Happy Memorial Day!! (And some news!!)

What a great weekend! It was so great that I almost forgot that I have to go to work tomorrow! (I wish that I didn't!) Actually, even though the weekend was great, it certainly didn't start out that way! Let me tell you about Friday!

After arriving home at about 11:30pm from the airport Thursday evening, I woke up at 5am and met up with a friend from work for a 6 mile run. I was pretty tired, but the run went fine and I felt pretty good. However, at the end of the run, the IT band (Iliotibial Band) on my left knee completely tightened up and hurt so bad that I collapsed in the middle of the road. I stretched it out and walked a bit and it felt better a few hours later, but wow, it hurt! Then, within about 20 minutes of this incident, after stretching my knee, my laptop fell from the top of my stairs about 8 feet into the basement before "bouncing" the last couple of stairs. The screen was completely destroyed! About 30 minutes after that, while backing out of the garage, Amy side-swipped the garbage can, deftly removing the passenger side mirror from the Nissan (actually, it's not completely removed and is hanging by the wires!) So, needless to say, the two clumsy Brown's had a very rough morning, but we did make it to the Women's clinic on time for our 8am ultra-sound, with the entire family in tow!! Now, to the awesome news for the week! Check out these pictures:

That's right, as you can see in plain text from the second picture above, we are having another girl!! We were all hoping for a boy (except Alyssa, who knew it was a girl), but we're all happy to have a healthy baby girl coming to our home!! Needless to say, after the rough start to the morning, this news of a healthy baby cheered our hearts and the rest of the day went great!

Steve and Alisha showed up right at dinner time on Friday and we really enjoyed the weekend with them. Friday night, we played games and ate pizza. Saturday, we were lazy all morning, then ventured out to Fort Fun for mini-golf, video games, and go-carts! Alisha hit the "jackpot" on the jump-roping video game. I was very impressed! We also enjoyed some Mongolian BBQ in old-town Fort Collins at the "Hu-Hot". Lot's of fun. On Saturday evening, Amy and I attended the Baptism of a great new lady in our ward. What a sweet thing to witness a convert baptism. Amy did a great job leading the music! I really love my adorable wife (sorry to be sappy on the blog! :)

Sunday was a very relaxing day, with church in the morning, a great PM nap, then games indoor and outdoor with the kids. We grilled "kabobs" for dinner and really had a lot of fun.

This morning, Steve and I ran the Bolder Boulder 10k race. I was hoping for a new personal record to beat my previous time of 59:40, but I just couldn't do it. We started out way too fast (8:47 mile) and it killed me! I was able to hold it together for the next two miles, but then I just started taking hard, turning in a 10:49 mile for the last mile. My final time of 61:28 was much worse than I was hoping for, but I learned a couple of things: 1.) I need to do some more hill training and 2.) I can't jump out to a quick start!! Both of these are very valuable lessons for me heading into the half marathon in 3 weeks!

After the Bolder Boulder, we hung out on Pearl street for a while, enjoying the great city of Boulder, then we met up with Amy Ellis Stone, her husband Matt, and her sweet children, Riley and Lilly! They then followed us up to our house and we had a great time catching up with them. Amy and I grew up together in Hendersonville, NC and we haven't seen each other in nearly 10 years! It was great to see her again and life is definitely treating her well! (Amy, thanks for coming!!)

Okay, time to put the kids to be and get back to the "grind" tomorrow!!