Girls' Day!

Howdy, folks! It's Shaina here again! Monday, July 28th: Mel, Em, and I met at the mall and set up appointments at Sephora for free makeup consultations. Em watched while the ladies sponged, brushed, dabbed, and rubbed a plethora of products all over our faces. Steve was a patient boy to be out on this girly adventure!

Hi, Steve!

POKE

squint

dab... stab

mmm, it tastes good!

The finished products-- with lips like these, we MUST kiss something cute...

I think we've tortured Steve enough for a day!

Shaina's FIRST EVER Dress Sewing Adventure

Hello, friends! It's your favorite Shaina in the world here, and I just thought I'd show you my latest adventure: I sewed a whole entire dress for the first time in my life on Monday (July 7th)!

The dress is for my job at the Historic Boone home, so I can be in "period clothes" to give tours of Daniel Boone's last home. I borrowed a sewing machine from two friends here, and got right to work. My first barrier was learning how to use a sewing machine that is NOT Mom's lovely 20 year old perfect machine that I've done all my other sewing on in the past.

Once I cleared that hurdle, the sewing part wasn't all too bad. I managed to master my emotions in times of despair, and I finished the dress without any breakdowns, and amazingly with no outside help (unless you count the time I had to ask Jeff if he could figure out what the sewing machine instruction manual picture meant when it illustrated how to thread the machine...) Victory is mine!

I was astounded that the sleeves actually WORKED for me on my first try!

After sewing the sleeves to the bodice, it was definitely time for a cookie break!

...and here is the skirt sewed to the top!

...the back....

Tuesday (July 8th) I wore my new dress to work without the hem done, and then came home and added a little white ruffle to give it a tad more length. The back still has to be pinned closed, but I plan to sew velcro on because I can't wake Jeff up to have him button me up EVERY morning before work--he has to stay up late for his job! Plus, I read that women technically did not start using buttons on the backs of their dresses until after 1815-ish, and this dress is supposed to fit the turn of the century time period. I have different fabric to make one more dress like this one so I can alternate days! Yay! Well, there you have it: my very first real life dress sewing adventure!

Gwynn Family Reunion

June 26-28, we went to San Francisco for the 50th anniversary reunion celebration of Grama and Grampa Gwynn (Shaina's Mom's parents). It was a QUICK but fun family gathering. First prize goes to Aunt Stefani for putting it all together! Another first prize goes to Grama and Grampa for FUNDING it all!!!! It was so good to have the WHOLE entire Gwynn side of the family together--4 generations! (the first time we've ALL been together in over 20 years!)

First stop: Alcatraz. How many people do YOU know on this boat?

Alcatraz materializes through the mist...

Walking up up up "the Rock" to the prison.

In a scary, tiny Alcatraz cell.

The next day, we went to the Muir Woods to see the Redwoods. They were HUGE!

Here's baby Steve INSIDE a redwood!

Mom and Shaina supporting sore necks: looking UP at those tall trees made our necks ache!

Shaina talking with the amazing MASTERMIND of the reunion, Aunt Stefani. It's nice to talk eye to eye with a female!

The Golden Gate Bridge right before Jeff, Dad, and Shaina ran across it. The wind and fog were intense! It was exhillerating to look over the edge into the swirling, scary water.

A Shaina special photo at the Muir Woods. These flowers smelled SO GOOD.

Grampa giving Grama her corsage. I love my grandparents!

The Brown kids after the celebration banquet. This is the last time we'll all be together for at least 2 years, since Brad is leaving on his mission to Portugal at the end of July!
I love my family.

Defiance, MO: The Final Frontier

We moved from our Park Avenue St. Louis apartment to Highway F in Defiance, MO on Tuesday, June 24th. We rented a U-haul cargo van (15 passenger size), packed everything, loaded the van, cleaned the apartment, drove to Defiance, unloaded the van, and returned the van to the rental location (30 minutes away) all in less than 5 hours!!!! It was exhausting, but we made it! Our apartment above the gift shop is being rennovated, so we are staying in the VanBibber House (a Boone married a VanBibber and the built this house around 200 years ago I'm pretty sure). We are living with another employee who is waiting for his lodging to be remodeled as well. What a nice happy family! haha.

This is the front of the house. I love the pink mimosa tree!

This is the road that wraps around back of the house and goes between 2 ponds. We do our laundry in that building in the distance across the pond on the left. Behind the barn in the foreground, there is a little one-room schoolhouse to the right.

An artistic Jeff-photo of the right side of the house. The 2 summer interns live in that cabin.

Our 12-Day Apartment

Well, after nearly 6 weeks of staying with Em and Jesse and Steve, and no luck finding any kind of jobs, we decided to just take a step in to the dark abyss and sign a 1 year apartment lease for a cute little place on Park Avenue in St. Louis (3.5 miles from the Arch). We moved in Thursday, June 12th. The next day, we got a phone call from our wonderful 'ole coach/friend, Coach Wright. He had heard of a job at Lindenwood University's Boone Campus, so he invited us out to visit and meet the dean there. Well, to make a short story shorter, 3 days after we signed the lease in St. Louis, we were already planning on moving again! We did stay in our fun little Park Avenue apartment for 12 days, so here are a few photos of this little home:

Our first dinner in our new apartment: ham broccoli "faux-fredo"

Our bedroom... well, if there is no bed, what do you call it? Our sleeping room!

Shaina was playing with her ribbon twirler when Jeff decided to take pictures of the place. This is our living room.

That was a great little kitchen. Sigh.
Onward!!!!

Happy Birthday, Jeff!

Sunday, June 1st, Jeff turned 26!!!! He requested his Mom's special lemon cake, so Shaina called her up and got the recipe. For his birthday dinner, Jeff made himself his favorite pizzas: chicken curry cream and a variation of his classic white bacon heart-attack pizza-- the birthday pizza had diced ham and sliced potatoes in the yummy sauce. Needless to say, everyone else in the house enjoyed the pizzas with him, so we were all happy to celebrate Jeff's birthday!




Jeff blowing out candles looks like Zoolander's Blue Steel!
















Jeff almost blew them all out in one breath-- good thing there weren't actually 26 candles or else he may still be blowing them out!

Frisbeeeeeee!

Saturday, May 17, we went to a field by the middle school and played frisbee together for the first time in months! It was so fun and refreshing to frolick around in the grass and sunshine. How did we take these pictures, you may wonder... well, we got our tripod out and one person threw the frisbee and quickly snapped pictures of the other running and catching it. The powerful wind made catching the frisbee extra challenging!

Go Jeff, GO!

Yay! A catch!

Nice save.

Throwing the frisbee sure made our arms sore!

Graduation!

After 3 years (Jeff)/3.5 years (Shaina), we graduated from our beloved school, Southern Virginia University. We were SO glad to have a sunny, breezy day to graduate so we could have the ceremony outside in front of Main Hall, instead of in the gym. The sun was pretty hot beating down on us in those nice black robes, but the wind finally picked up after we graduated and cooled us off nicely... and took Shaina's hat with it. It feels SO good to graduate! We will miss SVU and all of the good times and great friends we had there. SIGH. "Real life," here we come!



Walking buddies-- ready to graduate! We had to walk 2 by 2, and we were lucky to be next to each other.




Only at SVU does the president of the university give you a hug when you graduate. It is so nice to have the president know you by name. Here he is hugging Jeff. (Shaina is walking up the steps at the far right).




Triumphant Jeff after recieving his diploma and hug. In the background, that's Shaina talking with President Smith. He informed us both that we were supposed to have received gold cords for having a high GPA! oh well. At least we have the knowledge.




Shaina walking back with her diploma. That hat would not stay on straight! Her brain must not have grown enough in college...




Diplomacy.




Jeff with all of his fellow philosophy graduates and their professors (nice tassel in the face--it was windy!)




The support crew. Thanks for coming all the way from Washington state, parents! It really meant a lot to us.

Final Stop: London!

Our last stop on our long Europe Excursion was jolly 'ole London. We were there until May 3rd, when we flew back home to the USA. We decided that even though they speak English in London, England is way more foreign than France and even Austria because they drive on the "wrong" side of the road! The little flat that we stayed in was tiny and cute, with an oven and a stove and a little table. We loved going to Marks and Spencer food store at the Green Park Underground stop because they had great ready-made food that we took home and heated up in our flat's little oven. On our first night in the flat, we got there after the office closed, and we spent a whole dark night without electricity because they failed to turn it on before we got there!



Jeff at King's Cross Station trying to catch the Hogwarts Express. They actually made a Platform 9 3/4 at the station with that trolley halfway through it! Awesome



Shaina at the Tower Bridge near the Tower of London. Those clouds look forboding... this was taken during a short break in the relentless rain that we endured nearly the whole week we were in London.



In London, they put up round plaques on former homes of famous people, like Charles Dickens. Sherlock Holmes got his own plaque at 221b Baker Street, even though he is only a fictional character. We loved how they did not say on the plaque that he wasn't a real guy!



St. Paul's under some very thunderous clouds-- it started storming ferociously soon after this picture was taken.



This is an airplane in the clouds above St. Paul's Cathedral. I'm glad we weren't in that plane!



Shaina next to the London Eye-- the world's largest observation wheel. It went SO high! ps--Luckily we went up in the Eye on the only sunny day of the week!



Jeff's masterpiece "postcard picture" with 3 of London's finest: Big Ben, the London Eye, and a red double decker bus.



Us in front of Buckingham Palace. Nice flowers, Queen Elizabeth!



We found an Argyle street!




The "tube" or the Underground was a whole lot smaller than Shaina remembered it. But then again, she was about a foot taller this time than on her last visit to London 10 years ago!



Jeff blended right in on the underground on our way to the airport, reading one of the many free newspapers that they pass out twice a day on the streets. He would have blended in better if it wasn't for that large bright orange backpack propped against the wall!