At last....pictures

It's been quite a week! Amy & Abbey flew in on Saturday afternoon and it was a beautiful 68 degrees. Fast forward a few days and we've won an election, Daddy met Cheney, and we're settling in for a blizzard! It's really hard to believe that just a year ago this same week, Daddy officially got out of the Navy. What an amazing, unforgettable journey it's been. Lots of highs, a few lows, but we've never doubted the whole time that we were making the right decision. But we've literally been campaigning since the day Mommy, Harrison and I set boots on ground here in Gettysburg and it's a nice change to not be doing that for a little while -- if only we weren't buried in snow! (well, the snow hasn't started yet, but it's just to the west of us and closing highways and knocking out power as it makes its way here!)

Let's back up:

Last Friday was Halloween and Mommy promised some pictures of us together in our costumes. As usual, it's impossible to get two of us looking and smiling at the same time, but here we are and there's also one of us scaring Grandma and Grandpa:

I was so excited about Halloween but a lot of that excitement was because I knew the next day was when my cousin Abbey was coming to town. We went down to Pierre to pick them up and stopped by the grounds of the Capitol to feed the geese.

We had pretty nice weather the first few days so we went to the park and we got to get out the mini-moonbounce. Grandma and Grandpa picked up us kids and Amy & Abbey on Sunday and took us out to check on Grandpa's corn and show the city girls the ropes :). Amy took some pictures which we haven't put on the computer yet, so we'll share those later! We put Amy to work doing a campaign literature drop on Sunday with Mommy & Daddy and several other wonderful helpers. Amy was even working hard to sway the votes of the one or two people in Daddy's favor when they had the audacity to say they were voting Democrat even for the state senate seat! Go Amy!

Then of course, the big night arrived. We took some family out to Bob's Steakhouse again like we did the night of the primary and then headed down to the bar/campaign headquarters to await results. Aunt Christie surprised us and drove out to be with us that night -- thank you Christie! Within about 45 minutes of the numbers filtering in, things looked very solidly in our favor. Luckily, our friend Justin, who is also from Gettysburg and was running for one of the two House seats also won, so we were able to do a lot of celebrating (I should say they celebrated, us kids were home in bed with a sitter!). We are so proud of Daddy!

Corey, Christie, Reece and Mike Brown

The proud Grandparents

Mom's trying to put all the pictures together for those of you who want to see them all, but wanted to give you just a few of the fun night!

Amy & Abbey are supposed to leave tomorrow - we're so sad to let them go. Then again, there's always the possibility they'll get stuck here for a few more days, which would be fine by us!!!!

Thank you to everyone for all the amazing support, encouragement and all the congratulatory messages. It meant so much to all of us!