The Big Apple

I'm in love, with New York City!  A couple weeks ago, Nick's parents took his sister, Katie, and I to New York City for a couple days.  They had a friend whose sister was being featured in an art show and thought it would be a good getaway for Katie and I.  Boy were they right!  I had never been to New York before and now I'm in love!  What an awesome city!  The hustle and bustle, the excitement, the shopping, the shows, and all the Christmas decorations were so awesome!  Despite spending one of the evenings in the hotel not feeling well, I had such a wonderful time and I can't wait to go back again!

Our first night - out the front door of the hotel straight onto Times Square!

Out to dinner

My wonderful in-laws!  We had so much fun with them!

Rockefeller Center

Awesome decorations on every block

Trying to fit in with the locals.  :)

We were on the Today Show with our shout-out to North Dakota - did you see us?!!!

 The Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular really was spectacular - what a great show!

But the show was even more special because my cousin, Adam, is in the show!  Well, technically he's my cousin's husband, but whatever, I consider him my cousin now too.  He's in the teal blue jacket.

We got to hang out a bit after the show too.  I don't get to see them much so it was awesome to catch up in New York!

Of course, we had to check out Ground Zero.  The new building is pretty awesome and the memorial site is breathtaking.  The museum isn't open yet, but I would love to go back and see that some day.

Not the most flattering picture of me, but we took a really fun carriage ride through Central Park - I had no idea the park was 800 acres!  It was a great way to see the park on a cold day.

I think I'd like the trip to be an annual event, I could do all my Christmas shopping there and then be done - it would be awesome!  Now just to convince Nick of that.  :)

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Merry Christmas to everyone!  I hope you all ended this Christmas day with full bellies and full hearts, feeling God's love poured out to us!  Much love to you from The Brown's!

Baking With Grandma

Food has always been (and continues to be) a central part of family gatherings with the Wynia's (my Dad's side).  Grandma's chocolate chip cookies and cinnamon bread were always the coveted items that were rationed out to make sure everyone got at least one.  As I grew older I realized how many of Grandma's other recipes were also amazing.  Apparently so did the rest of the family because this past year someone had the genius idea to make a cookbook with all Grandma's recipes.  But it's not just any recipe book, it's a photo book with pictures of everyone cooking with Grandma - how awesome is that idea?!  We all had a year to get together with Grandma and cook a meal of her recipes to be included in the book.  I think our family was actually last to get it done because we had been waiting to get all of us there together (my sister and brother and I), but it never worked out so we all cooked separately.  We finally got our cooking done over Thanksgiving.  We had such a fun time and I can't wait to get the recipe book!  It will be the most meaningful keepsake filled with so many priceless memories - not to mention all the delicious recipes! Here are our photos of our cooking with Grandma.

First we made the cinnamon bread.

Then we made meatloaf.

 (I had never heard of the the spice, 'savory'.  Grandma used sage.)

Mashed Potatoes - the best ones ever!!!

Apple Cobbler was dessert.

My Dad is good at dishes.

 What a shame - we didn't even take pictures of the food on the table!  It was gone pretty quickly though - so good!!!

We love you Grandma!

Since we had to let the bread rise, Grandma had made a different loaf before hand to serve with our meal and our bread was baked later for us to take home.  It's a 4.5 hour trip back home and we had the whole loaf gone in about an hour.  It was delicious!

The Elusive Christmas Photo

We tried this past weekend to get a good photo of the 4 cousins for Grandma and Grandpa's Christmas card.  It was COMPLETE chaos but we managed to get a few.  The one Grandma chose isn't any of these - so don't worry, I'm not spoiling any secrets!

Not bad for 4 kids!

However this is what most of them were like!  So funny to go through them all!

These I snapped the other day.  I love this one of Ty and Ella - they are too cute and so funny!

This one was pretty good too - such sweet cousins!

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a wonderful weekend with my parents and extended family for Thanksgiving.  There's always lots of food and laughter - what else could you need?!  Here are just a few photos of our weekend.

We've been enjoying this game for a couple years now, it's called Settlers of Catan.  It's a strategy game and whenever we're together we play it at night when the kids have gone to sleep.  But this summer when we were camping, we busted it out on a rainy afternoon and Rylan was intrigued.  He LOVES it!  And he has won a couple times too!  We obviously help him out a little bit, but he understands it all and really does it all mostly on his own.  He's kind of a space cadet with other things so it's so fun to watch him concentrate so hard and get so into this game with us.  He's a natural negotiator!  We have always played with just the regular Settler's game, but have now added the Seafarers version - so much fun and always different!

I saw this on Pinterest a while ago but never tried it until last weekend - cut slits in an upside-down egg carton to hold cards.  Seriously genius!  I think I might start using one! :)

Of course there's always lots of foos-ball, another game Rylan is really good at!

We had an awesome meal with my grandparents - they are so awesome!  Grandma had it all planned out - after dinner she and Mackenzie played with toys and colored while the rest of us played Farkle.

I can't even describe how much I love this photo.

Farkle is a really fun dice game - another game that Rylan caught on to quickly and loved.

And of course, after games and coloring, we have dessert - no one can leave Grandma's house until they have dessert!

We love Grandma and Grandpa so much!

We should have gotten all four generations together in one photo, but I didn't think of that then!

Mackenzie loves the spot on Great Grandma's lap - they were pretending to sleep - silly girls!