Throw Back Thursday:

I love this video so so much!  

Her little voice.  It kills me every time.  She is somewhere between 15 - 20 months old.

Swim Lessons:

HOORAY!

Alanna has tested out of the starfish class and has moved up to the seahorse class in her swimming lessons!  She got to pick a prize from the prize chest and she got a ribbon showing that she has graduated from the starfish class.  She LOVES to swim!

The Brown's Go Camping:

We drove three and half hours NorthEast to a small town called Pioche, Nevada.  It is up in the mountains and is always 20 degrees cooler than Las Vegas!  HOORAY!  We went from 105* to 85*.....with 6% humidity....perfect!  It was absolutely gorgeous and worth the drive for sure!

When we got there, ALL of the designated camping spots were full!  We didn't plan for that!  We kept driving another 2.5 miles and ended up finding this secluded spot with 4 camping sites and as the website calls them "primitive bathrooms".  I'll just let you know now, it's basically a pot to pee in with cardboard walls around it.  That's it.

 We were right up against the mountain, so we felt very safe.  Cie-J immediately got us a fire going, while I set up the tent and got the beds ready.  Alanna helped to collect some little sticks for the fire.  See that small tree to the right side?  We called that our pee pee tree.  I'll let you figure that out...

 She thought it was so much fun to cook our hotdogs over the fire!  Then of course, we toasted some marshmallows for s'mores!  Alanna had never had them before and was amazed at how good they were.

 They were a huge mess and worth every bit of it!!

 The moon was so bright and absolutely beautiful at night.  We stayed up until 11pm just watching the fire, gazing at the stars, and listening to the quietness around us.  We discovered that some deer came to visit us in the night (we found the tracks) and the coyotes woke us up around 3am with their howling.

 We woke up at 4:50am and had breakfast and then headed to the lake to fish!  It was 54* and it was COLD!

 

Almost immediately, Alanna caught her first fish!!  She was so proud of herself and super excited to see what the fish was all about.  Daddy helped her touch it. She had to tell them goodbye before we'd throw them back.

 At first, we (Alanna and I) were scared of the worms and didn't want to touch them.  But I ended up sucking it up and just doing it and Alanna decided to do it too.  She was a pro at ripping the worms in half and running half to Cie-J and bringing the other half to me!  YAY!

 

(PROOF that I did it!)

It was nasty and not fun, but ended up being not a big deal.  I just used a wet wipe and hand sanitizer after each time. =)  LOL!

We will be going back very soon!

Monkey Monday:

Painting Dad:

 From time to time, Alanna asks Cie-J if she can paint his toe nails.  He always says yes.  I think he secretly loves it...but don't tell him I told you. =)

She chose a mint green and did a pretty good job.  Well, sorta.  Haha.  I, of course, grabbed my camera and snapped a picture.  Cie-J said, "You are putting this on your blog aren't you?"  I said yes. (duh!)  He said "Well, then put a caption that says 'A dad has to do what a dad has to do.'" Haha.

Star Wars:

Cie-J has introduced Alanna to Star Wars.

She LOVES it!  I usually find something else to do. =)  One day, while watching an episode, Alanna ran to her play room and grabbed her two nerf guns and her nerf sword and brought them in with her.  She sat in front of the TV and shot all the storm troopers and sith that came on the screen.  Or used her sword as a light saber.  It was cracking me up, so I had to get a picture.

Monkey Monday: