Saturday, July 28, 2012

Nora Got Ran Over by a Reindeer

Chris and I live in a very...umm...interesting neighborhood. And interesting works for us. We always say it would be hard to live in a "normal neighborhood" with things like neighbors and no trains shaking the house off the foundation. We have had some abnormal things happen while living in our cute, little white house.
I guess I should explain the location of our house, but don't worry I am not going to give street names because I wouldn't want hoards of people knocking on our door demanding to see more pictures from our Horse, Architecture, and Beach Retreat, because 6 posts and a home video just wasn't quite enough.
We live down a road that most people, who live around us, don't realize is even there. We have one neighbor to the right of us and 5 on the other side of the street. Our backyard has a field behind it that is bordered by 2 storage unit companies.  It makes our backyard open while maintaining our privacy. It suits us perfectly!
The only thing that would make our little house more perfect is if we were located in a more rural area, that way my big, blue horse could be in my backyard and we would have less neighbors. Being smack dab in the middle of a city, not far from main street, imagine my suprise when I looked out my window to see what Chris was up to and I saw


This nice looking 2 point buck in our backyard. The  poor thing was so scared and frozen like a deer in the highlights...right? right? get it? Deer in the headlights? Oh yes so perfect, so so perfect, just humor me :). He had a couple of red marks on his side but he was too far away I couldn't see how bad he was hurt.
I immediately called my neighbor Vicki (who runs the storage units), so she can come over and help with the situation, because Chris wasn't so interested in all the excitement. We decided to call animal control and do you know what they told me? "Oh yes, I can send an officer right over to come and put the animal down."  What!? Are you kidding me? put it down? Not on my watch buddy. You want to shoot this scared little guy in front of my little girl, my good friend, Chris, who is paying no attention to the action, and me the lover of all things animal, even the creepy, crawly variety...minus earwings and monkeys, those disgusting animals don't count and should be thrust down to hell... just kidding...kind of.
So we decided to wait it out. He wandered around and found a little hidden alleyway between the storage units. Well, Vicki had to go to work and Chris had to continue putting around the yard and baby needed to play in her sandbox so we dispursed thinking the deer had leaped and bounded back to his little friends, who were waiting with open arms...antlers.
My parents came over about an hour later to see if the deer was still sipping lemonade on our backporch. Since he wasn't quenching his thirst, we decided to investigate his exscape route. My dad had the baby in his arms as we started into the field. Chris and I were pointing out to to my mom where the buck had been, as my dad and Nora were looking in the alleyway, which happened to be completely blocked by weeds and trees. There is no way anything could fit through it.
I heard some rustling and looked at the blocked alleyway, when out of no where a crazy huge, 2 point, armed and dangersous, antlered, killing machine popped out of the weeds where he had been lying in wait to attack (he coundn't get through and must have laid down to take a nap, he was tired after that lemonade).
Luckily my dad just had a go go gadget knee replacement, because he still had Nora in his arms, He jumped and tucked and rolled(not so much tucking and rolling as running and jumping sideways) out of the path of that deer. All the while our fearless guard dog proected us.
She didn't even look up. See her sitting there in her awesomely designed kennel?
That poor scared deer  ran through the field and hopefully to safety, with his girlfriend to live happily ever after.
We all feel really bad that we scared him away. If we thought he was still there, we would have let him be. But luckily we got a good look at his cuts as we were petting him, when he ran by, they looked like more of a carpet burn then anything.
You just never know what adventures the wacky Browns will get themselves into.



Thursday, July 26, 2012

Responsible Parent?

 As a responsible parent I believe it is my duty to foster a learning environment for Lil Boss to grow and flourish in. One of the things I am teaching the cute, little babyface is how to share. Boy, she is acing this life lesson!!!

This is her sharing the chair with her twiner cousins, Lincoln and Lexi

 
This is her admiring the beautiful necklace Lexi is wearing...


...Sharing the necklace with Lexi (and maybe it is home in her toy box)

Notice the sippy cup Lexi has
Lincoln has an orange one just like it ... oh wait, Nora has an orange one...

...and a pink and green one.


The sweet little, love bug did share her hair bow with Gabe...

...Only because...




 Oh, yes, my mad parenting skills in action...lesson learned. Good job baby girl! 




Tuesday, July 10, 2012

So Much Fun We Need A Part 6!

It's hard not to be jealous of our Horse, Architecture, and Beach Retreat. We had so much fun that it took almost 6 posts and 3 months to sum up this wacky adventure. But of course I couldn't leave out the best part about vacations...food.  What would a good vacation be without food!
 Most of the places where Chris lived on his mission we were unable to return to, due to security issues. It's unfortunate because he has pictures of some great places that I would've loved to see. But lucky for us in Rosemead, Ca (one of the areas he lived) there is a very cool restaurant, that Elder Brown went to.

With wonderfully generous owners, who made us feel like life long friends.


Bahooka is amazing!!! They have something like 100 fish tanks. This guy is a very old fish, who loves carrots.


Nora loved to look at everything.


The decor was super cool and the food was amazing! My mouth is watering just typing and thinking about Bahooka.


If you're ever in Los Angeles, look it up. It's so yummy and so fun

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Part 5: Beach Love

I have never been to the beach and I was unprepared for the sight.
As we drove along the coast, Chris told me to look at the end of the road and what I saw took my breath away.
It was terrifying and beautiful and terrifying. The waves crashing to the shore and miles and miles of ocean nothingness laid out before me. It made me claustrophobic.
But like the siren call it was, the ocean wrapped its feathered arms around my soul and we were unable to stear our boat away. We came back almost every night.
A long time ago, Chris and his brothers almost drowned in the very spot we couldn't stay away from.
Elanora loved the beach but hated the waves
Two homeless men serenaded Nora, she loved it!
You can bet we'll answer the oceans siren song again!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Part 4: Will These Vacation Posts Ever End?

Please oh please let's wrap this up. I'll try to make this fast, but when I have so many cute pictures of Nora girl it's hard to only post a few.
We went to the Getty Musuem. I guess I lied, we did ride a train and I completely forgot. The Getty Musuem is on top of a mountain and we had to ride a train to the top.
The architecture was beautiful. Chris explained that the architect, Richard Meier, believed that if he used color rather than white, it would distract from the form.
The art was breathtaking! How can I pick just one or two pictures to show?
I'll spare you the naked ones, even though they were tastefully stunning (just don't notice that the statues have no clothes)
This is me telling Nora that she'll love art, especially Van Gogh.
We couldn't get enough of the Getty, although Elanora did. We were running from painting to painting and sculpture to sculpture trying to soak in all the beauty, while the Lil' Miss let us know that it was time to go.
What a wonderfully cultured day we had!
I changed my mind, everyone needs a little nakedness in their life, especially if the statue has a tail