Florence, Italy

This morning as I was typing my email to Collin the phone rang. It was 7:10 am. Who calls that early? Only family! I felt it must be the girls so I answered the phone. I couldn't hear anything but I was sure it was them. I hung up and they called again. This time I could hear them and we agreed to skype. It was great to see them and hear their voices. Best of all was to know that they are safe and having a great time. They ran into the high school group at the Louvre and that was wonderful! Currently they're in Florence, Italy. They have ridden on lots of trains and their plans are continually evolving and changing. It's good that they adapt well. The rest of us attended a family reunion and got to talk and play with cousins the whole weekend. We each received a few bug bites and accumulated a nice layer of dirt. It wasn't too bad this time because the weather was cooler so we didn't sweat as much. It was weird to have only 2 children with us. Lots of fun! Sorry for the short post but I have to go catch up with my life.

And they're off!

Emily, Madelyn, Grandma Nora and Grandpa Raymon that is. They all actually left the desert last night about 8 pm and stayed at the beach house so it would be a shorter drive to LAX.  This morning when I awoke I was thinking stuff like, "Hmmm, they should be driving there now. Now they should be going through security." Imagine my surprise when Emily calls about 6:45 am and  tells me that they're driving there. Uh oh. Their flight was scheduled to leave at 8:15 am. So I check the flight status later and it departed at 8:12 am so they must have made it and all is well. Or so I thought. At 9:10 am Emily calls again. She says, "Guess where we're going?" "Um, Paris?"

I answer. "No mom. Right now!" she says. Having no clue I say nothing. "Dallas!" she replies with excitement in her voice. She then proceeds to tell me that they missed their flight to Boston and are taking one to Dallas then on to Paris. WOW. The adventure has begun! Here's a little funny side note. A good friend of mine is a pilot for American Airlines and the route she usually flies is to Dallas. And that is what she's doing today but she flew out of Ontario. Mercedes and Nicholas are connecting in Dallas today too on their way to Sao Paulo for the summer. It's like a little mini reunion in Dallas or something. So with the girls gone it's quiet on the home front. The Rancho house is having it's roof demolished today in preparation for the addition. I'll go this evening and take pictures. All went really well at Emily's graduation and I hope to post pictures and video of her performance sometime this week. I'm off to Costco to shop for office stuff. 

A post about Collin

I know I've neglected this blog but today I'll post about Collin. He and his comp had baptisms yesterday and here's the picture. Here's a bit from his email.

Anyways, we had an awesome Baptism yesterday. It was Kim and Arthur *******. They are a golden family. They have family prayer and scripture study and FHE. They are awesome. They moved from San Clemente about a year ago and Kim says they were brought to Texas to find the gospel. They are amazing and their kids are so cute. Especially the baby.

Prom Night!

Prom night came and went. Here is a picture of Emily and her handsome date. In other news Spencer got 3rd place in Mental gymnastics at the districts math field day! His 1st cousin, Nicholas, came home with the first place trophy in the same event! Go Browns! Volleyball continues and will end this weekend for Madelyn. I can almost hear the angels singing the hallelujah chorus. Oh wait, that's ME! Melissa has one more week and tournament. All is well here and seminary ends on Friday!! YIPpEE!!!!!

The Dismissal!

After a lot of waiting, watching Top Gear on the laptop, blogging and anything else I could think of to waste time, I was dismissed by the defense. The case was a domestic violence one. I didn't know any of the attorneys or witnesses. Dang! I did find out that one of the other jurors was a neighbor. I think I was dismissed because when the prosecution asked if anyone had heard of the "cycle of abuse" I raised my hand. Still, though, I wasn't dismissed for a while after that. The prosecution approved the jury as it stood twice before I was let go. I almost jumped and did the happy dance when the defense said, "And we'd like to thank and dismiss juror number 11." There were some interesting moments. One guy immediately said that he had a problem with domestic violence and that he had no leniency for a guy beating on a girl. ZIP. I wonder who ended up serving? Well, I'm done for the year now. YAY! Cousins Conference starts tonight and Emily and Madelyn are gearing up for that. Spencer had his 13th birthday on Tuesday and received an underwater camera which he loves. Rich and I are still working on plans for the Rancho house and making progress. Beams and shear walls seem to be an issue lately but we have it solved now. Mormon prom is next Saturday as are volleyball tournaments for both Madelyn and Melissa. That should be a challenging weekend. Then BYU women's conference for me! YAY!! I can hardly wait!

Here I sit.

Here I sit in  a jury assembly room waiting for who knows what. My original reporting date was 3/23 and I was able to get it postponed until this week 4/13. It complicated how long we could be out of town for spring break. If I had known that I wouldn't be called in to serve until today at 12:30pm we could have goofed off more in Brian Head or at Franks's house in Henderson. I used to never report but then the government started issuing fines for no shows. Anyway, here I am waiting. At least they have wi-fi here. Cool. Here's another beef I have with jury service. The government pays you $15 per day for your service. If I was a gov't employee I would be paid my normal salary whether I'm there doing my job or here on a jury. I think that either each juror should be paid an equal amount regardless of employment status. No more jury pay for anyone. Nor should anyone else. Make it a true act of  civil service. Equal pay for equal work.  The current system favors juries to be filled by public employees which to me seems slanted in the liberal direction. Ok so now the jury guy just came in and said that he's not going to do orientation until there are at least 60 of us. There are 23 right now and I don't think the number is going to increase anytime soon. I'll probably sit here until 5pm and then go home and probably come back tomorrow. Oh joy.

That's my girls!

Here's a funny video!

News from Allen, Texas

We received a brief email from Collin this morning. Here's a bit of it.

Hey Mom,
hows it going. Everything is going well. I am in Allen
Texas, serving in the 2nd and 4th wards with Elder
Gifford. I am the senior companion, and it is a bit
different. Well, lets see Elder Gifford is from north
California, and is 22. He went on his mission late
because he had some medical issues that needed to be
resolved first.
so Allen is suburbia. and the members are pretty
concentrated. the wards are also very young and upper
middle class to just plain upper class. There are some
huge houses out here.
So here we email form the library, but not today
because we cant get a library card yet.
my favorite talk was either elder L. tom Perry's
talk on member missionary work, which is what we need,
or Elder Holland's talk. it was very spiritual.
There was a lot of stuff about temples.
Conference was awesome. we live with some members.
oh and we were double transfered in because we took over
the area from some sisters. obviously just 1 sister
couldnt leave.right now we have to go. i love you all
very much. i hope you are all doing well
Love,
Elder Collin Brown

Some new stuff.

I just posted a new slideshow of some of the recent things we have been doing. Tennis is there and also volleyball and California All state honor choir. Collin sent some new pictures and some of those are on as well. Collin's big news this week is that he has finally been transferred. Took a little longer than we all expected it would. We don't know where he is yet but will find out Monday sometime. He did know that it was a double transfer. That means that both elders will be brand new to the area. He said that it would be a lot of work but that's what they're there for. He spent 7 months in Quitman. Wow! That's more than a quarter of his mission. Here is an excerpt from a letter. 

oh, and something cool to note. We had dinner with the Stewarts the other day and got to talking, They talked about an exchange student from Sweden they had over here for a while and they went with her back and visited her family. I asked what part of Sweden and they said a tiny island called Gotland. Then i asked where in Gotland and they said Visby. So i met some people in Texas that have been to Visby. The foreign exchange student lived inside the wall somewhere. It was pretty cool. Its the first time i have met anyone who knows where Gotland is, much less to have actually been there.

So i got a bunch of emails to read and then a bunch of things to do to finish packing.

He also sent home a name tag of his. It's cool. He knows a lady that has a bunch displayed on her mantle on little stands. They're from her children and grandchildren. Fun.

Life goes on!

Consumed by tennis

It seems like lately our whole family has been consumed by tennis. From March 9-21 we were very involved in the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Ca. It's really quite fun but VERY consuming. Madelyn, Spencer and I all participate as ball kids or coordinator. Emily's choir works a concession stand in the stadium so she volunteers there. Everyone else comes and watches. Alec, our good friend from Finland, came and stayed with us during the tournament and we really enjoyed having him. Madelyn and Spencer were both invited back to work the final weekend this year and they were both happy about that. Madelyn got to be Rafael Nadal's towel girl on more than one occasion and  both she and Spencer got lots of autographs from high ranked players. I got to work stadium for the first time and my teams did well. They're all really great kids to work with and it's fun to see them year after year. Some of them come from far away and some are local kids. This year I had one girl nearly pass out while on court. She collapsed and myself and another person caught her before she was completely out. The chair stopped play and sent someone over to help. She apparantly hadn't eaten anything that  morning yet and that was the cause of her collapse. I made her take 2 bites of a banana and kept her out for a while. Her mother showed up soon thereafter and took it from there. I later told my other teams that if they ever felt sick on court to just sit down. I don't want anyone to hurt themselves by falling over and hitting their head or knocking teeth out. YIKES! That would be bad. We had some real fun stuff happen. Alec knows Jarkko Nieminen who is a player and Teemu Selanne who is a hockey player. They're all finnish. Anyway, so Teemu and his wife, Sirpa, came out and watched Jarkko's match with Alec, Rich and Spencer. I requested to work that court for the day so I was there with Madelyn on my team. It was great fun. Later, Jarkko was playing Blake on stadium and we had regular tickets given to us by Alec from Jarkko. Now the best part of this is that we could cheer. when you're in uniform you can't cheer for either player. So that night we were in normal clothes so we cheered very loudly! Alec taught us how to say "good" in finnish so we would yell that out whenever possible. People gave us ugly looks. Especially because Jarkko was playing an American. We were the only ones cheering for Jarkko in the stadium. It was fun. We were loud!

Collin has been doing great and we 're thinking that he will probably get transferred this coming Monday. He will be notified on Saturday if he does get transferred. He said that there has been a lot of rain lately and that he and his comp got stuck in the mud in front of a members house. It took quite a while to get out but eventually they did. All is well with our family and hope all is well with you and yours.