Has it really been five years?

Five years ago: 7/10/03

Look at us now.

What an amazing journey we have had during these past five years. Our life is blessed beyond belief. I look forward to continuing to share with you the craziness of life with The Browns!

Around the house

I think Emma is starting to get her two year molars. She has gotten all of her teeth so early! She has been quite a crab the last two days and is running a fever. She doesn't have an ear infection and she is back to chewing her fingers so I guess we are in for our last round of teething.

She loves to help me do whatever I am doing. She has become obsessed with the Swifter. I have to hide it from her because she gets hysterical if she sees it and she isn't allowed to push it around the floor. I am just hoping she stays this excited about do my floors!:)

Today we had showers most of the afternoon. There wasn't any lightning or thunder so I let the kids go out and play around in the rain. Both of them were so funny running around screaming and dancing around in the rain drops. The pure joy they got from this was amazing....I wish I could bottle all of their energy and excitement..I could sell it and become a millionaire!:)

July 4th Weekend

Check out the adorable dress that my mom sent for little Miss Emma. She was quite a hit everywhere we went!

We got off to a bit of a rocky start for our holiday weekend, but things turned out just fine. Thursday night, Marshall took Tyler to Anthony Cordova's (Mark and Shelly's son) All Star baseball game. He had a great time. He actually didn't watch that much of the game, instead he played catch with Kim and Elva's grandson, Nicholas. Marshall didn't see it happen but Tyler ended up getting clocked in the side of the head with a baseball. He was a bit stunned at first then he cried. Marshall told him it was just an accident so Tyler marched right over to Nicholas and said, "You have to say you are sorry." Nicholas did so and the drama was over! Tyler gets told he has to apologize a lot so he knew that it was his turn to be on the receiving end:)

They didn't end up getting home from the game until around 9:30pm so Tyler was quite late getting to bed. One would think that he would sleep in a bit but no...he was up and at it by 5:45am. Friday, we decided to skip Emma's morning nap with the hope that we would put them both down before noon-since we wanted to get to Kima nd Elva's house by about 2:30pm. This backfired on us and neither one of them took a good afternoon nap. We were a bit worried that we would have VERY tired and crabby kids on our hands but like always they performed well in public!:)

We spent the afternoon playing in the Dillavou's pool. Tyler still would rather just play on the steps or hang around the edge--we will try lessons again when we get back from CA. Anthony and Nicholas were both there and Anthony had two friends from his baseball team with him. All of the boys were great with Tyler. They included him in everything that they did. Emma had a blast and spent most of her time being carried around in the pool---she LOVES the water.

We were going to try and watch the fireworks on Kim's roof but by 8pm both kids had hit the wall. We decided to leave and hopefully catch a few on the drive home. Emma was asleep before we left the driveway so we decided to park and watch the firework display at one of the resorts here in town. We had an amazing view and were far enough away that they weren't terribly loud. Tyler enjoyed the show and must have asked "what do the fireworks do?' a thousand times.

On Saturday Marshall, Tyler, Kim, and Nicholas all went to Phoenix for a Diamondbacks game. Tyler had a great time and really enjoyed having another kid with him.

Here he is on the ride home!

15 mos.

Emma had her 15 month appointment on the first. She was 21.4 pounds, which is in the 25th percentile, and 30 inches, which is the 35th percentile. She is my petite little girl---hopefully she stays that way and doesn't end up with the dreaded Strohl ass!:) She had a great appointment and everything is right on track. We talked a little about her hemangioma and everyone agrees that is is looking great and it seems to be going away on its own. We will keep an eye on it and if at 2 years we don't see a big change from now we will consider laser treatment.

She is such a funny little thing. She LOVES to talk on the phone. Marie is a good sport and will "visit" with her for as long as she wants to "talk". It just cracks me up to listen to her. She has so much to say and the hand gestures she uses are a riot! All I can say is that we are all going to get an earful when she can actually be understood.

They are playing together more and more each day. Emma has gotten pretty good at making car sounds when she sits on the floor with Tyler and "drives" the matchbox cars.

We had the absolute cutest moment the other day. Tyler wanted the comb that Emma was holding so he asked her if she would please share. Emma handed over the comb and he said, "Thanks Emma, I appreciate that." Then he leaned over and got close to her ear and whispered, "Guess what Emma.....you are my best friend." It was the sweetest moment ever! Now reality set back in a minute later when she did something to him and he pushed her...but I had that one moment that I will treasure!

Saturday

Besides the scorpions that seem to enjoy living here with us we have quite a few lizards who reside in our backyard. It is pretty funny to see the same child who screams his head off when a fly lands on him run up and try to catch these lizards.

Check out this guy's breakfast!

We had our first monsoon storm last week. It was a pretty spectacular one too. One of the reasons I love Tucson so much is that we get to see these awesome storms come over the mountain. The lightning, wind, and rain held Tyler's attention for a long time that afternoon.

Emma has always been such an independent little thing. She has never wanted much help when she is eating. She actually is pretty proficient using a spoon to feed herself. Here she is eating her first tuna sandwich.

Emma loves to kiss right now. She puckers up and makes the cutest "smack" sound. Tyler is a good big brother and lets her kiss him all the time.

Tyler has had a few funny comments this past week. It cracks me up to hear him repeat things that I have said to him. Here are a few of them.....
I picked up something that he had dropped and he said, "Thank you mom, I appreciate that."
When I brought his dinner plate to the table he said, "Thanks dear."
At another meal he said, "Thank you for making this for me Mommy."--(He may be a little Eddie Haskell like but at least he is polite!:)
He asked Marshall for a drink of his tea and Marshall told him he could but that he had to take another bite of what he was eating first. Tyler responded, "Okay Dad, that would be awesome!"
He has also turned in to the world's worst backseat driver. He tells me when to slow down, that I need to stop, and has a comment about EVERYTHING that we pass! There are days when I sure do miss when he wasn't talking!:)

June 24th

I know that I am a wee bit biased but goodness these two are cute!

It must have been all of your good thoughts sent our way because swim lessons have been great the first two days. I am not sure about the quality of the lessons but I think that they are serving the purpose of helping Tyler to get over his fear of the water. I figure I will sign him up for private lessons at a swim school next but at least I will be comfortable knowing that he isn't going to freak out whenever we get in the pool!:) Emma has been doing great too. She was jumping in off of the side to me today. I put her under twice and she never even fussed about it.

June 22nd

We had a much more productive weekend this weekend We put tinting film on the kid's bedroom windows behind the blinds hoping that it will help them to sleep past 5 am---that is when it is light out here! Marshall also put up ceiling fans in both of the kid's rooms. Poor Emma is such a hot blooded little thing that she was waking up in the morning and from her nap sweaty. I keep the house at 77 but she was still too hot. The ceilings in here are not as high as the other house so hopefully the fans will really cool it off for them.

I will very readily admit that I do not have a green thumb. I have no live plants in my house--we have greenery but it is all fake. I just can't keep things alive. My sister, Katie, on the other hand has a deck that looks like it should be in Better Homes and Gardens---Marie has what she likes to call a "hospice garden" so apparently Katie got all of the landscaping talent in our family. Now with all that being said, my lack of talent didn't stop me from planting some flowers in the two flower beds that are along our back wall. I have to tell you that is was 110 today and I had to plant one whole bed in the heat of the day while the kids napped! They aren't much but I am proud of myself for at least making a small attempt at growing something!:)

We also had another date night this weekend. I am trying to get a good pool of babysitters so that I have a few options when I need one. This weekend Jessica and Haylee came to babysit. I also had both of these girls in my fifth grade class. They are sisters and always reminded me of Marie and I as kids. Jessica is the quite straight A student and Haylee was also a good student, but she had to try so much harder---she also REALLY liked to be social----see, like I said, Marie and I! Anyway, we went out and we saw SEX and the City. If you liked the show you will like the movie---both Marshall and I really enjoyed it.

Lately the kid's favorite time of the day is right after bath. Emma has decided that she LOVES running around naked with her towel on her head and Tyler finds it hysterical to chase her. I thought these were funny.

Keep us in your thoughts tomorrow. We start swim lessons at the Y. Tyler has told me every day for the last two weeks that he doesn't want to go, but on Friday I think I may have found the trigger to get him excited about them. We are going to go spend two weeks with Marie next month (so glad we can go to Southern CA and stay for free!) so I have been telling him that we need to be able to swim so that we can go to the ocean. That still wasn't working but when I told him that his Uncle Matt was going to be there and the only way he could go to CA and see him was if he took swim lessons he suddenly decided that he was excited about them. All weekend he has acted like he is ready----now tomorrow when he has to go off with the lifeguard we will see what happens.

One last thing! I already told you about the scorpion sting but I haven't told you about Marshall's response to the whole issue. We watched a news segment about how regular exterminator's spray doesn't always work to kill scorpions. Apparently these freaky little things don't have lungs and can hold their breath for weeks!!:0 They suggested some chemical you can spread that has a reaction with them and will kill them. Another thing they talked about was how the scorpions glow under a back light. So after watching this Mr Brown now goes around the perimeter of the house each night with his his little black light flashlight and finds scorpions and beats them and then torches them to make sure they are dead! You would not believe how many he has killed!!! He also goes through the whole house before bed and checks to make sure there aren't any in here-----he is my hero!