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!

LSAT SCORE! Michael got a .....

Good news! Michael received his LSAT score and I am so proud of him. He got a 160 which is tens points above the national average and in the 81 percentile!!! He is so amazing! He is still working on his personal statement but after that we begin applying. Considering it is such a relief to be done for me, I can only imagine how great it must feel for Michael! To our friends and family: Thanks for all of your support at this time! We appreciated it!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! "Oh Canada, Our home and native land." While I lived in Toronto, I was able to celebrate two Canadian Thanksgivings and while celebrating today with my husband, it brought a flood of missionary memories. I miss living in the big city, seeing the sites but most of all I miss the people I met and taught about Jesus Christ. For those of you how don't know and just might be reading my blog, I served an eighteen month volunteer mission to Toronto. While serving the people I gained a stronger testimony of Jesus Christ as my Savior and of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through a modern day Prophet. If you would like to know more about what I taught as a missionary, just checkout the churches websites or feel free to ask me some questions
www.mormon.org
www.lds.org
Anyways, Michael and I celebrated by having a Thanksgiving feast with a oven-baked turkey, mashed potatoes, veggies and cider. Then our weekly Family Home Evening Lesson (Each Monday night, Michael and I try to spend time together doing a church activity or lesson)was on appreciating our blessing. I am so blessed!
Here is a little history of Canadian Thanksgiving since I am often asked how the holiday was established.
The history of Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to an explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Orient. In the year 1578, he held a formal ceremony, in what is now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, to give thanks for surviving the long journey. The feast was one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in North America, although celebrating the harvest and giving thanks for a successful bounty of crops had been a long-standing tradition throughout North America by various First Nations and Native American groups. First Nations and Native Americans throughout the Americas, including the Pueblo, Cherokee, Cree and many others organized harvest festivals, ceremonial dances, and other celebrations of thanks for centuries before the arrival of Europeans in North America [7]. Frobisher was later knighted and had an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean in northern Canada named after him — Frobisher Bay.
So Happy Thanksgiving to my friends in the cold white north!

LSAT-Michael

This is Michael. Carissa says that I should contribute something to our blog every once in a while. Well last Saturday I took the LSAT, the real one this time. I've been taking previous tests for practice for about the past 18 months now so it was a relief to get the actual test over with. The test itself took about three and a half hours but I got to the testing center at 8 AM and waited for a little bit. Then I decided to go in and somebody met me at the door and said that they had moved the location of the test (they just moved it from the BYU Law School to the Wilk, right across the street, but it was still stressful to be told that you were in the wrong place for one of the most important academic tests you're ever going to take). So then me and a half dozen other people had to run across the street and get to the right room. The proctors were supposed to start giving out instructions for the test right at 8:30 but since they had to move the location some people were late so they didn't start until about 9. Then about two minutes into the instructions a guy on the front row raised his hand and told the proctor something and she disappeared for about fifteen to twenty minutes to make a phone call while everybody waited. She came back with my teacher from the LSAT prep class and they took the student out in the hall for a little bit then they all came back in and started again like nothing had happened. Some people are very, very serious about the LSAT. There is a professor at the BYU law school who tells his class how he had to train himself to use adult diapers for the LSAT so he wouldn't have to take a bathroom break. Luckily, I didn't have any psychos like that anywhere near me. There are five sections to the real LSAT and a writing section. One of the normal sections is experimental, it doesn't count for your score but it is just so the people who make the test can evaluate test problems for future reference. But you have no idea what section is going to be experimental until you are at least halfway through the test. But the experimental section has always been one of the first three that you take. My first section was games, which I do best at. Games are logical problems that have interconnected rules. Each games section has four separate games of about five to eight problems each. I did pretty good on those I think. Then the next section I took was logical reasoning, which is 22-27 short problems you have to answer logically, pretty self-explanatory. Then I took a reading comprehension section, which has been my hardest section on the LSAT. I used to think I was really good at reading comprehension just based on previous standardized tests like the ACT and stuff but the LSAT was extremely hard. After I took the third section we had a break so I wasn't sure which one of the three was the experimental. I was hoping it would be the games just because I am the best at those. After the break we went back in to take the last two sections and the writing sample. My fourth section was games again! I was so happy. After that I took the last logical reasoning section and then the writing sample. I feel like I did the best I could but I won't know what score I get until a few more weeks. Thanks for all the prayers in my behalf. It is a big relief to have it done. Saturday night we went out to eat at Macaroni Grill to celebrate.
Yesterday we went with Ben and Nicole to the BYU homecoming game against New Mexico. We had front row seats! BYU won 21-3. Go Cougs!

Michael took the LSAT

Today is the big day. Michael is taking the LSAT, which is the test students take to be admitted into Law School. He has been taking a prep class for 18 months and has improved significantly. I can't even tell you how many tests he has taken to prepare for the real test. I am really proud of how dedicated he has been to his studies. I know that this day has been weighing on the back of his mind for a long time so it will be nice to get it over with.Even if Michael does struggle and doesn't do as well as he would like, he is taking it advanced enough that there will be enough time for him to take it again. But I believe in him! He'll do great. Yesterday he opened his good luck package from his parents which has medicine bottles and fake prescriptions in it like, "Take bottle to help you de-stress" and it contained M&Ms. Last night, I cooked him meatloaf, as he requested and gave him a nice long relaxing massage. This morning I surprised him with some good ole southern cookin'- biscuits and gravy (He ate the meal on our You are Special Today Plate). When he comes home, he has a congratulations package waiting for him from my mom and dad. So he is being well taken care of. Please wish him luck and say a little prayer for him! We get the results in a few weeks.

Minersville Wedding

Michael and I went to my Great Aunt Pasty's wedding this weekend in Minersville, Utah. Minersville is a small town in southern Utah and I'm related to about everyone living there. We drove up Friday night and stayed in a hotel with my Grandparents for a couple days. We went out to eat at Arshel's which is a family restaurant. My Great Aunt was married on Saturday to Arnold Petersen and we gave them a hymnbook with their names and wedding date inscribed on it as a wedding gift, even though they requested no gifts. It was fun seeing family that I haven't seen in ten years! After the wedding, Michael and I went quading up in the hills. We had such a good time and it was so nice to get away for the weekend!

Prop 8

My degree from BYU is Home and Family Life which is pretty much a combination of Family Sciences/ Child Development. For years, I studied the positive effects families can have on a community. California is preparing to vote on Prop 8 soon. Prop 8 is designed to protect marriage between a man and a woman. Michael and I have been married for only a little over a year but I can already see the blessings I have received from being married to such a wonderful man! I hope that the people of California will recognize the sacredness of families. Here is a link that explains more of my beliefs on families. I have this statement hanging up in my living room. It's entitled The Family: A Proclamation to the World.

We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.

All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize his or her divine destiny as an heir of eternal life. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.

The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God’s eternal plan.

Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. “Children are an heritage of the Lord” (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.

The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.

This proclamation was read by President Gordon B. Hinckley as part of his message at the General Relief Society Meeting held September 23, 1995, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Engagement, Wedding & Honeymoon Pictures!