The Browns

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

I love summer!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Friday, November 6, 2009

Friday, August 15, 2008

Rafting the Snake River

We got back Wednesday night from Wyoming. Our family, Stephs mom and dad and sister and thier families spent most of the weeek in Wyoming on the Snake river, near Jackson Hole. It was a blast! We left last Friday, us and Steph's sister Stacie and her family and made it to Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. There is a river that runs through town and we were able to find a camping spot right in the river. In Lava, they have this huge pool with 10 meter diving platform and a couple of water slides. so we spent Friday and Saturday playing in the pool and on the slides and tubing down the river. the kids had a great time. Heck, I had a great time. then saturday we took off for WY. there is a campground right on the Snake River that we like to stay and spots usually dont open up till Sunday, so we found a campground just down the road from it and set up camp. the trailer is nice, just being able to roll in and pull out the awning and instant campground. Sunday morning we went over to East table (campground) and were able to find the perfect spot big enough for the trailer and a tent for the Shculz's. Steph mom, dad and her sis, sis's hubby and 2 kids stayed down the road @ Alpine in a hotel (wussies) but came into camp early inthe morning and stayed till late in the evening.
On Monday we made 3 trips down the river. we run a 12 mile stretch with plenty of rapids and it usually take about 2 1/2 hours to run, but this year it only took 2 hours because the water was so high and running pretty fast. By Monday evening we were all pretty worn out. Tuesday morning we made 1 more run and went back to the hotel to get cleaned up for a night in Jackson Hole. There is a place called The Bar J ranch that we like to go every year when we are up there. it is a blast. its dinner and a show. it's pretty amazing. they actually serve 530 people in about 30 minutes. you call a week before to place your order (steak, chicken or ribs) and whenit comes time to eat they line everyone up in 4 single file lines and funnel you through the line and slap what ever you ordered onto your tin plate. then its back into the "barn" to eat. once you have cleared your plate, you clear you table and then the show begins. There are 5 "cowboys" that sing and tell jokes and they really are funny. the kids loved it! if you are ever up that way, I woulod strongly reccommend that you go. Then on tuesday, it was time to pack up and head home. it was a fun trip and we are looking froward to next year already. I have been inviting everyone in the family to go, so if you want to come with us next year, start planning for the 2nd weekend in August, 2009.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Another blurb from Carson

Carson says the funniest things. This is just an example. Last night we were having a nice summer dinner outside. Corn on the cob, cukes and summer squash from the garden and hamburgers. As most of you know, Carson has a really hard time eating any kind of meat except hot dogs and chicken nuggets (only from Wendy's). Well, I told him that he needed to eat some meat, his body needed the protein. He was so positive and took three quick bites and started chewing. This was after he had eaten 2 ears of corn. Well, he started to heave and ran to the trash can and refunded his hamburger. As he was yacking, he makes the comment, " Awwww.., there goes my good corn." We died laughing.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Beaver Mountain Camping Trip

We spent the weekend on beaver mtn, near mt holly with mom and dad and Darren and reg. It was a blast. The kids had fun with Darren’s kids. We took the 4 wheelers and ended up not riding them much. Steph and I and D and Reg cruised the trails in the rhinos. They took their 2 youngest and we took Canon (Carson and Mak were having to much fun to be bothered by mom and dad). I have been trying to get Steph to let me buy a rhino, but she hasn’t seen the 'light' just yet. Maybe this weekend will open her eyes. They are so fun and just the right size for our little fam. It rained on us Saturday night, pretty hard. Found out the trailer had a leak, but it wasn’t bad. We let Carson and Mak take the 4 wheelers on their own, crazy, I know, but they did good and stayed in the camping area. it was just us, so I wasn’t too worried about them other than running into the stream. I took C and M fishing while Steph and canon stayed and visited with Reggie, but didn’t catch a thing. The kid’s weren’t impressed. I was pissed because the people just down the way were catching tons. I guess the 'old man' isn’t much of a fisherman. I have been working on a fence for the back yard. I finished work early today to dig holes. Canon is getting out of control so we are thinking that if we can confine him to the back yard we will be doing ok. We live on a dead end road, so we don’t get much traffic, but we still worry. We are going for the white picket look. We aren’t putting a fence between us and the in-laws, so it will be one huge fenced in area.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Pulsipher Family Reunion

We had a great time at the reunion. we got to see family that we had missed for the past few years and enjoyed catching up. The reunion ran from Friday thru Sunday. Friday we all just got setteled and got reaquainted. Saturday the games began. Mom was in charge and she had some fun things planned. the best was the boat races. she brought a bunch of cardboard and duct tape. she divided up all the card board and tape between the families and we got a half an hour to construct a boat that would have to be piloted across the pond and back . we built her for speed and carson was the pilot for the first leg and Rhett brought her back across. The Stan Brown family got our boat across and back before any of the others even made it across. Carson and rhett were pretty proud and we all had alot of fun. then it wouldnt be a Pulsipher reunion without the volley ball games.

Su nday was even better. we arent able to have sacrement meeting any more at the ranch, so we have a meeting when we get to update each other on our families. then mom and her brothers shared some stories about grandpa. not many of us knew him as he passed away in 1970. but it was nice.

Sunday night, it was just my family,momand dad and Stacey and Paula. the ranch is the best when its quiet. we cooked over a fire and had smoore's. Carson and makayla loved it even though they were the only kids there.

Rhino Ride

Carson and I took a ride. We left Coral Pink and made our way to Ruby's Inn (100 Miles) where we stayed the night. the shower was the best. the next day we made our way to Tropic res where we set up camp and fished. Carson caught a couple of small trout. But we had fun with darren and his boys and mike and his boys. Comming home on Saturday, carson and I got seperated from the group and got stuck trying to make it up a sandy hill. After 4 or 5 tries, Carson suggests that we say a prayer. We gave it another try and only made it 3/4s of the way up. he ended up driving while i pushed. it was still a learning opportunity. The Lord isnt going to give us anything if we arent willing to work for it. Carson was great!

"Once, after high school...."

This is a work in progress. Im not very good at keeping a journal, so I started writing this a while ago. I need to get with Gray and work out some of the details, but it was fun remembering. This was an adventure for a couple of young guys from a small town.

My name is Bryan Brown. I grew up in Hurricane, Utah. Do you know where Hurricane is? Just north of the Arizona border, east of St. George, West of Kanab. People always ask if it is windy in Hurricane. Silly question, of course it is. We used to always say it was windy because Dixie “sucked” and Kanab “blew”, but that’s not really true. It was Cedar City that “blew”. We were a competitive bunch in Hurricane. We didn’t manage to win many games, but we always put up a good fight. We were a small 2A school surrounded by the bigger 3A schools, but we were just a bunch of tough farm boys, so although we may have lost the game, we usually ended up sending a couple of their guys to the emergency room, so it was a fair trade off.

This little story is about a good friend of mine, Gray Jonas and I during the summer of 1988, after high school graduation.

Gray and I became friends when he moved to Hurricane from Smithfield, Utah our sophomore year. We were instant friends and he lived just around the corner from my house, so this made for convenient mischief. We got into the usual trouble. Egging cars, girlfriends, trash can baseball, girlfriends, that kind of stuff.

Shortly after graduation, Gray got a phone call, out of the blue, from an old base ball coach, Dave Larson, telling him that he needed a couple of young guys to work back in Connecticut. The word was that this old coach had a contact back east that needed a roofing crew and somehow this guy thought of Gray. Gray then called me. After a short discussion, we realized that this just might be our ticket out of Hurricane for the summer, not to mention the chance for adventure. It didn’t take us long to convince our parents, who reluctantly “OK’d” the “opportunity”, but they said that they wanted to meet this guy before they would let us go.

We scheduled a meeting and arrived at Dave’s house on the appointed day. This was the first time I had met Dave Larson. Right off the bat, I could tell that this guy was a piece of work. From the cheesy moustache, to the mussed hair to the crooked cigarette that dangled from his smoke stained teeth, I knew right away that our parents were as impressed with this guy as Gray and I were. After a few questions and a hand shake and a promise that Dave would take car of our moms “little boys”, we left for home to pack. We were leaving the next morning.

It was early when our moms dropped us off at Dave’s house. Dave was waiting by the car, a fine machine. It was a multicolored, 1970 something, Datsun two-door, that appeared to be totally rusted out beneath the doors. Gray and I looked at each other, but didn’t need to say anything. We didn’t want our moms to know that we were scared out of our gourds. We walked around the car and gave it a quick inspection. Gray walked to the back and dropped to one knee and put his head in his hands. I walked to where he was, put my hand on his shoulder and said, “Its ok bud, don’t cry.” It was then that I realized that he was not crying, but laughing. Gray and I hugged our moms and they left, I’m sure with tears in their eyes and the question in their minds of whether or not they would see us again.

Atop the car was a cheap aluminum rack to hold our luggage, 2 bags each. Dave, having hard suitcases offered to put his in front to shield ours from any bugs that we might hit. Mighty nice of him. We cinched down our luggage and climbed into our ride. Now, as you can imagine, the Datsun was not as spacious as we would have liked it. Dave was driving, cigarette and all. Gray was in the co-pilots seat and I, in the back seat, directly behind Gray, with the cooler of “whatever”. With my knees drawn tight to my chest and a lung full of smoke, we rattled down road.

Mile after mile rolled s-l-o-w-l-y past. With a max speed of 55 to 60 mph, it was quite possible that Gray and I would go crazy well before we made it to Connecticut.
It wasn’t long before Gray and I realized that this might be the longest ride of our lives. And we quickly found that if we didn’t find other ways to amuse ourselves, the authorities might find a dead Dave by the side of the road. The only thing that stopped us from doing him serious harm was the fact that the only get away car that we had access to may not get us very far.

We drove in shifts. We would trade off every four hours to let the driver rest up. At the first rotation, Gray took over driving duties, I climbed into the front seat and we crammed Dave into the back. It was nearly noon and we were trying to make our way to Denver for the night. It wasn’t long before Dave was asleep in the back seat, leaving Gray and I to finally be able to talk a little about our situation. Gray was as wary about it as I was and we weren’t sure what would happen on this trip. Suddenly, Gray swerved to miss something dead in the read. As he did, Daves bobbing head smacked the window with a low crack. Without coming to complete awareness, Dave managed to mutter something and then fall soundly asleep once again. Gray and I laughed so hard that our sides hurt and we knew at once that we could have fun with this. Gray said, “Bryan, watch this.” And he wiggled the steering wheel. Daves head wiggled in response and we laughed some more. Again, Gray said, “Hey, check this out.” And he jerked the wheel sharply to the left and once again Daves head SMACKED! the window, even harder this time. And again, Dave only muttered a few inaudible words and went back to sleep. Again, we laughed. This was only the first of many cases that Dave would be the butt for our relentless practical jokes and cruel and unusual punishment.

Any normal vehicle could have made the drive to Denver on 8 or 9 hours, but with the condition our car was in, we made it in a cool 15. We rolled into Denver at about 3 am and found an empty shopping center parking lot where we tried to get some sleep till morning, but it was useless for Gray and me. But Dave, still sitting behind the wheel, was soundly asleep in minutes. This gave Gray and me a chance to talk without wondering if Dave could hear us. We discussed our situation. What a looser Dave was and it was then that we decided that this could either be a miserable experience, or we could make it the adventure of our young life times. I think that it was then that I realized that we would be ok. When the sun finally came up, we roused Dave form his slumber, slapped together a sandwich from the fixings in the cool and hit the road again.

We drove through the day without incident into Nebraska. Nebraska was a beautiful state from what I could see of it, with corn growing on both sides of the road standing about 12 feet high. It was just starting to get dark and when it began to rain. I was having flashbacks of children of the corn when a semi blew by us, the driver pulling on his horn, shaking me back to reality. By this time, it was a down pour and Dave slowed the car even more. Again, another semi flew past blaring his horn. We thought that we were just going too slowly and with the rain, the truck drivers were seeing us just in the nick of time to change lanes and blow their horns. It was then that Gray notices that the head and dash lights were dim and said, “The alternator must be gone”. So Dave, in his wisdom, pulled to the side of the road and turned the car off. This effectively left us stranded, on the interstate, in a downpour, in the middle of a corn field at midnight. Again, Children of the Corn began to play in my head. “He wants you too Malachi!”

Stay tuned...More to come..