The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

Happenings

What’s been going on around here the past week or so? Lots!

Poor Samantha is learning the realities of having 2 older brothers and that it means having to wear things like boy pjs…

pjs

and a boy sleep sack. At least she’s surrounded by pink lovies!  🙂

sleep sack

Thanks to the space in our new driveway, the boys have been loving getting out the fire truck! It’s even reignited Maxwell’s love of all things firemen and he’s been wearing his firetruck t-shirts all week! Hooray!

fire truck

Last weekend we went over to Jessica and Watson’s house for a little bbq with friends. It was great – good food, a sprinkler for the kids, and popsicles for all!

brothers

babies

bbq

sprinkler

spirnkler

jack

popsicles

bbq

The boys have been thoroughly enjoying the nice weather and playing outside. As I mentioned last week, we got Maxwell a new orange scooter. It was a 2 wheel one and, while he was doing pretty good with it, it was a little difficult for him to ride so I got him another one with 3 wheels and he’s been zipping all around on that thing! Well, Spencer decided he needed a scooter too and kept trying to take Maxwell’s so I went over to Wal-Mart and got him one of his own – a RadioFlyer “My First Scooter”…

scooter

He was happy with that for about 5 minutes then just wanted Maxwell’s scooter again. Lesson learned – I should have just gotten them the same thing from the beginning. So, after asking Spencer over and over that he was sure he wanted “geen” and not orange like Maxwell, I ordered him his own big boy scooter.

scooter

He could not be happier! It came on Wednesday afternoon and they immediately took off on those things…

scooter

and were back at it by 8:00 Friday morning!

scooter

scooter

I have to say, it was the right decision. These scooters are great and after just one day of practice, Spencer is zipping around on that thing with no problems. Maxwell is a speed demon on his! The scooters are these – Micro Mini. Highly recommend!

Finally, Robert had to travel for work this week which meant dinner at the Mexaurant for me and the kids…

mexaurant

and nightly pj pics to send to Dad!

pjs

and, yes, I bought that baby girl some girl pjs!  🙂

girl pjs

Have a great weekend!

Swim Lessons

The Sunday that we got back from New Orleans, the boys had their first of 5 swim lessons. We’ve been taking a break from our other swim lessons for the past few months and decided to take advantage of an opportunity to do 1 week of lessons at our friend’s house with a great instructor. There were 10 kids in the class and each kid takes a 3-4 minute turn in the pool over and over. It’s a quick in and out but good focus on the skills they need.

Unfortunately, the sprinkles came when we got to our first lesson!

swim lessons

It eventually stopped and everyone was able to start taking a turn in the pool. My boys were SO excited to get in on their first turn and loved it!

swim lessons

swim lessons

However, by that time their second turn came around, Spencer had NO interest in getting back in! Not sure what happened but I had to drag him in kicking and screaming and it continued like that for the rest of the lesson. He’s always LOVED getting in the pool and I was so afraid I was ruining his love of the pool! But, we stuck it out and came back the next day. By their second turn on the second day, there were smiles all around! I think they just had to get used to Mrs. Laura…well, that and the fact that I started to talk to them about what animal they wanted to be in the pool! They both couldn’t wait to get in and swim like tiger sharks! ha!

swim lessons

swim lessons

The only downside? Having to sit outside in the not so hot weather in between turns! brrrr!

swim lessons

Don’t they look like they’re having fun?! ha!

swim lessons

By Tuesday, the boys continued to progress and were screaming when they had to get OUT of the pool! We also figured out a better way to lay out in the sun and keep warm between turns!

swim lessons

By the 3rd day, everyone was loving swim lesson and starting to show some good progress in the pool!

swim lessons

swim lessons

swim lessons

Laura was teaching Maxwell how to swim and take a breath without stopping swimming. By the end of the week, he was just about able to swim the entire length of the pool while sticking his head up to take a breath while swimming. He needs to work on keeping his breath short and kicking his legs while he sticks his head up so his body doesn’t sink down. For Spencer, she was working on getting him to keep his head down and looking at the bottom of the pool so his kicks will be out of the water and more productive. We’re just trying to keep him from running standing up underwater basically.

We skipped the lesson on Thursday. It was really chilly outside and the boys (and me!) were all exhausted from a week of summer school and daily swimming. Everyone needed a long nap more than another swim lesson. The last lesson was on Friday morning and I couldn’t convince Maxwell to go but I did get Spencer up there and he did great!

swim lessons

swim lessons

swim lessons

He even got a special treat when the lesson was over! He was a happy little tiger shark!

donut

It was a good week of lessons and they are becoming better swimmers all the time! I’m going to post a few videos of the week below if you’re interested…

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

Morning Greeting

Last week Samantha got quite the morning greeting in her crib!

morning

So sweet. With 2 older brothers, she better get used to chaos from the first minute of the day!

morning

morning

morning

Funny – the day after I took these pictures, my Timehop app pulled up this picture…

morning

No better way to start the day!

NOLA

Two weekends ago, Robert, Samantha and I traveled down to New Orleans for the wedding of Robert’s friend, Lem. It took a lot of coordination to get us out of town but I’m so glad we made the trip. The boys got to go have a fun weekend in Montgomery with Lulu, Granddaddy, Jenny, Ronnie and, of course, Katie and Anna! It was their first time to stay away from home without us and they did great. On Friday, Robert and I dropped Maxwell off at school and then hit the road to Nola. Spencer stayed with Susan who then picked Maxwell up from school. Lulu and Ronnie then drove up to get the boys and take them to Montgomery for the weekend. See, lots of coordinating going on! 🙂

When we got to Nola, we had the very best babysitter in the world waiting there to keep Samantha in the hotel all weekend…

GJ

GJ’s the best.

Robert and I had fun at the party on Friday night…

nola

and then had more fun exploring Nola and being tourists on Saturday morning! Beignets = yum.

nola

Also, babies in hats = adorable.

nola

I hadn’t been to Nola in years and, while it’s a fun city, it’s pretty dirty and just not really my scene. It was also crazy humid all weekend. Apparently, it was also exhausting…

nola

Completely exhausting..

nola

Still, we loved getting to see good friends and explore the city a bit.

nola

Meanwhile, back in Montgomery… the boys weren’t missing us one bit! They were having too much fun eating at Moe’s, camping out in sleeping bags, and going to the zoo!

moes

sleeping bags

zoo

zoo

nola

A HUGE thank you to all the Mgm Browns for making the boys’ weekend SO fun!!

In Nola, Robert and I got all dolled up to go the wedding on Saturday night…

nola

where we had a great time and loved getting to celebrate Lem and Evie!

nola

lem and robert

lem and evie

We even made it to the after party where some people danced on top of a pool table!

nola

But, I don’t know much about that. 😉 Sunday morning came way too early and we hit the road. Robert and I were both wishing we could have been doing this on the drive…

snooze

But, we made it to Montgomery and were so happy to get the boys and all be back together again!

mgm

It was a super fun weekend that would not have been possible without the help of our awesome families! Thank you again!

Water Main Break

On the Friday before Memorial Day, we had quite an exciting afternoon around here! I heard a strange noise coming from outside and looked around the corner to see this…

water main

The water main on our corner had burst open and there was water shooting 30 feet in the air like a geyser! It was pretty exciting…and a little scary!

water main

I called 911 and the police and fire were all there within 10 minutes…it took the water company a good 45 to make their appearance. Maxwell thought it was all pretty awesome though…

water main

Within about an hour, they managed to get the water down to just a very small geyser, thank goodness…

geyerser

Maxwell had gone inside and drawn a picture of the scene which we then took back out to show the policeman. He was very impressed!

water main

Once the water was stopped, the water company worked to fix the busted pipe and that was really exciting! Diggers, jackhammers, trucks…so much to see. Luckily GJ and Daddo got in town just in time to observe it all!

water main

water main

water main

When Spencer got up from his nap, he got to go check it all out too!

water main

In that picture above you can see how the water just dug a trench through our neighbor’s yard across the street. It was like a river running down the street! We were without water until about 7pm but they got it all fixed and patched the street and, by the next morning, you could barely tell anything happened. One bonus of it all? It was a great way to meet a lot of our neighbors because everyone was coming outside to check things out!

water main

Exciting stuff!