The Brown Family

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Baby Chloe - March 5, 2018

The first 2 years - Baby Chloe, March 5, 2018

We are so grateful Baby Chloe arrived safely. She's such a sweet baby. Brady is such an adoring Daddy. So blessed!

Baby Chloe and Great Grandma Chloe Belle Farr Summerill

A look back - The first two Texas years

The move....

We loaded up the Penske for the one way trip to Texas. This was the 3rd truckload, which is pretty crazy due to the fact that we sold almost all of our furniture with our house. However, we also had furniture from our St. George condo (about half was sold with the condo), and an accumulation of 30 years. The majority of items in the last move was Kent's garage items, outdoor furniture, kitchen items, and personal belongings. We got a late start, underestimating how long it would take to load. We are so grateful for the Brown family and kind neighbors and their great help getting us loaded and sent off with love and good wishes.

After braving a blizzard over Soldier's Summit in the dark, we spent the night in Moab. Kent drove the Penske, Kaylee drove Kent's truck with the large covered trailer, and I drove my Jeep, bringing up the rear. Kent did an amazing job keeping us on the road despite very limited visibility leading the way through the dark and the snow. Kaylee became very skilled at driving a truck and trailer. I had an easy job keeping up with everyone and operating the flashers to warn others of our slow climb up the mountain.

We were happy to see the "Welcome to Texas sign" on the second day!

The next morning we began to unload our belongings into the empty barn.

We are so grateful for safe journeys to our new home. The adventures begin!

Sunday, February 4, 2018

Brown Family - The Ranching Years

The Barn is ready... Are we ready?

In 10 days, we will pack up what we haven't sold or given away and move to an 85 acre cattle ranch in Texas, well, as soon as we have a house there to live in. In the meantime, we'll move in with Kaylee. How did all of this happen? It's a long story.

A little over a year ago, we were visiting Brady, Cassie, and Kaylee in Texas. We were driving around, looking at open fields and rolling green hills, and dreaming about the possibility of moving to a ranch in Texas when we retire. We came across a beautiful piece of land in a small town, about 35 miles outside of a large Texas city. It had a For Sale sign on it. We talked about diversifying our investments and buying the property as an investment and a possible retirement location way off in the future. Over the next few months, job changes led us to move our relocation to Texas to pre-retirement. Just over one year after purchasing the ranch, we're moving to Texas. We keep asking ourselves, "What are we doing? Are we crazy?!" We're pretty old to make such drastic changes, but it all just feels right, so off we go.

We had a large metal building constructed on the ranch over the last few months. Kent calls it a shop, I call it a barn. There's roughed in plumbing for a 2-bedroom apartment in the front end of the building. We'll start construction on a house as soon as we can get through all of the negotiations with the builder and we'll likely finish out the barn at the same time we build the house. In the meantime, we'll live with Kaylee, about 15 minutes away. Brady and Cassie built a house on one acre of the ranch and moved in a couple of months ago so we'll have them and their new baby girl as our closest neighbors. The hardest part of this move is leaving Tyler and Sydney and our little grand baby, Will, behind.

I completed my PhD in January and I have been applying for jobs for about 10 months. I've had some phone interviews, but haven't gotten a job, so I'm going on faith that the perfect job will come through. In the meantime, I will visit school districts and hope to get some opportunities to present some professional development in elementary schools and districts.

I plan to use this blog to document our journey to becoming ranchers and the growth and experiences of our family, more for my own journaling, but friends and famliy are welcome to watch the blog to check in on us. We look forward to many adventures, learning new skills, living in a new state, and becoming Texans!

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Since my boys have both returned from their missions, I've gotten out of the blogging habit. Perhaps it's time to begin again. When the boys got home, I published their blogs in hardcover, full color books through blog2print. They are treasures! It inspired me to do the same for our family blog at the end of each year. We'll see how this goes! We can hope....