More Maternity Pictures!

More updated Maternity Pictures! The first set was taken by my magnificent photographer Michael Wayne Brown when he took me to SLC for my birthday. The second set was taken on Easter Sunday. The last set are pictures from both of our bday dinners. For mine, we ate at The Garden Restaurant and had a great view of the LDS Temple. I also included a picture of us at The Roof, which is where I took Michael for his birthday.

We bought our carseat and stroller!

I just fell in love with this set and am really happy with the travel system we bought. The stroller is metrolite and the carseat is snugride. The colors we have chosen for our nursery are black and white with an accent color that is gender specific so the Rittenhouse travel system matches! Now we just can't wait to actually have a baby to put in it!
copy and paste
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/detail.gsp?image=http://i.walmartimages.com/i/p/11/13/00/01/88/1113000188458_500X500.jpg&product_id=10818276&iIndex=1&isVariant=false&corpCard=false&type=-9223372036854775808
For a clearer look at the material and design. It's super cute and unique!

Ultrasound and Stress Test Videos!!!

Michael and I went to our 4th ultrasound today with our specialist and she kept saying over and over again, "Everything is looking really good." We are posting two videos. One focuses on the ultrasound (look for the baby's heartbeat and for he/she doing a thumb's up) and the other focuses on the stress test (at the end, if you look closely, you might be able to see the baby's face). For those of you who are wondering, we did not include ANY shots of the bum!!!

Pictures of our Custom Homemade Crib

When my grandpa found out that my parents were going to have a baby, he got busy making his future grandchild a crib. But since my parents were told that they were going to have only one boy and were not expecting two girls, he had to hurry and make a second one when my mom had us. I guess he didn't really have to hurry since we were so small and liked to sleep in the same crib when we were really young. Anyways, all growing up I was excited cause I hoped my grandpa would make my children's crib. It has been even more exciting than I ever imagined since we were able to custom design it too! Then we found out that he was making a three-in-one bed (crib becomes toddler bed which becomes full size bed)! In the pictures there is only one that shows there are drawers under it but the drawers will be under all of the beds- the crib, toddler and full size bed. In the end it will be painted black.The first picture is of the creator- Clarence Pacheco. Second one is of the crib. Third and Fourth are of the toddler bed and fifth is of the full size bed with drawers under it. Thanks Grandpa Pacheco!

Surprise Family Baby Shower Videos and BYU Graduation!

This past weekend Michael walked for graduation at BYU! I was so proud watching him receive his diploma for Social Sciences- History. Above are a couple pictures of us at Michael's graduation. For his graduation both sides of our family flew in to celebrate. While here, they threw us a surprise family Baby Shower. It was so much fun spending time with our family and we can't wait to use the gifts when our baby arrives! We downloaded a couple videos we made of the baby shower using the new Flip video camera we received as a gift. We used "Dude looks like a Lady" as the song seeing as it fit since our baby's gender is a surprise! For all of our family who checks out our blog: Thank you for the gifts! We know that there was a lot of time spent either picking out or making the presents and we really appreciate the love and support given to us during this exciting time in our lives!

St. George BabyMoon Belly Pictures

Michael and I went to St. George for our BabyMoon a while ago. Here are some maternity pictures taken while is St. George. Our vacation was jam packed. If you want to read about it, scroll down a few posts. If you want to see more Belly pictures, I posted some yesterday. So check those out too! These pictures are of The St. George LDS temple, The Dinosaur Museum, and the Silver Reef Ghost Town.

Modeling the Latest Fashion in Maternity Wear!

Belly Pictures!!!







Here I am modeling the latest fashions in Maternity Wear! The first set of pictures were taken week 18 and the second and third set were week twenty and twenty-one (0ver half way there!!!).


Michael's Birthday- Pi Day!

For his bday, I surprised him by taking him to The Roof- one of the nicest buffets in Salt Lake City.






Most people who know me, know that I am obsessed with black and white! So I had to get some black and white maternity tops. I'm also wearing my first pair of maternity jeans. Well, I'm not gonna lie, it has been fun going shopping for new clothes!

Baby Ultrasound Pictures!!!

First of all, thanks to everyone for sharing their excitement when we announced our pregnancy. We appreciate the support and are looking forward to sharing updates during this exciting time in our lives. Here are some pictures of the newest member of our family!!! We are proud to present Baby Brown. These pictures are from two different ultrasounds 18 weeks and 23 weeks and Michael and I were shocked at the difference. Our baby is growing! We think He/She is pretty cute...must take after its parents! As mentioned in the previous post, we are keeping the gender a secret so if you haven't guessed what you think our baby is, now is the time to do it!



Baby Brown's Profile at 18 weeks.



We love our baby from head to FOOT.



Smiling for the camera.



Another side profile ( I actually think this was
taken during a one minute ultrasound during a
consultation visit. 24 weeks. Looks like we might have a
thumb sucker!?!



And this one is by far our favorite since it is so clear. This was taken at our last ultrasound visit- 23 weeks.

Coming soon....

This is Michael. We are expecting a new addition to our family!!! We are keeping the gender a secret but if anybody has any guesses we'd love to hear from you. If you have already guessed this would be a good place to post it again so we can keep track of everybodys' guesses. The pregnancy is going great. Carissa has hardly been sick the whole time. We've had lots of fun learning more about the pregnancy and our baby. If anyone wants to give any name suggestions we will look at those too. We can't wait to finally hold Baby Brown!
Ultrasounds forthcoming.

St. George Vacation

This weekend I planned a surprise trip for Michael! On Friday we began our trip to Southern Utah. It took us about 3 hours to get to Cedar City where we spent one night. We went up to SUU and watched their gymnastics team compete and then the next morning we headed up to St. George. First thing we did in St. George was go to a famous Dinosaur Museum. That was really neat cause they have some pretty awesome footprints. Then we checked a ton of the church historical sites. We went to Brigham Young's Winter Home,had a picnic outside of the St. George Temple, visited The Tabernacle (and stood at the pulpit where every prophet has spoken besides Joseph Smith and President Monson)toured Jacob Hamblin's House (he was a peacemaker and missionary to the local Indians). After all that sightseeing, we met up with Michael's old mission companion, Craig Rodriguez, and his family and went to InNout. How I miss that place! It was so good that we just had to hit it up twice. It was really fun to hear Michael and his old mission companion speak Spanish and tell stories from their missions. The next day we did a self guided tour through the city and saw the house where the prophet and apostles used to hid when there was persecution against the church. We also checked out the old county jail and Orson Pratt's house. Then went to a Ghost Town called Silver Reef. It was crazy cause we could still see a ton of broken glass from where there used to be saloons. On our way back we checked out the Mountain Meadow Massacre site outside of Cedar City. They had two really nice monuments. Then, as we headed back north, we stopped in Beaver, Utah ( a tiny town where a lot of my extended family is from) and ate at the local restaurant Arshel's which has been run by my extended family for years. We fit in a lot in one weekend. We really enjoyed our little vacation there and I highly recommend everyone visiting St. George. There is a ton to do. Also, we went to priceline.com and bid on a hotel. We paid 66 dollars a night for a hotel thats original rate is 209 dollars a night. Yay for vacations!

$ Mullah $

USDB has a program that if their employee does a personal development program in their own time, then they can earn an allotted sum. So tomorrow I am going to a conference for a few hours and am going to make 200 dollars! Big money!

Out with the old, in with the new! Happy 2009!

Welcome to a new year! This Christmas, Michael and I went down south to spend the holidays with my in-laws. Of course they spoiled us the whole time. We had a great time spending our break in Alabama with Michael's family and his grandma. Here is a list of things we did:
* Session at The Birmingham Temple (Michael's cousin is going to Italy on his mission).
* Family Get- together/party.
*Christmas and New Year's Party( Thank you Larry and Julie for all the wonderful gifts!). Michael stained me a beautiful wood chest which I am still trying to figure out a good place to display it in my apartment.
*Toured University of Alabama Law School.
*Visited the Helen Keller Museum (which was neat since I am currently working as a Communication Intervener for the Deaf and Blind).
* Saw Indian Burial Grounds in Mississippi (that's one new state to check off my list).
* Went shopping at an outdoor mall, saw the movie The Valkyre, went bowling, and went out to eat to lots of good restaurants- One of our favorites was the Puerto Rican restaurant since Michael lived there for two years.
* Michael and went on a dessert date to a restaurant that we ate at during our honeymoon when we were staying in Alabama for the reception. We got fried ice cream and a chocolate chimichanga.
Below are pictures of us at the temple, The Helen Keller museum- by the pump where she learned her first sign, "water", at the Puerto Rican Restaurant, and the wood chest.
Best wishes from the Brown Family to you for a Happy New Year!