Thanksgiving

The Stumps graciously hosted Thanksgiving at their house this year. Jake the kids & I spent the night Thanksgiving eve. The girls spent the day cooking and as you can see from the picture below - reading :) Andy & Allison joined us around lunch time to help prepare the food and enjoy the day! We had such a great couple of days & look forward to having a Stump / Brown Thanksgiving again!

Mark & Mackenzie prepared eggs for breakfast :)

Sacramento

In November we went to stay with my sister Kris and her family in Sacramento. We had such a fun time with my family & look forward to going again next year!

Picture to the right is of my nieces & nephew, my brother & his wife Karla and my sister & her husband Kevin.

My sister & I took the kids bowling, while the guys were at a UFC fight.

Cosmo joined us on the trip & had fun with my sister's new puppy.

Movie Nights

October Movie Night: We watched "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Sleepy Hollow".

November Movie Night: We watched "Christmas Vacation" and "Elf". We had a great turn out with over 20 people!

We love hosting these movie nights & hope to have more soon!

Krystal Garza brought these great cupcakes!

We decorated the yard with spiderwebs for our October movie night.

I failed to take very many pictures at our November movie night - but we decorated an outdoor Christmas tree with old fashioned rainbow lights, Jake put up a strand of white lights around the bushes in the back and of course we had to break out the leg lamp as well! We enjoyed hot cocoa, egg nog & brandy, apple cider and other goodies :)

Pumpkin Patch - ok so I'm VERY behind!

In October we went to a local farm to pick out our pumpkins. The kids had a great time... they raced through the corn maze and in addition to picking their pumpkins - they were able to pick some fresh veggies that we roasted when we got home. It was a fun day!

School Pictures

Sorry it's been such a long time since I've posted anything. I have to confess - I am now obsessed with Facebook & have spent too much time on the internet! Hopefully I'll find some time soon to update our blog:) Anyways - here are the kids school pictures from this year. Mackenzie is in 5th grade and Blake is in 3rd.

Keisuke's Birthday

Mark & Joanne are hosting an exchange student from Japan named Keisuke. He has been in the US since September and will probably be here until the end of next month. He is such a nice guy & is a lot of fun! Sunday was his 25th birthday, so Mark & Joanne threw a birthday party for him at their place. I probably won't be able to post a video - but it was so great - two of his friends are break dancers and put on a little show for us at the end of the night. They were awesome! Thank you Mark & Jo for hosting the party at your place & thank you Ryan for the "recession proof BBQ". We gave Keisuke a Harbor shirt, so in the picture above he wanted to take a picture w/ Jake since they were both wearing a Harbor shirt. We had such a great time! Enjoy the pics..

Ryan Barlow Show

A couple weeks ago we went to Its a Grind to see Mark perform some of his songs from his band, "Ryan Barlow". We had a great time! I went a little picture crazy since I realized that I haven't taken very many pictures this year.