Utah?.....Really?

I have no pictures for this post. Don't get me wrong, I have TONS of pictures I NEED to post, but we are without internet for another week. I am using my moms computer right now, and it doesn't have any of my pictures on it. Why you ask?

If you would have told me 2 months ago I would be living in Utah I would have told you you were crazy! When I left Utah 7 years ago, I didn't think I would be back to live very soon. When I married Chris 4 years ago, I NEVER thought we would EVER live in Utah again. Not that we don't like Utah. We both love it and think it is a very beautiful and nice place to live. We just thought it didn't have anything for us job wise.

We were wrong.

Chris has had his resume all over the country. Salt Lake City took the bait. And here we are. He accepted the job last week, flew back to Houston to get our stuff from storage, and I found us a place to live. I found a place, signed the lease, hooked up our electricity and gas, and then sat back crossing my fingers that Chris would like the place.

He did. We both love it. We love the house, we love the area, we love being by the mountains, and we LOVE being so close to family!!! Mason finally has his own room and we are getting into the swing of things. I can't wait for spring to be in full swing (What is with this snow? This 2-year Texan, 5 year Southern Cali girl is having trouble adjusting!)

For all of our friends in, around or near Salt Lake----Let's play!!! I can't wait to see you all!!!

And because I can't stand not putting some sort of picture, here is Big Cottonwood Canyon that we now live by :)

Small Update

Well, I am horrible. Mason is a month old now, and I can't believe how much he has grown. I do not have any pictures downloaded right now, but I will hopefully get some on here this week. I meant to do it last week, but it has been a whirlwind of things this week. Chris was laid off from his job at HP on Monday, and being that our lease is up on April 1st, we had some things to decide. We came to Houston for a job. Well, no job, so we are leaving for now. We did not want to renew our lease if we had a chance to go somewhere else. Don't get us wrong though, he is looking for any job, so if he happens to get another one here, we will be grateful and take it. I am personally hoping to be headed back west. Between Doctors appointments, and trying to pack our apartment and Mason not feeling well and wanting me to hold him all the time, I just didn't have the time to update pictures.

We have some great friends here. Most of them showed up yesterday and spent their Saturdays moving all of our belongings into a storage shed. Where are we going you ask? Well, we will embark on a 32 hour roadtrip on Thursday morning (not sure how I feel about this with a 1 month old, but oh well). We will drive to Kansas city, Missouri and stay with my wonderful in laws. We can't wait. We are going to stay a couple of nights there. They have not seen Mason yet, so it should be a lot of fun. Then Saturday morning we will drive to Denver where we will stay the night with Chris's sister, Lisa. This should also be good. We don't get to see them enough. (Kirsten, if you are reading this, I wish we were staying longer so we could meet up, but it looks like we will get there late, then leave early in the morning. Bummer) Then we are gong to drive to Provo on Sunday where we will get to see Chris's other sisters and all the nieces and nephews on Easter!! Yay! Then on Monday we will conclude our trip in Benson, where we will be staying with my parents. How long you ask? Not sure. Maybe 3-4 weeks! It all depends on when Chris finds a job.

So, any of my Utah friends want to get together? I would love to see some of you while I am there!

And because I can't do a post without pictures I will leave you with a few from when my family was here at the first of March:

Sleeping Cousins

We went to Brazos State Park while my family was here. It is just South of Houston and hey have TONS of Alligators just roaming around. They were even on the trail!!

Baby Alligator

Mama Alligator

And a couple Family pics....

Some pictures of Mason

So for some reason blogger won't let me upload my pictures for this blog. So I had to steal some pictures from my sisters facebook pages. Weird. I don't know what the problem is, but here are some pictures of Mason. I can't believe he is two weeks old already! Just a warning, there are a lot of picture, so don't feel bad if you don't make it through all of them :)

This Seahorse is amazing. It can calm him mid cry.....

Like Father like son...

Proud new Auntie Em

Chilling with Grandpa Munkee

Grandma Munkee :)

One Week old

Mason's first wreck at one week old. Ha ha ha, not really. My mom just high centered the car!

First Doctors Appointment. He is NOT happy!

Napping Cousins

Mason Colby Brown

Mason Colby Brown

Born 2/23/2010

8:57 am

7 pounds 15 ounces

19 inches long

Let's face it. I had a scheduled c-section. I therefore don't have some amazing birth story like most of you, other than all the sudden we have the cutest thing I could ever think we would have! He is such an amazing little guy, even though he doesn't do much. Chris is totally enthralled with him and can't believe how he all the sudden has a little boy. Cute is now is Chris's vocabulary. We went in Tuesday morning, had our baby. It takes no time at all if you don't have to labor first. Then we were in the hospital until this morning (Friday). The hospital and the staff were great. I had a very nice room, and Chris got his own bed to sleep in so he didn't have to sleep in a chair or anything. We are a little overwhelmed with all the work it takes to have a baby when you want to be sleeping, but we will get used to it. Since there isn't much to the story I am just going to post an insane amount of photos. You can look at all of them if you want, but I can't resist them so you don't have to look at all of them if you get bored at looking at my child :)

Our first family picture.

I am not quite sure what to do at this point, I think I was still loopy from the anesthesia...

Baby Showers

Let me start out this post by telling you all that I am horrible. I have had 3 baby showers. 3!!!! And how many did I remember to take my camera to? 0. That is right, 0. I don't have ANY pictures of my baby showers. I am already failing as a mom. We even have nice cameras that I could have taken. Do I ever remember them anywhere we go? Nope. I really need to be better about this.

So, the first one was given by Chris's work. I am not going to lie. It was kind of awkward. I didn't know anyone there. But Chris was very excited that they would think to give him a baby shower. So, that is good. I am glad they did it.

The second one was given by my work. It was a triple baby shower, and a lot of fun! Our Team head coach's wife is having a c-section the day before me, and one of my best friends here in Houston that I work with is due a few weeks after me. Our co workers gave us wonderful gifts, and all of my team gymnasts brought in lots of gifts as well. So nice of them. My favorite gift of the night was from my boss. She bought all three of us a baby food maker from William-Sonoma. I can't wait to use it.

The third and final baby shower was held by my good friend Rebecca Malone. She did an awesome job! She is a Martha Stewart in the making. Although I didn't take any pictures of the actual baby shower here are some pics she took of the set up. The theme was that I was going to have an egg hatching soon, so she did everything with birds, nests, and eggs. Very cute.

Plates with "nest" trimming...check!

Napkins with bird embroidering....check! (and yes she embroidered these napkins herself!!!)

Bird in nest cups with homemade strawberry lemonade....Check!

Origami birds as decoration.....check!

And yes, she melted chocolate and shaped it into birds for cupcake toppers on her own.

Instead of some silly baby shower games, she prepared material for people to cut out the cute shapes and make me onesies and burp cloths. They just cut them out and ironed them on. I got to pick the winner. It was hard because they were pretty cute. But I loved my friend Tiffany's with the anteater, top right. The colors were nice together too. Rebecca kept them to sew around the edges so it all stays on before she gives them to me. Very thoughtful.

Because we don't have a name, she had a station where people could write down names for the baby. Unfortunately, no one else can think of a good boy name for me either...bummer.

As I said, I wish I had pictures of the actual party, but I will just have to make the goal to do better at the picture thing.

One more week!!!