Jared especially likes his new board game, Small World.  Finally, Jared started his last (hopefully) first day of Fall Semester; and Kaitlyn cut 4 new teeth (bringing the total to 9).  Here's to a wonderful, but less hectic, September.

Trip to Dallas

On July 18th, my best friend Mandy got married to her very longtime boyfriend, Ryan. It was so nice to be able to go and see them get sealed for eternity. It was also nice to have a small vacation with Jared before Kaitlyn gets here. The hardest part for me was the flying; it's always made me motion sick. I packed several snacks and bought a water bottle once we got through security, so that helped a lot. Kaitlyn, however, loved flying! Anytime we took off or landed she would go crazy moving and kicking - it looks like I've got a little daredevil on the way. Friday we got in and went out to the church to talk with Mandy and spend some time with her while she was decorating. When we got there my old roommates Melanie, Whitney, and Jesse were there as well and we had lots of fun reminiscing. Saturday we went to the Dallas temple - best sealer I've heard yet! It was so beautiful, and I was so proud of Mandy's family. They were there meeting everyone as we came in. Because they aren't members, they had to stay in the waiting room while the rest of us went in to the ceremony. I can't imagine how hard that was, but I admire them so much for realizing how much it meant to Mandy to have a temple wedding and supporting her decision. That night we went to the reception, again sitting with old roommates (joined by Miri, as well). We danced together a little, including the father daughter dance - "Little Miss Magic" by Jimmy Buffet; both of Mandy's parents are parrotheads. Sunday we flew home. It was a short but relaxing and wonderful trip. I also loved the air conditioning in our hotel room. I was able to make it so cold in the room that I got to sleep with a blanket - it was sooooo nice.

Engagement Photos

My sister Jennie is getting married this May. She and her fiance Sean went and took some engagement photos last Saturday. They had fun, and here are a few of the photos from the photographer's website. Her name is Kinsey and she's just starting out in photography.

What I've Been Doing Lately

I feel like I've been so busy but when I sit down to blog about things I can't find anything worthwhile to blog about. Basically, July was the month of travelling. We went to Boise for the twins' birthday, then came home on the 5th after spending time at the cabin with Jared's grandparents.

When we got home Jared's sister Megan had her baby, Thomas, and so we had Mom and Matt in town for a week - lots of fun. After that, we went to my parents for a week to house/dog/grandma-sit for the week while they and Jennie were in Disneyland. Once we got home I went to new teacher workshops for Alpine district and I have to say that they are WAY better than Jordan ever was! I am so psyched to be working at OJHS this fall. Next we spent a morning in my classroom unpacking more stuff - and finding a mouse who had inhabited the filing cabinet that the previous teacher had left full of food. After asking the janitor (God bless janitors, my job would be so much harder without them) to take care of the mouse, we went back up to Boise for Tyler's wedding to Carisa.
The ceremony was beautiful and the Spirit was so strong. We ran around doing errands and had a fun time with the family all around. We'll be back home late Wednesday night and I'll be back at workshops/meetings/training/classroom set-up on Thursday. We are very excited, though, to be at home for a while. Also, we just found out that at the end of August our ward is moving to the 11 o'clock slot - happy for us! Blogger is being slow so I'll upload pics later.