Bruised

Here is our bruised ballerina. Over Thanksgiving Lauren was running in Grandma and Grandpa Brown's house, when she tripped and hit the side of her face on the leg of a stool.

I'll be glad when it is gone completely because I am so tired of the stares we get out in public.

This past weekend Lauren was able to go and dance on the stage where the Nutcracker is taking place. They were given wands and danced to three songs. Her teacher, Melissa, is the one dressed in street clothes. In the Spring she'll get to perform in a recital.

I can't see an end in sight of her ballet days. This could turn into a lifetime thing. I am happy that she has found something that she loves to do.

Howdy Doody Partner!

I'm behind on posts yet again.

This year Lauren was a cowgirl for Halloween.

Yeehaw!!!

Happy 5th Birthday!!

This birthday for Lauren was a lot different than ones in the past. When she turned 2, 3, and 4, I was in the kitchen for hours preparing cake or cupcakes. This birthday I didn't even spend one second preparing anything in the kitchen.

Has anyone ever known a 5 year old, or any age for that matter, that didn't want a birthday cake?

This year Lauren just wanted to get some frozen yogurt at MyFroYo. We invited family to come along. We have gotten together with Jason's brother and family, and his sister on Lauren's birthday for the last 5 years. That is hard to believe! Where does time go?

The only dilemma for the evening was: How was Lauren going to blow out candles?

Well, we made her a cake out of our cups, sang happy birthday, and she blew out her candles.

We love you, Lauren! You are one of a kind!!

Party Time At The Brown's

We decided to let Lauren have a party for her 5th birthday. Five of her friends were able to come. Before everyone arrived, we took a picture of our decorations and, boy, do the Browns know how to decorate!
We took this picture, after which I realized the silverware drawer was open and the package of knives were on the counter. We can't have that in our picture, so Jason took several more pictures with all of that fixed. Little did I know that something else was in this first picture...

Lauren's party consisted of "pin the tail on the donkey."

I played with the girls and came the closest. I outsmarted them all! (Or maybe it is because I cheated by feeling the outside of the poster.)

Then, they decorated sugar cookies that were shaped like butterflies, a crown, and a princess shoe.

Finally, Lauren opened her presents.

Lauren loves all of her friends. She could play with them all day and all night. Thanks to all the girls who could come.

Playin' In The Rain

          It's raining; it's pouring.

The old man is snoring.

He went to bed and bumped his head,

And he couldn't get up in the morning.

It rained here a few weeks ago, so Lauren took advantage of it. She put on her rain boots and rain coat and ran outside to play in the small puddles. She laughed the entire time. :) 

To The Hills We Went

Lauren and I had our "yearly end of the summer get away" trip to Oakley, while Jason went to Las Vegas for classes. It was another great time with my parents. We stayed for almost a week, and the week couldn't have been any better weather wise and all. Have I said before how much I love going to the mountains around Oakley? I'm sure I have, but I will reiterate it now and probably next year too.
We were able to go to three different places while there. I've posted a lot of pictures, mainly for my family because I know they all love the mountains as much as I do. So this post probably won't be too boring for them, but for the rest of you who might check out my blog, you may be bored, but what's new???

We went to the City of Rocks, but first stopped at the Outpost in Almo for lunch.

In the background of this next picture are the Twin Sisters, which were a major landmark for pioneers passing by on the California Trail in the mid 1800s. The City of Rocks has some of the oldest rock in North America. The sister on the left is 2.5 billion years old and the sister on the right is 25 million years old. How does that happen? They cooled underground at different times, but were both brought to the surface at the same time by erosion.

Bathtub Rock is the tall one in the back in this next picture. It is named that for the hole on top, which feels up with water from rain and looks like a bath tub. On the backside are handles so anyone can climb to the top of Bathtub Rock.

We took the four wheelers up Old North Road on our second trip to the mountains. Oakley is down below.

Our final trip to the mountains was to Bostetter, which is a campground. We rode all around up there. I love when the trees start changing colors.

Finally, a video of Lauren up at the City of Rocks. She is well on her way to being the next American Idol...

Ballet + Soccer

Lauren has been dancing around the house since she started walking. I never taught her any moves because I don't know any and I am more than awkward when it comes to any kind of dance. As far as I know, Jason has never showed her any moves either. However, one memory does come to mind, which occurred when Lauren was very young, maybe even before she turned one. I caught my mom teaching her a few ballet stances. I don't know the names of them, but I don't think Lauren has ever forgotten my mom's graceful moves...I told my mom to stop and tried interrupting with some basketball moves. So far, my mom's moves have won because Lauren is in....
BALLET and tap.

(More pictures are to come.)

I am excited that Lauren is in ballet. She knows what she is doing and I really enjoy watching her, but I just had to put her into some kind of sport and this is what she got...
SOCCER
Stretch:

Warm-up:

Stand in line:

Go Lauren Go!!

I can't wait to see what she will do as she gets older. I'm just afraid that I am going to be one of those parents that yells because I sure wanted to on the first day of soccer practice (not just at Lauren, but at the other kids too). I never have the desire to yell during ballet. Maybe a more elegant activity such as ballet is the way to go.

Return to Reno

We took a trip over Labor Day weekend to see my sister Anne down in Fallon, Nevada. At first it was just me, Jason, and Lauren that were going. Then, it turned into half the family, with my sister Stephanie and my parents.
Hahaha.
Jason and I were able to return to Reno for a few hours to remember the good ol' days of living there. We walked around UNR. Glad our money went towards improving the campus with new buildings and landscape that we never got to enjoy because Jason graduated before they were all completed. The campus is awesome. We saw a good friend. We drove by all the places we lived. Frightening! We lived in some scary parts of town. It was great to be in Reno. It is amazing how many memories can come to mind when you see things that you haven't thought of since living somewhere.
It was nice to be with family too. We had some good laughs, ate plenty of food and junk, and enjoyed the Boise State/Georgia game.


Wish I knew what we were laughing about here.

It's kind of interesting that we went down there a few weeks before the airplane crashed into the crowd out at the air races at the Reno-Stead Airport. I feel so sorry for those people that were affected by it all. Back when we lived in Reno, I worked for DHL, which is similar to FedEx. I delivered packages around that airport and saw the air races taking place, which was pretty neat. What a tragedy.  

Some Catching Up To Do

Now I know why I don't blog anymore. It takes way too long. It has taken me four months to finally write about our trip to Olympic National Park on Memorial Day Weekend because I knew it would take forever. I'm going to have to get out the map to remember the places we went too.

The first night we camped at Deception Pass State Park on Whidbey Island. It was beautiful and loud. I say loud because it is right by a Navy Base. It was fun to see and hear the jets and other planes flying over us, but by 10:00 P.M. I had had enough. I am so glad they stopped as we were going to bed.

It is a good thing the jets stopped because then we were able to hear the visitors in our camp and scare them away; otherwise, they would have eaten through all of Lauren's Capri Sun's and that would have been devastating. Darn raccoons! Here is our campsite.

The second day we drove down Whidbey Island to Keystone to catch a ferry to Port Townsend, which is on the Olympic Peninsula.

By the way, the whole reason we went on this trip was to see Glines Canyon Dam and Elwha Dam, which are on the Elwha River, before they are both torn down. Jason had learned about them in one of his classes. This will be the largest dam removal ever in the U.S. Jason had a great idea to climb down into the "Do Not Enter" area to get a closer look at the water spilling out. Dumbly (if that's even a word), I followed. Lauren had no choice.

Anyway, they are tearing down the dams to restore fish habitat and fish population. Before the dams were built, there were 400,000 returning adult salmon over 70 miles of river. Today there are 4,000 adult salmon that are able to return five miles up river.

Glines Canyon Dam:

We drove up to Hurricane Ridge. It was a cloudy day and snowing on top, so we didn't get to see how beautiful it is.

Elwha Dam:

On the third day we continued on to Neah Bay, which is the most western part of Washington. We walked to the point on a nice wooden path. We ended up staying near Ozette. I didn't get any pictures of that.

The fourth day we went to HOH Rain Forest. The pictures don't show how cool it was.

Finally, we stopped at Ruby Beach.

This picture shows the reaction of me when I had just told Lauren not to step in the water. It shows Lauren's reaction too....

Then....she does it again. Go figure. What a great ending to a great trip I suppose!