Five Brown Kids

On a round of Happy Mother's Day texts Emily made this comment: And it's so true.  Since we first met in 2004 it's felt like a never ending Ricks/Cleverly/Brown party.  Jaxon tracks the passage of time by knowing how long 'til our next get together. Another road trip coming up.  Can't wait! Here's a few of my favorites:

So you can probably tell that it was a wonderful trip.  I loved my time in Nova Scotia. Things I'd forgotten - all the water everywhere.  Every time you turn around it's ocean, lake, river or stream.  It's even more beautiful than I remember.  It was hot.  That was shocking.  I'm sure we had a few hot weeks when I was a kid - but all my memories are tied up in being cold. The houses are smaller, the cars are smaller and older, people still hang up clothes to dry out on the clothes line, everyone has a woodpile to help defray heating costs in the winter.  It is not Raleigh. The travel there and back was pretty insane.  On the way there our flight left late, we missed our connecting flight to NS and had to wait until the next day to fly in.  From Detroit to NS we were bumped up to first class which was a great perk. On the way home our flight was switched and then delayed and then cancelled, and then back on.  And then supposed to ...

We had barely recovered from our trip to NS when is was time to head home to Abingdon, VA for Tyrone's 20th High School reunion. A note about my trips to Tyrone's hometown.  My first visit was our wedding reception and I was not pregnant! By my second visit for his 10 year reunion I was pregnant with Jaxon, the third visit for a family funeral I was pregnant with Scotia and this, my fourth trip, pregnant with baby B.  We joked all weekend that this might be my last trip to his charming hometown. A note about Tyrone's trips to his hometown.  He's still kind of a home town hero.  There is this double page spread in his yearbook listing all his awards and accomplishments including a full ride football scholarhsip to a division 1 school.  Within a few hours of being in town he had a message to call the parents of a high school kid who is set (20 years later) to break his Abingdon High School Basketball Career Scoring Record. We had a wonderful weekend despite...

Pregnancy is a lot more interesting with three big kids helping keep track of things.  When they were toddlers and I was pregnant they didn't care at all but this time it's question city. Courtney said that I'm like a big science experiment happening right in front of their eyes. Scotia commented that my arms are getting too chubby.  I blamed it on the pregnancy of course.  Jaxon thought about this for a minute and then asked, "How is the baby making your arms bigger?" Then I had to explain that the baby is only responsible for my growing belly, everything else is because I eat more calories than I burn..... Taye was wondering if the umbilical cord didn't get cut after birth would the baby stay attached to me forever?  So I had to explain what a placenta was and how it comes out too after birth.  I told Taye that I'd heard it looked like a dead jelly fish but I'd never looked.  Or course he turns to Tyrone right away to ask him and Tyrone just said...

Carter's beach is just a really beautiful beach. We had to wade through some jelly fish infested waters to get from one side to the other.  Jaxon was a little freaked out because he'd been reading about killer jelly fish just a few days earlier.  We found five sand dollars.  This is the place for sand dollars but you've got to time it right so someone else doesn't beat you to them. The water was cold.  It's wadeable but not swimmable....

Yesterday when Taye was leaving the neighborhood gym his key broke in his bike lock and his bike was stuck! We tried our own wire cutters but no go. Today I thought I might ask a policeman up the street if he could help but then I remembered. The fire station is next door to the gym. Surely they'd have the right tool. I dropped by and told them my story  and asked for help. I though we'd walk over with some clippers but the captain said just meet me there in a few minutes. They showed up alright.  Five firemen in a big fire truck within yelling distance of the station. They tried a few tools until they found one that cut it.    Thanks guys! 

One morning Tyrone and I borrowed my parents bikes and cruised around Western Head.  It's a ten mile loop out along the harbour, past the wide open ocean and back into town.  ( Here's a birds eye view .) When I was a teenager I biked around several times a week in the summer just for exercise. The cuaseway has a big cement wall now between the ocean and the lake.  Last time the remnants of a hurricane went through it took out the road. The Western Head lighthouse.  So much smaller than I remember.  But the fog horn is still loud.  Moose Harbour