New Thanksgivmas Eve!!!

Posted from sunny beautiful AZ where we are spending a FABULOUS week vacation (and loving it):

The weekend after Thanksgiving we went out to Pittsburgh for a Rockville girl roommate get together at April and Cord's awesome big old house. April initiated the gathering for New Thanksgivmas eve, a new holiday started by us :) Aside from Harrison being sick and Cory and Harrison having to take off before the main event (8 course dinner and gift exchange) it was so fun to have almost all of us (and Erin's sister Taci) together again with our families. Harrison loved playing with Vincenzo and Alesa and chasing the "baby kitties" around the house. Thank you April for making this happen, can't wait til next year where I will be more prepared to ensure my child is NOT sick

I snapped a few pictures....I really need to see the one with the boys in their cheap-o chrsitmas ties (holding up cory's since he was absent)! April??
Shalise and Frank getting ready for dinner. You'll notice beautiful table decorations and like THREE drinks at each place setting. It was pretty amazing.

Yumm...Ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potato souffle, and pumpkin cheesecake

My claim to fame for the night was definitely assistance with salad assembly.

Our cute hosts!

Taci was SO excited she drew my number in the white elephant exchange....I of course had forgotten and threw something together that I found in the car (who knew that a big gulp cup filled with candy could be so hilarious..)

Although the weekend was half-super stressful, it was still a great time--can't remember when I've laughed so hard. Love you guys!!!

Thanksgiving

We just got off of two really fun (as far as road trips with a small child go) holiday weekend trips. First, we went to visit our friends Todd and Emily and Jonas and Carmen in the Detroit area for Thanksgiving. Todd and Cory are BFFs from their days at the BYU-I/Rick's College and we haven't seen them for far too long and it was great to catch up! It was COLD, but we had a great time eating an AMAZING dinner (with 4 pies plus awesome pecan bars and pumpkin woopie pies made by yours truly...yeah...for four adults and three kids under three.. :) YUM), watching the kiddos play awesome together, visiting the Ford Motor Company museum and "village" (not many people braved the cold to go into the old shops and buildings...good way to beat the crowd!!), and going out on a DATE to eat yummy italian food and see Harry Potter. Oh yeah, and we went to a diner and ate chili dogs. YAY FOOD!!! HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! (I could say a bunch about gratitude here and what not but it's almost 11 and I have to get up at 5...so please just keep and mind that the Brown family is very blessed and grateful this year!!!)

Slim pickings in the weekend pics, but I think I covered the most important stuff:

A huge train set made out of legos!!
Blurry photo of Harrison and Jonas in the tub--the BEST part of every day! Nothing better than two little boys in the tub dumping water on each other and cracking up!!

OH WAIT!! There is something better!!! jumping up in down in your sister's bed after mommy told you not to!!!

(as a postscript to this post, Emily, you can see why I need your pictures, right??)

(also...let's save the new holiday and last week's trip for another day...before I start writing incoherent sentences that I'll regret in the morning)