It's a Sunny Day in Our Lives!

For those of you who are not in the Greenville/Greer area this week, let me tell you something. This weeks weather has been INSANE!! I've attached a video of the Boys playing outside yesterday afternoon.

The temperatures have been in the high 70s with 80 being the high yesterday. It's unbelievable! Except, we're living in it, so it is believable I guess. Anyway, we love it! I'm able to wear flops again and Baby Harry loves not having to be all bundled up when we go outside! It's nice for now, but with Christmas less than 2 weeks away, I'll be ready for the cold (and turtlenecks, right Annie B!?) when the weather turns normal this weekend.

Before I forget, I have a friend (well, I guess he's my friend-he's really Rhett's friend and my Boys' playmate!) who has an awesome blog so I want to give him a shout out! Check it out here: http://kentbateman.blogspot.com/ . It's very thought provoking. One thing that I have learned about blogging is that if you read someone's blog and agree (or disagree) about something that is written, let the author know! Let then know if you like reading it! Let them know that there are people out there reading it! I love it when you email me and comment on my goings on (is that a word?!) or comment directly on the blog. I feel validated!!

Okay, so it's Wednesday and I have decided to make it WONDERFUL WEDNESDAY! Here are 5 wonderful things happening in the Brown Family right now.

1. Reece and Garett are on the same basketball team with church and loving it! They have won their first 2 games! Hootie Hootie!! Let me know if you want to come to a game and I'll give you the schedule!

2. My kitchen is coming into the final stretch of being re-done. Once we are finished anyone who wants to come over for dinner is welcome! I love my new stove/oven and can hold so much more food in the fridge now! BIG hugs to Rhett for all of his hard work reconfiguring my cabinets so the microwave will be up and out of the way!

3. Logan LOVES acorns! And I don't mean just a little bit! I have them all over my house! We can't walk barefoot because he drops them and then I can't find all of them till I step on one. I find them in every load of laundry because he puts them in every treasure pocket he has. This is much cleaner than the rock phase since those were covered in dirt!

4. It's only 13 days til Christmas!! I love Christmas! The lights, the songs, the hot chocolate, the craziness...it's all so much fun! It's awesome to talk about the reason we celebrate Christmas with the Boys too. Garett is full of questions about God and how we know that Jesus is beside us all day. I think that this year the Christmas Story will have new meaning to him. What an exciting time!

5. Finally, I am happy to report that my Speech class is over! I gave my final speech last Friday night (and received a 100!) and took my final test on Monday and if my calculations are correct, I ended up with a B. That's great for me since #1-I hated school before and still wonder why I have gone back and #2-Most of you know that I love to talk, I just hated having to plan what I was going to talk about! I'm a fly by the seat of your pants kind of girl so there you go! A B is awesome! Now I am looking at taking 2 classes beginning in January and possibly auditing Rhett's math class before I take my only math class left.

Okay, that's all for now since a Mom's work is never done! I think I'll put a load of laundry in, eat some bon-bons and take a nap on the couch! Just kidding-I'm skipping the laundry part! This last part was purely for Rhett's benefit!

Have a great rest of the week and remember to let me know you're out there!

Till next time, I'm fondly yours,

Jeanne

CHO for the Brown Family

P.S. I'm sorry, I didn't mention Harry in my 5 wonderfuls. He's doing great (did you hear him laughing when Reece was swinging?! That's priceless!) and has moved up to his big boy car seat.

OK. Now I'm finished. (People finish, turkeys are done. I learned that in Speech from Ms. Trumbo!)

Learning to Adopt!

Just looking at my pictures, what do you think this post will be about? Hmmm, could it be, one of the Brown's favorite pastimes, our vacation to Disney World? Ding ding ding!!

You're right...kinda.

I sat down to work on this not having a clue as to what I was going to talk about, but knowing that if I didn't post soon ,

I was going to lose some faithful readers! So, Logan (along with a smelly Bubba) climbed into my lap and I asked Logan to look at pictures with me and pick his favorite. He picked these three. My favorite is the one with my tower of Boys on Main Street at the Magic Kingdom. It doesn't matter which picture I pull up from September's trip, Logan can tell me all about what was happening in the picture. He has amazing recall abilities.

Our trip to Disney each year is a trip into fantasy land. Literally. This is not real life that we experience, BUT, real memories are made. I don't think my children are aware of just how lucky they are that they have gotten to meet Mickey, or Buzz, or Pooh. There are children who will never have this experience and this is what I try to instill in my boys. Thankfulness to Beba and Teba for them taking us is something that I try to get them to express. Now that I think about it, we have tried to work vary hard to express thankfulness this year. I have repeated over and over, "Look at the person when you thank them." We've also worked on ma'am and sir with Logan. Reece and Garett have that down pretty good now and are great examples for Logi to follow. I didn't show this form of respect to adults until I was taught how to when I moved to the South and I love that my Boys are learning it at young ages. We are learning every day so I want to show you an example of progress that was made just this week.

Reece was sick on Thursday of this week and so I asked my friend Melissa if she could take Garett to school. She was fine with this. Garett was not. I was told that he wasn't used to riding with Melissa to school and that he wasn't going to do it. I begged, I pleaded, his Daddy offered him a dollar, I offered him a dollar. No dice. I sat down and explained to him about how sometimes we have to adapt to change. I explained that he would be fine. That he would make it to school just fine and go on with his day. I told him that even though I wasn't taking him to school, that I would be there to pick him up. I promised. Still, he was upset. I left him to get dressed while I made breakfast. Five minutes later he cam into the kitchen, smiling. "Wow! What a change", I thought! I was pleasantly surprised when he told me. "I'm ready to adopt!" What a wonderful moment for me, not just because he touched my heart by using adopt instead of adapt, but because he GOT it. Through all the crying and hyper-ventilating, my words reached him and he understood. We chose our JOY for the day (since we wouldn't be in the car together!) and when he left I emailed his teacher (Mrs. Deal, Wellford Elementary-wonderful teacher, we love her and Mrs. Gibson!) to let her know we had kind of a rough morning and related the adopt/adapt story to her. I asked if she could just love him a little if he was upset at all and she mailed me back and told me that he was doing great and writing about the morning in his journal. I breathed a sigh of relief and took Joy from the way the whole event played out.

Okay, so maybe I rambled today, but it's okay, because this is all for my family and you can stop reading at any time. I love all of my Boys and just wanted to get this story down before I forgot it.

Moral of the story: I know that my Boys are not by any means perfect, but they are mine and are a constant work in progress. That's all I can do. We wake up, choose JOY and move along trying to make others feel loved and good about themselves, fall into bed and start all over the next day.

I feel another blog coming on, but it will have to wait. I want to talk about my husband and the amazing job he is doing re-doing my kitchen, Reece and Garett and their basketball team, Logan and his growing up too fast moments and Harry and HIS growing up too fast moments. But, I am tired, it's time for Harry's bottle and morning will come quickly, so I will close for now.

Thank you to those of you who hung in there through all of my story!

Until next time, I'm fondly yours,

Jeanne

CHO for the Brown Family

P.S. Reece is better now, it was a 24 hour bug, thank goodness!!