Ferguson

Picture this. If a african american police officer caught a white man in a crime, chased him down and ended up shooting the man in self defense, would the general public make a big deal out of it? Probably not. If they did, it would probably be an applaud to the cop- good job, you saved yourself from that rasicst white man.  Now here we are with the roles reversed..white cop, black man doing the crime & getting killed. What does the public do? FREAK OUT. Oh no no no.. you can't defend yourself if it's a black man.. that's rascist. Now you're whole town is going down.  Aren't we overreacting just a tad?

Now let me back track. I am NOT rascist. I am all for treating everyone equally no matter your outward appearance or lifestyle. America hasn't always been where it should be in equailty, but we're past that. Equality has been around for a long time now. Or at least it was. When does it become "okay" to act in violence because your opinion differs than others? People get so offended by anything and everything that equality is always thrown out the window. We all have our own mind.. thank GOODNESS.  But we can't expect people to all be on the same page as we are 100% of the time. We can't expect people to change their minds when we explain our point of view. That's why we all have a right to an opinion.
It's really sad that this man ended up in the situation that he was in and lost his life in the process, but that has nothing to do with race. A white man could have made the same mistake. A white man could have gone down that same path. The only difference would have been that people would accept it. People would accept it just as they should in this case. MOVE ON.


Signs of the times..  I tell ya!

Monday, October 20, 2014

Here's whats new and happening in the Browns lives nowadays! Adam started his MBA in August. It has been surprisingly a lot smoother than we thought it would be. He has recently been being a loan executive for the United Way which has changed his work a bit. We thought that with him working full time and school full time, he would be super busy, but so far we've been pleasantly surprised. His MBA program he is doing is online through ASU. The program is structured for him to take 1 class at a time in shorter timespans. That way he doesn't have multiple finals in one day or week. It's been nice so far! He's into his second class and it's been fairly smooth.
As for me, I got a new job at Vanguard. I am an "Portfolio Implementation Specialist." Sounds pretty crazy, but really just translates into porfolio processer. Haha it's been nice for us finance wise since Adams schooling started because we have that extra money to help with school bills. I started August 25th. Since then, I got my friend Monica Shipley a job as well as my friend Courtney's dad a job within the company. So, it's been helpful!
Also, since July, a few friends have gotten home from their missions! First one was Courtney Maragritis- she got home from her mission in Seattle, Washington. Second, Summer Allen got home from her mission in St. George, Utah. And just last week, my friend Karlie Harrison got home from Oslo, Norway! It's been so surreal having them home! There is just one more sister missionary that is still out. London Heywood gets home in... January? I think. It's been so so crazy that they've already been gone and are coming back! It's like they never left, but not really.. cuz life went on. These girls are the same girls as they always have been (no surprise), but just magnified by so much greatness! It's amazing.
Our 2nd anniversary is coming up in a couple months. It's weird to think that before the girls left on their missions, we had only been married for a couple months... nowww... it's a couple years! Yet another thing that is weird, but not weird at the same time. My friend Candice Gleave is about to pop.. she's due to have her baby Nixon on thursday! Lots and lots of changes!

When I think back to the days before any of us girls were married, we were so crazy and full of energy! It blows my mind. Those days were fun, but they weren't kidding when they call getting married "settling down." But I love that things are so chill, but still crazy in their own way.

Also, the final Arizona Anberlin show happened. Still bitter. It makes me literally sick to my stomach to think I'll never have another album or concert to look forward to from them. I'm hoping at least Stephen Christian, who has his own band, Anchor & Braille, will live on and I can at least have that. Not the same, but still great. I got a picture with the drummer this time! Woo!







Also, I've been doing more hair recently! So that's good. I've recently tried actually making a porfolio of everything also. Here are a few examples, but to see them all, visit instagram #bykatiebrown or my entire page @katie_snipps

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

It's been quite a while since I've updated. I know, I say this at the intro to every entry. I keep waiting till some big event happens so that I actually have something interesting to write and forget to write about all the great little things. It's the little things, really.
Since January, not a whole lot has happened. We did go on a couple vacations this summer. I'll start there.
Our first vacation was our first Mexico trip! Neither of us had ever been out of the country until this trip. It was an adventure. Not really, but it was fun. I never had a passport up until a few months after we were married. We initially wanted to go on a cruise for our honeymoon, but since I didn't have a passport, that didn't help. So we decided on something else and I later got my passport. So since Adam starts school back up in August, we wanted to go somewhere nice before we get busy and our lives start changing. We went to Rocky Point and rented a house from a couple that are from Tucson, AZ. It was great. The house was like 2 blocks from the beach and it was a legit house.. not a condo. We got a smokin deal too! We stayed a weekend fri-sun. It was just enough time for us. We just hung low on the first night.. walked to the beach and checked that out, ate dinner, and hung out at the house.

The second day, we went to the Old-town shopping area. The people there are ALWAYS trying to sell you something.. everywhere. We'd be at dinner in a restaurant and someone would approach your table with a bunch of knick-knacks trying to get you to buy something. It was slightly annoying, but it comes with the town. A couple of places we ate at were Mary's Seafood, Lucky's Cantina, and anther place next to Mary's that I don't remember the name. I want to say it was senior something..?? We had a few virgin pina coladas and fun drinks like that too. I tried flounder for the first time. I didn't mind it. Fish doesn't make me gag anymore (with some good ketchup or something of course).. but I would still rather spend my money on something else.  Anyway, so other than eating, we went to the Sandy beach and hung out there and rented a jetski/skidoo for like a half hour. It was fun. The first time Adam rode a jetski was a couple years ago at a lake trip that my old job took us on and he ended up getting a ticket for driving on the wrong side of the lake. Ridiculous, right? Anyways, so he had a bitter experience before and was pleasantly surprised this time. I'm sort of scared of deep ocean water. Too many shark videos probably. But anyway, so when we are riding on the jetski, we are definitely far enough out that you can't see the bottom of the ocean anymore. I was fine (as long as I didn't think about it) until we see these fish jumping out of the water. After a few hours after we finished riding, I couldn't help but think.. those fish were trying to escape something.. in the water. I know, I'm such a nerd. But it's a valid thought.

We were going to rent a couple horses and ride on the beach too, but that didn't happen. Here's why. By the time we hunted down a guy with some horses to rent, me- being the horsewoman that I am.. noticed the horses hooves. THE WORST I have ever seen. Those poor babies. They looked exhausted.. and that's why. This picture is one that I pulled from the internet, but this is exactly how those horses hooves looked. It made me sick. The guy who was ponying the horses around was an older Hispanic man. I asked him "Don't their feet hurt?" and he just said "Ya. Thirty Dolla!" Obviously he had no idea what I was saying. We just did the horses a favor and declined.  We did see another guy that had horses to rent as we were leaving that seemed to be healthier, but we were leaving so we didn't ride.
After hanging at the beach for a while, we went home and got cleaned up. We just hung out at home till dinner because I wasn't feeling good. The next morning, we packed up and left. No trouble at the border either.

A few weeks after that, we had my moms family reunion up in Pinetop, AZ. My grand parents live up there right next door to my aunt and uncle. So, the family had a big sleepover between the two houses. On the way up we had to stop at the burger house! Adam had never been there before. He wasn't that impressed. I guess it's a childhood memory thing that makes it better. But I sure missed it.
We mostly just hung out and visited.. played pounce (aka nerts--a card game... and if you haven't hear of it.. you're missing out) and some frisbee game that my brother Tanner got. We also all played softball with everyone which was really fun, but WAY too short! We started a little late and it got too dark so we had to stop. But it was still really fun! I definitely always love being back on the field. I played softball all growing up and the league I played in decided to cut the age limit so I was only able to play till I was like 16. I miss it.
We have so many photographers in our family. I hadn't realized it till this weekend just how many we have. So of course, we had family pictures taken. Which I'm ok with. Me and Adam are kind of bad at remembering to take pictures. So I'll take the excuse. That pretty much sums up our summer vacations so far.



Adam starts school in August. So far, it's looking like he's taking online classes for the ASU MBA program. It's either that or the Tempe campus. With him working full time along with being in school, online classes are probably going to fit best, but we'll see. This program is a "2 year" program, but is really only 22 months-ish. I'm not counting down or anything. ;) So after we figure out where this will leave us financially, we'll be able to plan when we can get a house of our own and the fun stuff that comes with that. I'm hoping sooner than later. I'm just really excited to decorate my house. I think I'm going to like interior design. I've thought about going to school for that, but I doubt there's a very big demand for that.. so it's just a dream.
Me and Adam are trying to be more active now-a-days. Adam is always into working out, but me.. not so much. I don't like exercising just to work out. I like being active if I'm doing something like sports or something. I just don't like focusing on it while it's happening. But I'll get over that. We hiked the mini mountain over off of Brown and Power in mesa this last weekend. We have really good timing on deciding to be active.. when it's 115 degrees outside. But yeah, it was death out there. I am so out of shape. But we're trying to work up to cooler mountains. I'm going to take some time, but I'll get there. Typical duck-face selfie.
That's pretty much all there is going on here! Until next time.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

I guess it's about time I catch up on our life through the holiday season, our anniversary, and new years till recently. Well, I guess I'll start off with Halloween. Halloween was fun! We went to a couples halloween party at our friends house the weekend before and then on the day of halloween, we just stayed home while i handed out candy till adam got home because we both worked the next day.

 Going from there, Thanksgiving was nice and relaxing. We are lucky enough to live close enough to both of our families so we got to hang out with both on Thanksgiving.

 We had our family pictures taken with both families that day as well. I don't have copies of both yet, so I will have to add that at a different time. But for now, here's us on Thanksgiving!

We had been thinking about what we wanted to do for our first anniversary for a while. We didn't want to spend a fortune, and didn't want to travel too far, but still have fun. So, we chose Sedona. It was nice to get away and just have a fun weekend with just us. We hadn't been out of town since our wedding, so at least for me, it was much needed.

The first day, we checked into our hotel and then just went sight seeing and walked around. We went to the Chapel of the Holy Cross. It was a church that was built into the side of a mountain. It was a cool experience since I had never been in a different church other than an LDS church.
The next day we went to Out of Africa wildlife park which was pretty awesome! We got a good deal from Groupon for it and lemme just tell you.. it was way better than the zoo! We got there in the morning and spent a good chunk of the day there. When we got there, we went on a little safari through the park with a tour guide that showed us all the different habitats and even drove into some of them. We drove into a zebra, giraffe, water buffalo, and a few other deer like animals that I don't remember the name. We got to feed the giraffes. Well, adam did. I gave him my carrot so he would have more chances of getting a picture of him feeding it OUT OF HIS MOUTH. Yeah, he got a nice slobbery giraffe kiss. I made sure he washed his face before I would kiss him, don't worry. ;)

 Apparently, this deer like animal below got its broken horn because it use to be bordering habitats to the lions and tried to ram its horn through the fence to get the lion. Obviously, didn't work out so well. And of course, the rhino. He seemed like such a gentle giant. They gave him a big tractor tire that apparently, he sleeps with. Cute huh?

 Weird deer like creature that started running when we took the picture on the right side. And of course, the zebras. They were NOT shy. They kept cutting off the bus and stuff and trying to get food. They told us that they "don't like carrots" haha which has got to be such bullcrap. They're the horses cousins, they're going to like carrots. They told us that the zebras bite, so there's why they used that excuse.

Ok so maybe they were a little feisty

 From there, we got to basically walk around and do see the habitats a bit closer. Here's a taste of what we saw.

 This was the prettiest of the regular colored tigers, in my opinion. It had such a pretty orange color. Or maybe he just had the most recent bath. Who knows! It was cool though because it was just pacing back and forth along the edge of the cage.. so we got to get pretty close.

Here's some more pretty kitties!

And of course, the prairie dogs!

 After a while, they had a tiger water show. They had some of the trainers play with the tigers in a pool and the tigers were chasing the trainers around and jumping in the pool after pool toys. It was pretty cool. After that, we got to feed the tigers. Its not as cool as it sounds, don't get too excited. There was  fence..and another fence.. and a man.. and some tongs in between us. BOO. haha it was still cool though! They were really gentle.  You can tell they've been around people a bit.

 From there, we left the park. We just pretty much killed time at the park till the water play thing and so we could feed the tigers.. but it was at a certain time, so we got in a lot of walking that day.

Some restaurants we visted while we were there were El Lote Cafe.. and some brick oven pizza place that was by our hotel. It was all pretty good from what we had. At El Lote, we got the "El Lote" which is just corn in a white sauce that you dip your chips in. It was pretty good.. different. I dont remember what kind of pizza we had at the pizza place. It was weird, but it was good. Haha

Then the next morning, we drove home. So it was pretty fun. I liked it a lot. I probably wont like going to the zoo anymore cuz this one was just THAT much cooler.

Then, along came Christmas, It was nice also. We had a small Christmas this year because we're trying to save up for Adams schooling that will be coming up before we know it. Which, by the way, he got accepted to ASU and will be starting August 2014 for his MBA.

For new years, we were boring.. and we just stayed home. In fact, we were in bed before 12. Haha even my sisters family who also lives in my parents house with us went to bed early. They had some little fireworks that we lit in the driveway of our parents house around like 11... and then we just went to bed pretty quick after that.

If you don't already know, I'm a big Anberlin fan. They've been around forever. In my mind, they were GOING to be around forever. They recently announced that in 2014, they will be releasing a final album and then touring after that.. and then they will be done. It literally makes me sick to think about it. I know, I shouldn't be that invested in a band, but it really makes me sad. First Acceptance.. then Between the Trees.. now ANBERLIN?  Sad news... really sad news. So, what did I do, me and my brother Tanner & his wife Chandra went in and bought some merch for the upcoming tour that we HAVE to go to. Like.. if they don't come to AZ.. I'm going to them. Ha, its gonna happen.

So funny story..
ummmm so me and Adam have my parents old waterbed, right? Haha so Saturday, Adam wakes up for work and tells me that the floor is wet over by his side of the bed. I'm like half awake.. like whaaa? I was like "Did you drool" and he said no.. and he got out of bed and started getting ready for work. So after he left the room, im trying to go back to sleep and i hear dripping. I'm like wtf.. we don't have any cups over there so its not like it was something like that. Then it hit me.. our bed is leaking. So when Adam came back in, i said i think its the bed leaking. So he feels the bed on the side of the mattress and sure enough.. our bed was definitely leaking. So i had to wake up at like 6am to figure out what we're going to do. And so we had to take all the bedding off the bed and then we didn't know what to do. Its not exactly a common situation. Haha so then I just went and slept in our guest room in this crappy day bed for a couple hrs till my parents woke up. It wasn't like the bed was pouring out or anything, we just put a bucket under the area it was dripping so I could go back to sleep. haha anyway.. to sum it up.. we had to drain the bed.. and now we dont have a mattress and have slept on a air mattress because we haven't had a chance to go buy a new mattress. So since we're going to need it eventually when we move out of my parents house.. i guess its time. Ha but yeah it sucked.. but on the bright side, we are getting a memory foam mattress. I'm excited. :) haha 

sad box mattress face.

Since then, we've had an air mattress. Bleh.

Other than that, its pretty much the same ol' thing going on here! Riding my horse as much as I can.. Which is MAYBE once per week. That's pretty much it for now.. until next time.