I love Independence Day!

Hooray!!! It's my very favorite holiday. What an awesome time of year this is. We get to celebrate our freedoms and honor our military and spend the day eating BBQ, watching parades and lighting fireworks. All in the dead of summer which too, is my favorite time of year. How can one NOT know we live in the very best Country? God Bless the USA!
My kids are such good sports because I have them go with me to the flag raising ceremony at the fire station here in town. We have an outdoor breakfast by GHS. Dance company at 7:30, then the ceremony at 8am. Then it's off to save our spots for the parade! Tiff and her family came to watch the parade with us and ended up staying the rest of the day, too! I felt badly that I didn't see her too much because I had other Brown family plans for the day. At least Tracy lives here too and was able to spend more time than I did with Tiff and her family! Here is the cutest picture of her and her 2 1/2 month old baby. She's a kangaroo!

Here we all are waiting for the parade to start. Left to right: Nathan (drinking), Allie, Tiff and baby Blake, Seth, Braiden, Mike....Mindy and Andrew in back, Jaden in front, Tracy, Matt and John.

Me and Matthew waiting for candy. MMMM Candy!

Maddie was a part of the parade with the Grantsville Dance Company. She ran behind the float handing out flyers. You can see her running with her white sunglasses in this pic.

After the parade, we took off to the park for the festivities all afternoon. This is a picture of Maddie, Jaden and Lindsey with their fishies they caught. Dang it....I have to go buy a fishbowl now!

Then we went to Darren and Shereen's house for the BBQ before fireworks at the park. Keep in mind, the back of their house butts up against the park so you can't get a better view of the fireworks than here. I choose to wear sunglasses at night because I'm afraid of the shrapnel falling into my eyes. This is a picture of Darren showing off his new barbecue.

Me, Trisha and Shereen feeding our faces..... It was a great day, as always!!!!

Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House

For youth conference this year, we got to take the Young Men and Young Women to the open house of the newest temple. We are on the wrong side of the temple for this picture but about a week or so earlier, Moroni was struck by lightning and had a black trumpet! It was fun to be able to get to walk through this with Maddie and answer a few questions. She is always amazed at how beautiful the inside of the Temple's are. If you look up at the picture above once more, you will see a cloudless sky. You must keep in mind here that every single day for weeks, it's been pouring rain here. But it stopped long enough to enjoy our visit to the temple!

Mormon Grasshoppers???

I try not to be a complainer about Grantsville. Truly, I do. I live here now and have come a long way in adjusting to small town life, and raising my family. Well, these past few weeks have REALLY tested my outlook on this nice little town. Just look! Out of nowhere, baby grasshoppers have been hatching and INVADING my home, garden, and our ten acres that we live on. It's happening all over Grantsville and my skin is crawling! I can't even go outside to weed my garden (what the grasshoppers aren't eating, anyway) and the kids don't go outside to play. When I say my home is invaded, I truly mean it. They have infiltrated my entire place and are even getting in the house! I'm go glad my sweet children aren't wussy like me because I'm always screetching and yelling for them to come rescue me from a grasshopper that has gotten in the house somehow.

So...bring on the seagulls! And yes, they have come. Swarms of them, actually have been flying over my field and taking mouthfulls of them. The only problem is that there are so many billions of grasshoppers that the seagulls aren't making a dent in the problem. Tooele County has even come out to spray with planes to help with the problem. Matt has sprayed THREE different times in the last two weeks just to try to get rid of some of them. Yuck. Below is a picture of Maddie's window well. They just cover the screen. I couldn't even go out to take the picture because when you walk across the lawn, the grass is just moving with them and it freaks me out. Like I said, I have good kids that aren't as afraid like me so I had them do the dirty work and get this shot for me. I am truly a prisoner in my own home!

Taylor Swift Concert!

Last night I took Maddie and Jaden to the Taylor Swift Concert in SLC. My neices Mindy and Allie and their friend Kristy also rode with us. In this first picture, we are posing by one of Taylor's semi's full of her equipment. When we got inside, our seats were the highest up that you could get but it was straight in front of the stage so we got a great show, head on! And of course, the kids had no complaints! Here she is performing. She is such a fun entertainer!

Performing "Love Story" where she changes into her Bride's dress right before she sings, "Marry me, Juliet; you'll never have to be alone....."

Her encore performance was the BEST! First she came out in a Utah Jazz Jersey and the crowd went wild. By the end of the night, she was hot and sweaty and the coolest part was at the very end when it started to rain right where she was standing. She, of course, made her signature "HEART" with her hands....

And Jaden was pretty tuckered out and actually FELL ASLEEP right before Taylor's encore! But then he woke up afterwards and we all went outside to wait for Taylor's Tour Bus. There was a small crowd that stayed afterwards hoping to get a glimpse of her or her bus. If you look closely, as the bus is pulling out, she's all dressed in her bride gown again and waving at her fans. She blew a kiss to Jaden! It was a very fun night, indeed!!! Maddie loved her first concert experience and sang along the whole time!

Before's and After's.....

I decided to do one last post on the progress of the house. It is far from done by any means but on the outside, we are nearing completion and I'm very happy about it! There is much to do on the inside still but the outside is just about finished so here we go:
This is the West side of the house before the add-on. And this is after. Aaaaaah. Notice Matt on top of the house finishing up on the new shingles...

The front of the house before (well, actually, after the siding had all been ripped off...Notice the color of the shingles):

And after. Woo hoo! Not sure if you can see the shingles but we love them! They are a real heavy duty shingle and the way the overlap is really pretty. If you click on the picture you can see it a little better. The brick is a very nice colored Brown and we are so happy with it! The chimney and the pillars on the front porch will eventually be done in stone.

Tiff's baby!

Okay, this might be confusing since the title is, "Tiff's baby"...let me back up. This is ONE DAY before Tiff had her baby. We were actually visiting our friend, Karen who had just had her baby on April 21st. Tiff is holding Karen's baby, little Harry....

Fast forward 24 hours...and now it's Tiffy's turn! I think her due date was May 3rd but little Blake decided to come April 22nd. He's so adorable! Here is a picture of Nadja, Laney, Tyler, Tracy, Mother, Tiffany, Braiden and me. Hmm... where's Blake?

Oh, there he is! Look at those beautiful, bright eyes. He's such a dolly. Tiff and Mike, you two did fantastic!!!!!

PROM!

Here's my neice Mindy getting ready for Prom. LOOK AT ALL THAT GORGEOUS HAIR!!! Here she is putting the boutenir on her date...

Here's Colton getting ready for Prom as well. Who would've thought pink would look so good on a guy, eh???

Colton and Amber getting ready to leave for the big night!