true Sterling humor

Sterling is getting better at singing his ABC's. So I decided to get some video of it (mostly for family and my sake) to remember him at this age. This is what Sterling thought of the whole idea of having to sing his ABC's at first... (it was also nap time) Here he is about 1.2 seconds later... Apparently he thought it was funny that I was getting frustrated! He is trying his best not to laugh in this one. I am getting this video if it takes me all day! :) Now I put this video on to show you true Sterling humor. He is such a ham and such a goof ball! VERY expressive little boy...always has been too. After about 8 trys and me threatening him with a half inch of his life to be serious and say his ABC's, this is the video I kept trying to get. I think he was done by this point! Now that we are done this is what he says! What a cutie! :)

I think we have a long way to go but it's fun to keep track and watch them grow and learn!

getting caught up

About a month ago we decided to take the front off of Sterling's crib and make it into a toddler bed. *sniff sniff* He really didn't give us a reason to other than the fact that he could crawl out if wanted to. He had never done it previous to this picture, but we asked him one day to see if he could do it and sure enough...

My little chunk-a-lunk could do it. So we decided since he is two and a half and can actually climb out now we might as well do it. I wasn't too happy about it because that meant that my baby was no longer a baby!

Daddy's big helper...always!

look how little he looks in that bed!

Sterling LOVES his bed so we were a little worried about how this transition was going to go, but this is what he did the first night without a whimper, cry, getting out of bed...nothing! We were SHOCKED!

Snug as a bug in a rug! He has been like this since this day.

Well I have some bad news to go along with this post...for those of you keeping up, our baby birds fell out of the nest last week and went to little birdie heaven. Sad.



I thought this was cute though. After I found the birds I told Sterling that the baby birds had died because they fell out of their nest and now they are in bird heaven. And in his sweet little voice he said,"Oh, that's nice." I just laughed...no clue! Then of course he had to see them. Then he kept telling everyone that our baby birds had died.

a weekend in Branson...there is a moral!

Settle in for a minute (or maybe a little longer!) because I'm going to tell you the "story" of our 5 year anniversary trip to Branson. It's very interesting to say the least.


It all started about a month and a half ago when I got a phone call asking me if we would be interested in going to Branson to stay at a new resort and then come back and tell my friends about our stay and how nice it was. The package included a two day/one night stay, $30 for dinner, two show tickets, and a $30 coupon book for the outlet malls. The only "catch" to it was that I had to come back and tell my friends.



Ok. Charge my credit card. Great! Our anniversary is coming up...this is great!


About two weeks later I get my confirmation papers in the mail. I am looking through it and see that it says we have to go on a 90 minute tour.


What.


The lady never said anything about a tour, otherwise I wouldn't have agreed to do it. So I call back and ask to talk to the lady that I had originally talked to. She told me if I had any questions to call her because she is one of the managers. So when I called I asked to speak to her. Well the lady that answered was being VERY rude from the get go. She will not let me talk to the lady I want and proceeds to tell me what this package is. To make a long story short after about 15 minutes of going back and forth with her she ends up hanging up on me....ON PURPOSE!!! I immediately call back. A man answers and smooths things over and offers me another package along with this one. He tells me about the tour and reassures me that all we have to do is come back and tell people about it.

Ok. I'm satisfied. Thank goodness for that man.

So our weekend rolls around (last weekend) and we leave for Branson, on our actual anniversary mind you. We took a pit stop on our way out to the chapel that we were married at. We were married at Whitney Mountain Chapel in Garfield.

The entrance to the chapel and lodge. It's so beautiful!

Here is the chapel. Isn't it so cute! It over looks Beaver lake...just absolutely beautiful.

Front view of the chapel.

View from the balcony. This is what was in the background of all our pictures...of course with glass panels separating us.

Here is the reception site (it's a lodge) just down the road....it also looks out over Beaver lake.

Back to the story.

So we get to the Welcome Center and check in. Now, Heath had made reservations at a really nice restaurant thinking we get $30 off our meals, right?

WRONG.

One of the first things the lady does when we are checking in, is whips out this list of restaurants that we can choose to spend our $30 at.

Are you kidding me right now. But ok, maybe our restaurant is on this list.

I'm looking at our list of SIX choices of restaurants. Yes I said six choices. You have got to be kidding me. And you can guess that our restaurant was not on that list. We were disappointed but we thought, ok the way they described it sounds like it has stuff that we would enjoy. So we choose to go to Peppercorns.

Then she lets us choose our two tickets...we choose Ripley's Believe it or Not museum.

Then she tells us where our hotel is. What? I thought we were staying at the resort. "No, you're touring the resort ma'am." in a VERY rude tone. I thought to myself...self control, self control, self control. So we gather our things and head off to our hotel.

I just have to laugh every time I tell this part of the story. We pull up to our "hotel" and this is what we see.....

Yes folks the Dockers Inn MOTEL!! Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with staying in a motel, but when you are expecting the resort, then at least a nice hotel, and this is what you pull up to, we just had to shake our heads and laugh...disappointment written all over our faces.

Have we been schemed...yep sure have.

Now the sign outside of our motel says that they offer a free breakfast at the Dockers in next door. We're thinking, at least we get to go to a nice restaurant for breakfast and we can just walk there in the morning.

Yeah, After we checked in she gave us our breakfast vouchers and tells us that we are going to Granny's. Granny's is clear on the other side of Branson.

Seriously. Can anything go right?

Well we went to our room completely disappointed at this point but still just laughing at it all because what are we gonna do? At least we are together. Heath then tells me that he is surprising me with a massage...YAY!!!! I haven't had one since right after we got married.

It wasn't the best but wasn't the worst. Best thing so far though!

After our massages. Maybe it is going to be better from here.

So after our massages we go to the outlet malls and get some shopping out of the way. Then it's time for dinner then Ripley's. We get all dressed up nice and head out to Peppercorns. Remember we are expecting nice here. Yeah, we get there and it is a buffet. The second we sat down this crazy looking/acting guy comes and asks if he could take our picture.

For what? ...oh it's neat I'll show you, he says.

He comes back with a framed picture of us. It is a really good picture of the two of us too. It's in a glass frame that is S-shaped with movie reels bordering it. We're thinking oh wow, we get a free picture and it's a really good one! Sweet! Yeah, not so much. While I'm getting my food he comes up to me and tells me that he can get me my picture all wrapped up nice and it's only $10. (ha, I took the picture out of the frame and tried to take a picture of the picture without him seeing me!)

What? For real. No way I'm paying that much for that. Whatever.

We go back to our table to eat. I hate to sound really bad but this food was probably some of the nastiest food we have tasted. If it wasn't dried out and crispy it was cold. Heath had to soak his catfish in ketchup just to be able to bite it...no joke! We didn't eat much. So the man comes back and asks if we want to get the picture. I just wanted the actual picture and not the frame. He says it's $5 for the picture....BYE!

**If you're still reading...thank you! It's almost over!)**

So we leave and go to Ripley's, still hungry of course. Still just laughing the whole time.

my camera would not get a clear picture of it, but this building was so cool!

We had a great time in Ripley's. We spent 2.5 hours in there! Here are some of the fun things we saw.

a crooked room...I could not walk in there. It made me sick! It even said it on the sign outside the door that it could make some people sick!

if only my legs could be this long!

tallest man in the world known to date. 8' 11" 491 lbs and wore a size 37AA shoe! Look at him compared to me...5'2"! His hand was the size of my face! He died at the age of 21.

Remember the breakfast situation from earlier? We woke up and decided it was absolutely ridiculous to have to go clear across Branson to go to breakfast. The lady at the desk ended up letting us go next door to eat instead...thank you lady! Our tour was supposed to be at 2 o'clock. So check out was 11 and we go shop some more waiting for 2 to roll around. Meanwhile, just dead set on NOT going on this tour because the whole time (from the first phone call) we have been mislead. Heath had called to see how we can get out of our tour and the lady told us that it is a $200 charge. It states on the paper that that charge is based on a two night stay...we stayed ONE night. So our charge should only be $100...right? She told us it doesn't matter it is a $200 charge regardless.

I don't think so. We calculated up what the charges would be for everything that we had actually done since we were there...$100 exactly. So we went to the check in place for the tour and talked to the lady in charge. She ended up getting us out of the tour for the $100, which is for what we did, and we didn't go.

Guess what we ended up doing instead.....

Yep, toured the Stone Hill Winery instead!! It was awesome and a perfect ending to a not so perfect weekend!

**So the moral of the story: don't get suckered in to buying anything over the phone and plan your trip to Branson by yourself! (which I'm sure most of you already know, but I guess we had to find out ourselves!)**

HAPPY 5TH ANNIVERSARY!!!

7 years ago....well almost!

So this has taken a little while for me to put together but I told you I was going to be posting pictures of Heath and I since we have been dating until now. (7 years)

OK, the first like 17 pictures are a little ghetto (and you'll be able to tell which ones) because we don't have a scanner and I had to do it the old fashion way and take a picture of the picture. So the quality is not that good but you'll get the picture!

Our first "official" first date was September 11, 2001. Yes, the same day as the worst thing to happen to America, happened. We already had the date planned and so when we woke up that morning, we just decided to go ahead and go anyway that way we could remember the day of our first "date" for sure!

Ok, enjoy....

Our very first picture together October 2001. It was parents weekend at Harding and my dad came down. So he met my dad quick! :) (I don't know if you can really tell but Heath had long hair. It flipped out under his hat so we called it his "wings"...all of it was cut off shortly after we started dating!)
Look at that hair!
Our first college function together...Kojie formal... Once again look at his hair...UGH!!!

This was the night we got engaged...the ONLY picture from that night that I have...sad. We were calling our parents to tell them the good news!

Our official engagement picture
our rehearsal dinner
AWWW!
YAY!!!!

so glad that night was finally over...weddings are so exhausting! Especially when you are having to plan it from 4 hours away, having a full time and part time job, going part time to college (harding at that), being active in my club at school, AND most of all having a social life! So needless to say we (I) was exhausted!!

in Cozumel for our honeymoon...wish I could have been back there this past weekend! (that's a whole other post for later!!)

Oh the married life...pre-kids!

Last picture of Brown family of two.

First picture of Brown family of three.

This is a terrible picture of Sterling but thought it was a good one of Heath and I and after all, that is what this post is about, right!?!

One of our favorite things to do together is go riding on the 4-wheeler...even in the snow and ice...man the things I have to put up with, SHEESH!! LOL! :)

the infamous "kissing" picture

being our usual goofy selves

don't ask cause I don't know!

The End! (of that anyway!)

At a Razorback game

I now I have already put this picture on here but some people may not have seen it in previous posts!

Ok and that's it! Stay tuned for pictures and the story of our "lovely" anniversary weekend!