The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

Be Mine!

We’ve been celebrating Valentine’s Day early around here. The boys don’t have school today so they both had their school Valentine party on Wednesday. We made our cards last weekend and what kind did we make?

masks

Big cats of course!  🙂  I was so proud of Maxwell for writing all of the wording on his cards. He then drew some cats on his and Spencer’s and then we just made color copies and tied them to the different masks.

Maxwell’s…

valentines

valentines

and Spencer’s…

valentines

valentines

Cute…and candy free! 🙂  I didn’t know Valentine’s Day was basically Halloween 2.0 until the boys got into school and came home with tons and tons of candy. They obviously love it!

On Wednesday, the boys wore their red and Samantha wore her pink, of course!

samantha

Maxwell had a great time at his school party and even ate some McDonald’s chicken nuggets. shocker! Love this picture of him with Mrs. Kathy…

mbb and mrs. kathy

and here’s my whole crew after school!

valentine

When we got home, we went through all the loot and goodies! They scored big!

valentine

valentines

valentines

While Robert will always “be mine”, we both know Valentine’s Day is all about the kids now and I’m so happy to have these 3 little Valentines!

valentines

My heart could burst! Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

 

Zoolight Safari

Hi all! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was an adventure as always. Sunday Maxwell came down with the croup and was up barking like a seal all night long. We had him at the doctor by 8am on Christmas Eve and got some a steroid prescription and it worked pretty quickly, thank goodness. He was feeling much better by that afternoon and slept pretty good that night. Good thing because he needed to be rested up for Santa’s visit!

Despite Maxwell’s nasty cold, we had a great Christmas day and, yes, Santa did deliver that fire truck and choo-choo track he asked for! He also brought Spencer the school bus that Maxwell had requested for him. That Santa is pretty good! Full details on Christmas day to come tomorrow.

For today, a little zoo action. On the 22nd, we went to Zoolight Safari. It was really neat and really, really cold! We bundled the boys up as best we could – Spencer in a fleece bunny suit and Maxwell in his Elmer Fudd hat…

Ready for some lights!

We met some friends there and Maxwell got to hang with his new buddy, Jack.

Notice those red mittens on Maxwell (or mit-mits as he says!) – those are now his favorite things and he’s been wearing them every day, even though it’s been 60 degrees out!

We rode the train…

and the carousel…

After that, we were freezing and decided we had had enough Zoo for one night so headed out to get some pizza. A fun holiday night!

See you all later!

When he grows up

Not only can I not wait for BBB to get here, but I can’t wait to see what he’s going to be like as he grows up.

Will he be ready to head out on big adventures and crawl all over the rocks?

Stephie crawling

Or just try to crawl looking like he’s had too many drinks “on the rocks”?  🙂

Robert crawling

Robert crawling

One thing’s for sure, he will definitely know how to politely fold his hands and pose…

Stephie

And look very cute in navy and white.

Robert

I can’t wait to see if he has red hair….

Stephie

But regardless of the color, I think it’s a given that he’s going to have a lot of hair!

Robert

And I can only imagine that BBB is ALWAYS going to be just as happy as these little kiddos…

Keath, Daddo, and Stephie

And never, EVER, act like this poor little guy!  Right?!  🙂

Robert, Lou Lou, & Ronnie

Regardless of all the above, I do hope all our future holidays are this happy…

Stephie

and BBB is just as smiley as this cutie on all of his birthdays!

Robert

In all seriousness, if we really want to know what BBB is going to look like, just compare this:

Baby Robert

With this:

BBB

Mini-me anyone?

A little Christmas secret

Taking true advantage of being in Alabama and so close to the fam, we spent a fun 2009 Christmas Eve and Day in Montgomery celebrating with the Browns….

We then headed back to Birmingham so we could host the Patterson family at our new house on the day after Christmas!  Little did everyone know that while Robert and I were setting up this…

And waiting on Delaney and everyone else to make their appearance….

That not only were we cooking up a fantastic meal….

But we were cooking a bun in the oven as well!!  We found out the morning of December 26th that we were going to become a family of 3!!  woohoo!  Guess Santa knew what we really wanted for Christmas after all…

A merry Christmas indeed!

Home owners!

I know you all are getting anxious for the baby posts…and I promise they’re coming soon (just like I hope BBB is coming soon…3 weeks to go!)  But, first I have to introduce you to our first baby – the kind with 4 walls!

So, after lots of looking we finally found just the right house!  Hooray!

Welcome home, Brown family.  Welcome home!

Over the next few weeks we tested some paint colors…

Gutted a bathroom…

Updated the kitchen…

And did a little yard work.  (A little pro landscaping – below – mixed with many hours of Robert and me (and GJ!) sweating face and on our hands and knees getting it all done!)

I’d say it all turned out pretty great!

We’ve loved living here and getting it all fixed up and decorated…during all the seasons!