The Brown Family: It has been awhile

As March is coming to an end, I am just now starting our blog for 2012, after almost a year and a half hiatus. To catch up, so our children will understand someday why the break, I will begin in the spring of 2011. Not sure what happened between Sept 2010 and then, but that is where we will start. In the spring of 2011, we put our house on the market. It showed infrequently most of the summer. Then in August Chad goes to Peru on a mission trip, pictures to follow soon. The house shows 3 times while he is away. He returns to Memphis on a Saturday, and after 36 hours of travel, I drag him with our 3 children to the zoo. Did I mention it is August!!! He starts feeling bad close to us leaving the zoo. By the time we are home he is very sick and has a fever. As we are pulling into our house, our realtor calls with an offer on our house. Two weeks later we have a contract on the house, but we have no where to go!! I had looked at every house in Tupelo. So, we move into a rental house in west Tupelo. We were are on a great street with fabulous families, that we miss even today. Thanksgiving was approaching and we still had not found our new home, and our rent house was showing almost twice a week. My stress level was really high. A week before Thanksgiving we finally find our forever home. It is in foreclosure, and is a work in progress, but it is perfect for us!! While the kids and I are in Oklahoma, Chad fills out loan papers and we get a deal worked out. We are set to close Dec 8th, but there is no way we will be in the house by Christmas. I have a big Women's event at church Dec 6th, we are meeting with the contractor and Parker comes home from school not feeling well. He has to have his appendix out, and I will write more on this later. Needless to say we spend Tuesday night in the hospital and close on our new house on Thursday. We have an 1800 square foot rental house packed full, two storage units packed full and have at least a months worth of work on the new house. We move in January 20th!! The pictures that follow this post are the first pictures of our children I took in 2012, and they are making Valentines cookies. We had the best time doing it, and we are loving our new home. It is perfect for us. I will put pictures of it on here soon.

Parker and Henry In Mrs. Hazel's class for their Valentines Party.