New Years Resolutions

We have a couple New Year's Day traditions.  They go like this... we take down the Christmas tree and then fill out our time capsule so we have something to read when we set up the tree next year.  Sometimes we watch old family videos.

We wrote some goals for this year.

They go like this:

Brown Family financial Goals:
Pay off our explorer
Pay off my student loan
Save  XXXX for a rainy day
Buy a New Mattress for Cameron and Melissa's bed (it is way past time.)

Brown Family Fitness Goals
We have a family goal to run more and participate in a 5 K race
Ali wants to run a mile in 8:30
Ashling wants to learn to do the splits
I want to run a mile in 8 minutes
Cameron wants to run in the mornings before work for 15 or 20 minutes
We want to go on a family back packing trip.
Melissa wants to take some ski lessons

Brown Family Spiritual goals
We want to read the Book of Mormon as a family
Go to the temple monthly
Ali wants to read the Book of Mormon all the way through on her own

Brown Family education goals
Cameron wants to pass the seismic part of the PE exam and get PE liscense
Ali wants to get better at science and get a 4.0
Melissa wants to read one classical book on my kindle for every fun book
Ashling wants to read lots of chapter books

Annika has goals too.  Her most important is becoming potty trained and also learning all her ABC's and how to write them.  She is going to work on cutting too and also hiking by herself.

Kids and Santa

 Here are some pictures of the kids and Santa.  They got to see Santa at our ward Christmas party.  It was fun!  Annika likes Santa and goes right up to him to tell him what she wants for Christmas!  She wants a big kitchen and a pink dress.  We will see how Santa does with that.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

 I made Ashling and Annika's costumes.  After spending a fortune on material I was blessed to have the exact costume given to me for free for Ali!  How wonderful was that?

 The kids met their friends at Grandma Sue's house and they went around their neighborhood.  I stayed home and off my foot which is apparently broken although I have not been to a specialist yet to see what they will do about it.  They even got to go through a pretty good haunted house.

First Win!

Ali is on the team called the Crush.  I am the team parent.  We have had a pretty difficult season and had not had one goal in about 5 or 6 games.  We lost every game except the last one where we tied.  As parents we just wanted the kids to finally score a goal to make them happy.  This game was with the other Running Springs team.  We were pretty evenly matched and we seemed to be doing a little better.  The girls kept getting it down by the goal and scoring only to have it called off-sides.  Cameron was getting pretty emotional and the ref told our coach to control her side-line.  We were all upset for all the calls that we felt were wrong.  Finally the other team scored and we were all sure that was an off-sides call too.  

In the second half Ali played forward.  She had told me all day that today was the day she would score a goal.  She kept getting it down there and getting it close but missing the shot.  Finally she broke away and dribbled it down the field and shot.  The goaly tried to get the shot but it rolled out of her arms and right into the goal!  

We celebrated a little too much but it was great to finally score a goal!  We figure it was because Grandma Sue and Papa were home from their mission and came to see the game!  

 The rest of the 3rd quarter they tried but did not actually get another goal in.  I was worried the score would once again be tied.  But in the 4th quarter while Ali sat out her friend, Isabella, scored a goal!  The whistle finally blew and the crush had finally won their first game!  The kids were so excited!

 Here is a picture of Ali, Louise and Isabella in front of their sign!  Louise scored a goal too but it was called off-sides so her goal did not count.

 We went to the beach last Wednesday as a family.  The kids had a minimum day so Cameron took a few hours of work off.  It was supposed to be at least 84 degrees and it was warm.  I love Corona Del Mar because the waves are always very predictable.  That gives my kids a lot of confidence and all three of them spent some time out in the waves.  Cameron helped them to enjoy body boarding and the kids loved it!  Annika just enjoyed holding tightly on to daddy out in the waves.

I enjoyed a quick, frigid swim and also enjoyed reading my book since the kids were so involved with Daddy.  It was a great afternoon!

Field trip to the Apple Orchards

I went with Ashling's class to the apple orchards. It was really fun to spend the day with just Ashling. We bought an apple pie to take home with us and then spent the afternoon shopping together and getting a slushy. I love one on one time with my children and they always behave like little angels when I take them by themselves.

broken wrist

I took the kids to the park one day like I do every Tuesday when Ali is at piano lessons. This time when I called them to come Ashling fell off the monkey bars and landed on her wrist. She started crying and I felt like it was probably broken. I loaded her in to the car and went to pick up Ali at piano. At home I iced it and she complained whenever it was touched. I wasn't sure what I should do since I had all the kids and didn't want to end up sitting in urgent care with all of them.

Eventually I had someone else look at it and she was convinced it probably wasn't broken because Ashling would move it all around for her. Fast forward to Friday and she fell on it at school as she was getting on the bus and was crying quite a bit. Now I knew it was for sure broken. We went to urgent care where they confirmed that it was broken and Ashling had to wait labor day weekend before she could get a cast.

She chose a pretty blue cast and only had to have it on for 3 weeks. She is fine now but missed the first 3 soccer games.