Our Generation Vol.2 No. 23 It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It truly has been the most wonderful time. Seasons greetings to all and special milestones for the Browns. First off, Mia has grasped all of her letter sounds and is in the beginning stages of sounding out words. This delights us so much and reading time has developed into an even more special time than before. Benjamin's language skills have exploded. He can speak in two and three word sentences and loves to identify just about everything! His favorite words still are: NO!, basketball hoop and Mia. Not to mention that this year the magic of Christmas has consumed us all. Mia and Ben are so into the Christmas Tree, lights, and Santa Claus. Lists have been made and posted on the refrigerator and stockings are checked often to see if Santa stopped by while we slept. This year, we heard that Santa was flying into the College Park Aviation Museum. Who needs reindeer when helicopters are much faster? We had a fun time at the museum making arts and crafts and we even got to meet Santa.

Our annual tree lighting was a great success. Even though it was SO cold, the kids had a great time and we had a lovely dinner with friends.

Daddy had a nice time on his birthday. Kim, Kristen, Laura and Marcy met us downtown for a surprise dinner at Alero (one of the restaurants we used to go to before kids). He had no idea that the Robertsons were even in town.

Mia likes stuffed animals again (this is a huge breakthrough- but as evident from the picture folks- we have enough!).

Mia, Ben, and Brad finally got to meet Avery Phelan. We feel lucky enough to have taken her out to her first dinner. We ate at Pacci's Pizzaria. If there's a cute baby and food involved, we'll be there!

Christmas at home was nice. We had our family Christmas present opening one evening after school/work and Santa even came early. You see, he knows when kids are traveling and makes a special stop before you leave!

Please stay tuned for many more good times in Arizona!

Our Generation Vol.2 No. 22 Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving this year was cozy and fun with our guest Bernadette and her roommate, Lauren. They brought over Oreo turkey fixin's and entertained the kids while we got our dinner ready. This strictly from Arizona crew built forts in the living room and left them up all day, watched the Macy's parade and played games. Dinner was tasty and followed up by a sit by the fireplace out on the deck.


We had the girls help us pick out a Christmas tree as per day after Thanksgiving tradition. They even put the lights on for us (a job that neither Daddy nor Mommy loves). W hen the kids woke up from their naps it was decorating time. Daddy made wild rice soup, we trimmed the tree and house and had a lovely rest of the weekend.

Most of our dark winter days have been spent sitting in front of the tree and fire awaiting the magic of Christmas.

Congratulations to Jackie and Andrew on the arrival of their new baby girl, Avery Oliva Phelan. (Nov. 10th). Mommy got to visit with the family for a bit this weekend. She is PRECIOUS!

Our Generation Vol. 2 No. 21"Twik oh Tweet!"

Pumpkins were a plenty at the pumpkin patch this year. Mia was lucky enough to go on a field trip with her classmates and mommy was lucky enough to be a chaperone. Mommy enjoyed not being the teacher in charge for once, and it was nice to see how Mia and her friends play and interact together.

This Halloween was quite the fun one as we had special guests visiting- Aunt Kari, Grandma and Grandpa. They came to town for a lovely fall visit and entertained the kids, helped us with our party and even carved our pumpkins! Mia and Ben loved watching and helping with the pumpkin carving. They liked playing with the slimy seeds. As you can see below, we even got Grandpa to carve one, thanks to Mia's sweet persistence.


We squeezed in a fun trip to the zoo one morning to visit with cousin, Marcy. She lives in D.C. and she met us there for some elephant viewing and lunch. While the others were observing the elephants, Ben took it upon himself to make friends with a gorilla statue. He danced and sang to the statue and entertained himself for a great deal of time.

Fall wouldn't be complete without our annual chili party. This year we went all out with help from Grandma and Kari's stellar decorating skills, food and drink galore. Most everyone dressed up and once the kids were well fed and sugared up- we headed out for the largest Trick-or-Treat parade I've ever seen. Ben managed his evening well by yelling, "Twik oh tweet" at every house, reaching in for candy then putting it in his pumpkin bucket. He even did it when we walked back into our own house! He yelled and helped himself to more candy.

Ben was a National's baseball player and Mia was a sweet little Tinkerbell.

Our Generation Vol. 2 No. 20 Pumpkin Picking and Two Robertsons

Fall in Maryland is wonderful. We especially like to take a trip out to Butler's Orchard for pumpkin picking and the pumpkin festival. This year, we managed to get a crew to come with us. Andrew, Claire, Luke, Allen, Elaine, Owen, Nora, Pete and Lydia were part of the group this year. Most everyone spent some time watching pumpkins fly through the air through a pumpkin launcher. The launcher flung pumpkins about 100 yards across a field and hurled them into an old beat up VW bus. After the noise got to some of us, we went through the corn maze, played in the corn box (like a sand box), slid down slides on potato sacks, ate lunch, and took a hayride to pick pumpkins.

The kids had so much fun running around on a beautiful fall day.

Brad's having the most fun on the hayride.

Good pickin'

As an extra special treat this week, we had a visit from Laura and Kim. Laura got into Georgetown University and made a trip out here to interview for a scholarship and check out the campus. We had them over for dinner one night than met them out in Chinatown another night. It was a quick visit but we're are SO excited that there will be many more in the future. Since Laura got her scholarship (YAY!) and she'll be moving here in January.

Chinatown fun.