Annual Brown Christmas Party

John's family has quite the Christmas shindig every year. It always includes a visit from Santa, a nativity and really good Mexican food. It was great to spend time with everyone and EZ couldn't have been more excited to play with his cousins. I kept waiting for him to get tired but he was going strong till almost 1:00am. We were really excited to get pictures of the kids all dressed up with Santa. Unfortunately Netta was not a big fan.

EZ's attitude improved immensely towards Santa. Last year he freaked out and kept crying and reaching for us. This year we were actually able to get a cute picture.

And here is our failed attempt at getting a picture of both kids together.

Like I said the kids always act out the Nativity scene. The youngest baby always gets to play the baby Jesus and this year that honored was bestowed upon Netta.

EZ got to be an angel and wear a nice shiny white dress. After putting it on he proudly announced to everyone "I'm a princess!". John tried to explain that he was an angel, but he just kept insisting that he was a princess.

You may notice in the back of the picture that the baby in the car seat is not Netta. She started freaking out and had to be replaced by her understudy Daphne who is a month older. All and all it was an awesome party and I am glad EZ is getting old enough to really start enjoying Christmas traditions like these.

Dancing Queen

While visiting at John's sister Buffy's house EZ had a seriously gross diaper that leaked on his pants and he had to borrow some pants from his cousin Libby. They were some stylish black leggings that made him look like quite the dancing queen. Please do enjoy.

And last but not least . . .

And here is just a really cute one of Netta trying out her winter hat. We wouldn't want her to feel left out. Our friend Emily gave Netta that hat at my baby shower and it was perfect for our trip to Utah.

Hindsight is 20 20

So yesterday we took off for Christmas vacation. Our flight left out of Austin at 7:30am in the morning. Austin is a really small airport and typically there is no line to check in or at security. We didn't think Thursday would be a busy travel day because you could still buy cheap fares as of 2 days ago so we thought the typical hour we allow would be plenty. Wow were we wrong. John dropped me and the kids off to go park the car and we got in line. We got in the southwest line and it took over 45 minutes in line just to check in! I have seen longer lines before and not have them take that long. I couldn't believe the line just wasn't moving. Finally John caught up with us and it was clear we wouldn't make our flight and I just started crying. What was really frustrating was that we had gotten in the line for people who needed assistance instead of the kiosk line because Netta is a lap child and they always tell us to get in that line in order to get her taken care of. Well about the time I started crying I realized the kiosk line was moving quite a bit faster. Maybe if I had gotten in that line we would have made it, but who really knows. Then I got really frustrated when I realized that the reason our line was moving so slowly is because it was filled with people who had missed earlier flights and were trying to rebook. Why hadn't someone been directing the lines and making sure people like us didn't miss our flight because of people like them? They weren't going anywhere anytime soon so we easily could have gone ahead of them and not missed our flight. By not monitoring the lines Southwest actually made their job harder because people missed flights who shouldn't have. 15 people missed our flight all of which were just stuck in the lines. One girl we talked missed the flight even though she got there 1 and 1/2 hours early because it took over an hour to check in at curbside check in, which she assumed was the fastest way. When she asked an employee for help he just said "That sucks" and even when she offered to pay people $40 to get in front of them in line they wouldn't budge. Wow. Tis the season to be jolly. Then southwest's system kept crashing while we were trying to rebook our flight and it took another hour and half just to get new tickets. The people helping us were really friendly, but still it shouldn't have taken that long. We weren't confirmed on a flight till 3:40pm, but we were standby on 10:30am flight. That flight was over sold but seriously by a miracle we made the earlier flight and despite a 2 hour delay in Austin and being stuck on the runway once we landed in Phoenix for about 20 minutes, we were able to make our connection and arrived safely in Salt Lake. When we got here 3 of our bags were already here, but one was still missing. Luckily that one arrived about 20 minutes later, so about 13 hours after starting our day we were finally done. I went back and forth most of the day between hating myself and hating southwest for what happened, but I have realized that we did the best we could with the knowledge we had and hindsight is always 20 20. We are lucky to have made it without further delays and I am just happy to be on vacation with my family.

Swing Kids

We lucked out and bought a house that came with a decent swing set. The only problem was it didn't have a swing that Netta could use. So in an interesting turn of events we got one for free from Target. Some of you may have heard of the seemingly awesome deal Target had were these $250 car seats were down to $50. Well I ordered one and then two days later I got an email from Target saying they had messed up the price online and that it really was $250 so they had cancelled my order. Well I thought that was really rude and I was quite annoyed with Target. Then about a week or so later I got another email from Target saying they were sorry and wanted to keep my business so they were giving me a $25 e-gift card. Cha-ching! I was pretty excited about that and I found a swing that was $25 and had free shipping and voila Netta has a free swing from Target. So here are some pics we took of the kiddies swinging while Meghan was here. As you can see they love it and I love seeing them have so much fun.

My Baby Is All Grown Up

Netta is really good at sitting up and now hates to be in her car seat. She likes to sit in high chairs when we go out and sit up in the stroller so she can see what it going on. That, in addition to her starting to eat some finger foods, makes me feel like she is all grown up. I don't know why but for some reason seeing her in the high chairs makes me think she's not my little baby anymore. I guess I have a thing for not wanting my babies to get bigger. I remember laying in the hospital right after EZ was born and crying because I wanted him to stay little and I was afraid he was going to grow up too fast. EZ definitely did grow up fast and bringing home Netta has just made him seem even bigger now. So I will do my best to enjoy them each day and enjoy each little phase they go through. Even if it's not always my favorite phase (terrible twos anyone?).

Aunt Meghan

My sister Meghan is graduating from BYU in May with a degree in linguistics and is applying to grad school. She knows sign language and served a mission for our church working with the deaf community in Manhattan. One day I mentioned that maybe she should look into University of Texas since I knew it had a really good Arabic program and hoped that meant a good linguistics program. Well as it turns out they have an awesome linguistics program and you can even specialize in the linguistics of sign language. Well hello that is just awesome and UT is like 25 minutes from my house. So Meghan started seriously looking into UT and this past weekend came down to visit and check it out. It was so much fun having her here. EZ loved having someone new to play with and so did I! We got to visit campus, which I had never been too before either, and she was able to meet with some professors. She was impressed with them and they were impressed with her so it was a great visit. Other than that we did a lot of shopping. Meghan got a taste of how fun it is to try and go clothes shopping with two kids. John was out of town for a boy scout camp out so it was perfect timing for her visit. Well for me at least. Hee Hee. Part of our shopping was me trying to get some Christmas decorations. Here is a picture of EZ outside with the "display". If you look close he is pretty upset in the picture because we wouldn't let him play with the big bulb lights.

Here is Meghan and Netta outside enjoying the view.

We wanted to give Meghan a taste of Austin so of course that meant BBQ, but instead of Mexican as well we decided to mix it up and try this place downtown called Huts that is supposed to have the best burgers in Austin. They really were good. I don't know if I would drive all the way downtown to get one again, but if I was already there and in the mood for a burger that is where I would go. So here is a pic of Meghan and EZ at Huts. I love the looks on both of their faces. (John really wants me to get EZ's hair cut and I think he could use this picture as evidence against me.)

Finally here is a pic of Meghan and EZ right before she left. For some reason he did not want his picture taken. So no he isn't asleep he is just throwing a fit. Maybe he could sense she was leaving. He really wanted to get out of the car with her at the airport and then he fell asleep on the car ride home and as soon as a woke up he asked "Where's Aunt Meghan?" Luckily he can see her again in just two weeks.

The Many Dirty Looks Of EZ Brown

EZ has a really good stink eye and on Thanksgiving day he woke up from his nap in an especially cranky mood. He wouldn't stop giving dirty looks to our friends Romulo and Priscilla so of course we had to capture it on camera. Please do enjoy.

Much Better

So today we decided to try again to get our driver's licenses. They were open later today so John only had to leave work a little bit early. We had to take a number when we got there and we saw that we were number 94 and they were on 72. That didn't seem too bad till I realized that in the 10 minutes we were standing around filling out forms the number hadn't changed. I just thought "Oh man we are screwed. The kids will riot before this is through." Well then this lady with a stroller comes up to me and hands me a ticket with the number 74 on it and whispers "Someone who left gave me their lower number so I thought I would pass mine on to you since you have kids." I couldn't believe it. That was so nice and so awesome! We were in an out of there in about half an hour and we easily would have been there another hour or more if that lady hadn't helped us out. I was sure to pass my number on to someone else before I left so I could share the love that had been so kindly shared with me. So thanks a bunch to that lady for making today so much better than yesterday.

The Day From Hell

So today I had two goals: get our driver's licenses and get Christmas pictures of the kids taken. John took a half day at work so we could get this all done. I spent yesterday searching for a shirt for EZ and shoes for Netta. Then this morning I went online and triple checked what we needed to take to get our licenses. Technically we should have gotten them within 30 days of moving here. Oops. The place to get them is over 30 minutes away so that combined with having to take both kids was going to make it quite the trip. As we were driving to get the licenses I kept checking to make sure I had everything and when we finally get there I pull it all out and the guy informs me that I was supposed to bring the registrations and I had brought the titles! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! What the heck was I thinking?! I don't know how I messed that up and I quite honestly cried in the car and kind of freaked out. I used to be an intelligent person and then I had kids and swoosh my brain went flying out the window. It's only kind of funny now. It still stings a little. So now we are going to have to try and go again. Yippy.

Then we had our appointment scheduled at JCPenny for the pics. It was scheduled for 6 oclock so that way EZ could get a nap and Netta would be well fed. Well of course EZ refused to take a nap and when we got there they were behind schedule and only had 1 girl working the whole thing. We didn't get to start taking pictures till almost 7:30. By that point Netta was starving and EZ was all funned out. We did our best to get good pictures but EZ refused to sit by Netta and half way through Netta hit her had and just started screaming. Oh joy. Total between EZ pictures, Netta pictures and group pictures we only had 17 to choose from. Not very impressive. We were able to choose 3 we liked, but overall we were very disappointed. The poor girl working there was really sweet and trying so hard, but there was no way she could do it all alone. She was nice enough to wave our sitting fee, which was a good thing since we ended up having to buy EZ a stuffed Mickey Mouse to keep him somewhat happy. The one shining moment is that we learned that Netta absolutely loves Mickey and freaks out whenever we show her the stuffed animal. What a day.

Hanging Out

Here are just some recent pics of what the kiddies have been up to. The other day Netta was bouncing in her chair and all of a sudden she got real quite. We turned to look and she had fallen asleep. I guess she had gotten a really good workout.

As of late, EZ likes to set up shop in Netta's Bumbo and play his little piano. I couldn't believe the first time he did it. It just cracks me up. EZ didn't have a Bumbo so maybe he is trying to make up for lost time.

I love this picture of EZ and Netta. They really do love each other. EZ thinks everything Netta does is hilarious. And he cries for "Miss Netta" every time I put her to bed for a nap or for the night. Netta gets a huge smile everything she sees EZ and really excited when he interacts with her. She is getting so big and rolling all over the place as her means of transportation. EZ didn't crawl till 10 months, so we'll see when Netta will figure it out.

My First Thanksgiving

We have been pretty spoiled the last three years living driving distance from my parents and therefor being able to enjoy a delicious Thanksgiving dinner made by someone else. (Thanks mom.) Obviously the move to Texas has isolated us a bit from family and so it was finally my turn to host Thanksgiving. Luckily, we have great friends here that we were able to share it with. We had our friends Ruth and Gavin come down from Dallas with their two kids, our friends Kim and John who we met last summer during John's internship, and Romulo and Priscilla who we met in Michigan through John's MBA program and are now living here for a job at Dell as well. I am not one for decorating, but I really wanted to have our table look nice, so I worked my magic to try and make the table look as good as possible for as little as possible. It may not seem that great to those who are really into this kind of thing, but I think it was quite an accomplishment for myself.

The dinner turned out great and no one got sick that I know of. We had some of the best food and in fact my favorite dish was the sweet potato dish prepared by the Brazilians, who had never had a Thanksgiving dinner before! You may notice that EZ is missing from this picture. We ate dinner at 3 which is right during his nap time. I planned it this way so I could actually enjoy the meal. Sorry EZ.

Gavin and Ruth stayed for the weekend, so EZ and Caden got to play. They went back and forth between being best friends and worst enemies, but for the most part they had a great time. EZ was very very sad to see Caden leave. He got a bit hysterical. This picture captured a great moment. No they are not about to hit each other. They were actually sharing the drum, which I thought was pretty amazing.

They also had a blast jumping on the blow up mattress. It was hard to get both of them to jump and look at the camera at the same time. As you can see they loved it and we loved having visitors. It turned out to be an awesome Thanksgiving.