Catching Up

One of my goals this summer is to stay up to date on our blog.  We'll see how it goes. 

But for now, I will try to catch up on what has been going on since I last posted.  Sorry it has been so long!

Mostly we were just busy going to school.  To refresh everyone's memory, I am going to school for Elementary Education and Kai has decided to go for a Master's in Business Administration.  It was a busy semester as we both were going full time.  And we are doing it again next semester.  Both of us are taking a class in the summer to which starts June 7th.  We both ended up really good!  We were excited!  But amidst all the hard work for school, we were able to find some fun things to do. 

Over spring break, which was in March (I know, slacker) we went to Thermopolis swimming.  I had never been swimming there because I am not such a good swimmer, so I never really wanted to go when we went as school activities.  The boys had a blast and Kaydee loved it too!  Before we went swimming we walked around the little walk path they have there.  They also have a big swinging bridge which, needless to say, I was quite afraid to go on.  Kai wanted to go on it and take some pictures.  He coaxed me onto it a little ways and then all of a sudden a HUGE wind came up and I kid you not, Kai was literally standing sideways to be able to stay on.  Yeah, I ran off as fast as I could!  Here are a couple of pictures of us on the little walk.

Then, over Easter break we went driving around.  We found this little house on a dirt road headed up to the Big Horns.  It was pretty cool!  We also did some other exploring that day, trying to find our way up to the Pryors from behind Cowley.  We didn't so much find it, or we were on a road that took us there, but it was getting close to dark and we didn't want to get stuck and not be able to get out.

 Easter was not too big and exciting at our house.  We colored a few Easter eggs and then Kai hid them around the yard for the boys to find.  They enjoyed that quite a bit.  We are mean, we don't tell them there is an Easter Bunny.  It detracts too much from the real meaning of Easter.

 One weekend we went bowling.  Matthew and Mason absolutely love bowling and ask if we can go everytime we drive by the bowling alley.  Well, we were bored one Saturday and decided to attempt it again.  They get a little restless at the end, so we tried to hurry it along.  I think that Mason smoked all of us and we even played with bumpers.  Pretty sad huh?  But yay for Mason!

 These next two pictures were just ones that I decided to put on of our cute children!  We gave Kaydee some chocolate pudding for her to eat herself.  Can you tell she enjoyed it? 

Since it has been raining so much these last few days we decided to go swimming at the Powell pool yesterday.  We had a blast and Matthew didn't want to leave.  They have a pretty fun set up for kids, I think.  The have a lazy river and a little place that have pads that they can jump to and see if they can stay on.  Matthew had a blast with that.  He freaked out the first time he fell in, but once he realized I was there to take care of him, he was just fine. 

Well, that's the catch up in a nutshell.  Like I said, I will try to be better from now on. 

The craziness of our lives!

Well, I have done really bad at blogging.  But in an attempt to do better, here I am.  We have actually had a whole lot going on lately and we feel like we just are going, going, going.  I don't really have the pictures in the order that things have happened, but I will just go by the order of the pictures.

This picture shows what our newest development has been.  As most of you know, Kai has been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.  I wanted to put a picture of his blood testing thing, but he was sleeping, so I couldn't get it out of the bedroom, so here is the medicine he takes 3-4 times a day.  Plus another kind that he takes in the morning.  This was a long story, so I will just give a quick summary.  He started a diet, he stopped drinking pop.  Then, all of a sudden he was losing like 5 to 7 pounds a day.  He thought it was great, but we felt like something was wrong.  Anyhow, then he kept drinking a ton of water, like over 2 gallons of water a day.  He would go to the bathroom a lot, and his appetite left.  What he did eat he threw up.  Also, his mouth was extremely dry, which is why we thought he was drinking so much water.  This dry mouth issue bothered him a lot and we thought it was the medicine his doctor had prescribed, so we called the doctor and he said to stop the medicine.  If it wasn't that, he had the flu.  Well, he stopped the medicine, the symptoms were not getting better and he was getting worse.  He decided to go to Express Care and the doctor said he thought he had diabetes, but just told him to take a fasting blood test in the morning.  Anyhow, he had his blood drawn, hadn't heard anything for a day and we were getting antsy.  He was getting worse.  During this time, the only thing that tasted good to him was watermelon, canteloupe and milk.  So, I made several trips to the store to get more fruit as he would eat one or two a day.  Finally, the nurse calls back and tells him he needs to go to the Emergency Room.  So, he goes, I get a call back about 2 hours later telling me that they are admitting him to the hospital to the ICU because his blood sugar was almost up to 800.  Keep in mind, if you don't know, normal is 90-110.  So in the long and short of the my long summary, he was in the hospital from Friday until Tuesday night.  He is doing somewhat better now.  We are just trying to keep him regulated, which is going fairly ok.

Next picture...school.  Yes, we are both in school.  I am going back to become an Elementary Teacher.  Kai is just going back to get his general done until he decides what to go into.  I am enjoying my classes, except for Psychology.  I have a better respect for those who have gone into Psychology.  I seriously can't wait till it is over.  The class I have to go to is 2 hours long.  I think I have only stayed awake 1 time.  Blah!  Kai is doing well in his classes and thankfully the teachers have been very sympathetic about the classes he has missed.

Miss Kaydee Belle.  She is a fun little girl.  She is so close to crawling!  She wants to so bad, but hasn't figured out how to move her legs yet.  She can finally roll over both ways. 

 Matthew is fun too!  He is learning his alphabet really well.  We found this program called Reading Eggs and he is learning sort of how to read form that.  He loves the program!  He loves to play dress up in super hero costumes, as you can see here, he is a firefighter.

 Mason cracks us up all the time!  He was dressing up as Santa Clause, and for some reason he thought that Santa needed to have pretzels in his nose.  Crazy kid.  He is fun, but he has hit the terrible twos.  It makes me sad cause he used to be so sweet, now he is a terror.  But he still is a good boy a lot of the time.

One more funny thing I wanted to share about our kids.  If all of you can recall the 20th Century Fox song at the beginning of movies...Matthew and Mason LOVE to dance to that.  Well, it has caught on to Kaydee.  I started a movie and it started playing, she started bouncing and kicking her feet!  It was hilarious!  What cute kids we have!

I am grateful for all the help from family members and ward members and I am also grateful for all that we have.  There still is good in our lives even through all the trials.  Thank you for all your prayers!

Grab my Button

Hello all!  Just was letting you know that I have finally figured out how to make a button for my craft blog.   This is what it looks like, so if you want to put it on your blog, go to http://browniepointsandcreations.blogspot.com/ and copy the link to put it as a gadget on your blog.  Thanks!

A yummy little breakfast treat

Yes, since I haven't blogged in ages, I have enticed you to my blog by putting a delicious recipe for you to try on here.  It is so easy and Mason absolutely loved them, I loved them, Kai loved them, and Matthew, well, he didn't even try them.  Silly boy.  But here is the recipe.

Cream Cheese Clouds
1 can (16.3 oz.) refrigerated buttermilk biscuits
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
1 pkg. (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, cut into 12 cubes
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
PREHEAT oven to 350°F. Separate dough into 12 biscuits; press or roll each to 1/4-inch thickness.
MIX sugar and cinnamon in shallow dish. Dip cream cheese cubes in melted butter, then roll in the cinnamon sugar. Place 1 cheese cube in center of each dough circle; gather up sides of dough to enclose filling. Press edges of dough together to seal. Place, seam sides up, in lightly greased muffin pan. Drizzle with any remaining butter; sprinkle with any remaining cinnamon sugar.
BAKE 15 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm.

In other news, not a whole lot has been going on around here.  We have both just been getting ready to go to school.  I have finally decided what to do.  I am going to get a degree in Elementary Education.  I have actually started already.  They had what was called Intersession, which was 2 weeks of certain classes.  The one I took was Intro to Careers in Education.  I just finished it last night and it was actually pretty interesting and easy.  I will be taking two online classes and two classes on campus.  I am very nervous and excited.  It is all a good thing.  Kai is taking general education classes to get those out of the way.  He is also excited and very nervous. 

The kiddos are doing great!  Growing too fast.  Kaydee has been sick with a sinus type thing for the past few days, but hopefully it is going away now.  But...now I have it.  My eye became all goopy and started hurting last night.  This morning it is pretty swollen.  Yuck.  Hopefully it doesn't get any worse than that.

I have also been crocheting a bunch.  I have a few new things that I have done that I will post on my other blog, http://browniepointsandcreations.blogspot.com/ here in the next few days, so look for those.  I was way excited for these new projects and I think they turned out really well. 

Well, that's about all that is going on in our world.  Hopefully all of you are doing well!

Eternal Families

We had the opportunity to go to the temple yesterday and witness the sealing of an awesome family in our ward.  They are great friends and have a wonderful story.  They have six children.  It was a great testimony builder of eternal families.  I think that we take for granted sometimes the fact that we are sealed as a family when we are married in the temple and opportunities like these help us to remember this great gift and blessing.  It was very heartwarming to watch this sealing take place and when they brought the children in to be sealed to their parents the spirit was very strong.  The kids were all smiles and very very grateful that this was happening.  I don't think there was a dry eye in the room.  They are so beautiful.

As I was looking at our blog and the pictures of our beautiful children I was overcome with gratitude that we will have them forever if we live faithfully.  I am so grateful that we have been blessed with such sweet spirits in our lives.

Matthew is such an amazing little boy.  So smart and so helpful.  Yes, we say he is probably our biggest challenge, but he is such a great blessing!  I don't think that when we say he is our biggest challenge we realize that he isn't that bad.  He really isn't, he is a very very good boy.  He comes home from primary and tells me the things that he learns.  He quoted a scripture to us last week and I was floored.  He is so happy when he accomplishes something and make sure we know it.  He keeps us laughing by quoting lines from all the kids movies that we watch.  And believe me, he is good at it.  I can't believe how fast he is growing up.  He walked in to the bathroom tonight when I was getting a bath ready for Kaydee and I was shocked when I looked up and saw how tall he is getting.  My little boy is growing up!!! We love him so much and are grateful for his personality and spirit in our family!

 Mason...oh Mason.  He is a sweet and gentle spirit.  So fun and kind.  He is a most generous little boy.  If he has something, he makes sure everyone else has some of it too.  Like candy.  He gets some and asks, "You want some?"  to everyone he sees.  Mason is like our peace maker, because he is so calm, but when he gets mad or is being beat up upon he sure can defend himself.  He is a big joker too along with Matthew.

Kaydee Belle is our bright spot of sunshine.  She is always ready to give everyone a smile.  She is the happiest in the morning time.  When I walk in to pick her up she lights up and gives me the greatest grin ever.  She has started laughing a lot and is very ticklish.  It was funny the other day we went to the library and I layed her on the floor while looking at some books.  Yeah, she started her happy screaming and being really loud...in the especially quiet part of the library.  Oh well.  It was funny and cute.  What a blessing she is in our lives. 

We are so blessed to have three absolutely wonderful children in our family and so grateful we can have the opportunity to be with them forever.!!!

About Time

Yes, I know, I know...it is about time that I actually blog something. I haven't forgotten, just haven't had the internet or time. Or, we just haven't had a lot going on to blog about. But...we have had a few things going on since it is beginning the holiday season. I guess I could update about everyone.

Kai...we are still trying to figure out his back issues. We have been going to a neurologist and now he has referred him to an orthopedic surgeon because the neurologist can't really do anything I guess. It gets frustrating, but we are hoping beyond all hopes that we will get it figured out very soon.

Susan...I am just staying crazy with kids. Having a ton of fun with Kaydee and trying to have fun with the boys. Hehe. No, I love the boys and have a tone of fun them too.

Matthew...Well, we just had to take him to the Emergency Room today, but other than that he is great. He got his thumb cut by this little brother with an Exacto knife and had to get three stitches. He is going to a mommy preschool 1 time a week and loves it. We were really excited cause he drew a picture that actually looked like a stick figure the other day. A milestone I say. He gets to do his first primary program on the 14th and he already has his part memorized. Now let's just hope that he gets up and actually does it.

Mason...He is so much fun. Growing a ton and talking a lot. He loves to follow Matthew everywhere and do everything with Matthew. His favorite thing to say is, "Mom, where's Matthew?" It gets kind of old when he asks it every five minutes, but I love that he looks up to him so much. He also loves to play with Kaydee so much.

Kaydee...Is such a cutie. She has started to laugh and smiles a ton. She is happiest right when she wakes up in the morning. She doesn't roll all the way over yet, but she does roll to her side. She does turn herself around on the floor though. So cute and such a bright spot in our family.

We had fun carving pumpkins for Halloween and going trick or treating. I didn't get any pictures of the kids in the their costumes, but Matthew was a cowboy, Mason was Mickey Mouse and Kaydee was a horse.


We also had a lot of fun playing and jumping in the leaves in our back yard. These are a few pictures to illustrate all the fun we have had.

Catching up after 9 months

Alright, so this whole blog updating idea didn't work as well as I wanted it to.  I had a cd of pictures I wanted to put on here of our kids, but I forgot that at my house and I am not at my house.  So...since everyone wants to see a picture of Kaydee, I put a picture of her on here.  There has also been a whole lot that I was going to put on here of what we have done this summer, but that isn't going to work right now either, so I will try again a different day.  Just thought I would share our main event of our newest addition of our baby girl Kaydee Belle Brown born on July 17 th.  

I loved this picture of me and the boys at the hospital so I had to share it.  Not that I loved the way I looked, but the kids were so excited to have their baby sister finally here, and they looked so handsome.

Here is our sweet little girl.  She is now 2 months old and growing fast.  Ok, she isn't that big.  She was 8 lbs 3 oz when she was born and yesterday at her 2 month check she only weighed 11 lbs 9 oz.  So, she hasn't grown a whole lot, but she is just fine.  She is starting to smile and coo a lot and it is a blast.  We are grateful to have her in our home, she is such a wonderful spirit!  So there, now you have seen Kaydee Belle.  

More posting to come soon!