Thoughts on blogging...

It seems like the more and more people get connected through facebook, that blogging tends to go 'out the window'. I suppose it just seems redundant to post pictures on facebook, and then again on the blog...when 'most' of the people have already seen them on facebook.

One feature I love about blogger is that it gives the other posts you might like at the bottom and I find myself clicking on these from my own blog very often. I absolutely LOVE to look back and read about things that we have done and since it has been over 3 years since I've been keeping this particular blog (I think...maybe more?), there are many posts about many random things that we've done as a family.

I think as I started getting more serious into photography that I started to use the blog as a place to show my favorite pictures, rather than just to document the on-goings of our family. I also have found that I tend to not want to take pictures unless they are in perfect light situation or perfectly in focus...and just overall photographically good. These two things have actually made me write less on my blog and take less pictures..and looking back over the last few months it is kind of sad!

There are SO many things that have gone on that I could have been blogging about! I started the blog with the idea in mind that it would be more of a family journal for myself...and for anyone else interested in reading it. I think I sort of strayed away from what that initial goal was. I don't think I've posted a single picture of our new nephew Zach..and there are very few pictures of Emma on here.

So...from now on, I am going to go back to documenting the usual stuff that we do as a family. I'm not going to care if the pictures are great, or the story isn't profound or really if anyone even reads it! I'm going to post so that I can go back and read and remember all of the fun, crazy, silly things that we do as a family.

So here goes..I shall start now with a completely random photo review of April! Lots of pics..so beware:)

Jessalyn after she and I put together Truett's crib..


All the kids after making a snowman with daddy..in April.


Owen...on his birthday.


Youth Group at the Community Center.


Emma and Zach!


Zach




Ethan and Luke at football...try getting by this defense!! :)


Hike!


Daddy and Owen with his favorite lion hat..


Owen at his birthday party..


Ethan and Zach


Me..at 24 weeks preggo...growing what appears to be a giant Truett!


Jessalyn's craft for Easter..


Kids and Nana..on Easter


More pics from Easter..










Papa..


Josh


Jessalyn


Zach, Emma and Shara..


Zach and Emma


Papa taking a picture of Zach and Emma


Josh the grill master


There...a very quick random run down of this last month:)

TruJELO

We don't typically do this. And in doing it, it does sort of feel weird to both of us, but at the same time it just feels so right:) Our family has had a name in mind for the baby boy in my belly for weeks now. We actually were talking about this name before knowing he was a boy.

Again, coming up with names for our kids usually takes a long time. We both want to LOVE the name and so usually suggest names for months trying to come up with something that we both equally love. This time we have the added input of four other kids. Having three kids in school makes for many "name associations"...and our kids have outright despised some of the names mentioned because of some sort of school association. With all of that said, we kind of knew that this baby would have a name that was somewhat "out of the box" ...a bit like Jessalyn. She loves her "out of the box" name!

So what's his name?

Baby Brown #5 is ...are you ready? :) Ok...



Truett Striker Brown



Just how did we come up with this name you might ask?

One day while driving in the van with the kids we were listening to Toby Mac...this is the usual artist of choice right up there with T-Bone, Skillet and Family Force 5. On every Toby Mac album, his son (who is right around Jessalyn's age I think) does a song. They are always quite catchy and are particular faves of the kids. On the albums, his name is TruDog. I knew what this stood for, but the kids realized it on this trip in the van when at the end of a song Toby Mac uses TruDog's real name...Truett. I'm not sure who mentioned it first, but it quickly became a name suggestion for our baby. All four kids were like "yeah!!!" and completely agreed with each other. I kind of liked it right away, and as soon as possible sent Josh a text suggesting the name. He didn't say anything right away, but then later that night mentioned that he couldn't get that name off his mind and that the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. The same thing was happening to me.

Striker is Josh's mothers maiden name. Josh's mom died of ALS when Josh was around 8. We have always loved Striker and have tried with each kid to implement it in their name somehow. It just never seemed to work with the other names. Josh mentioned Striker to go along with Truett and again, we all LOVED the idea. It seems to fit perfectly, in our opinion!

We have 'played' with this name for a few weeks now and it just seems right. None of us can come up with something that we like better...or that we like at all:) So we are going to throw ourselves a curve ball, and go ahead and name this baby before we meet him!! Like I said, doing this feels a little odd to us considering we haven't actually done it like this before, but his name seems so right to us that we couldn't help but share it with everyone else!!

And really, even though it seems completely permanent because I posted it on my blog and facebook, it isn't on any birth certificate yet so if we really came up with something we all like better (highly unlikely..since we aren't even looking!) we could technically change our minds! What is it about posting on facebook that makes things so official anyway???

I think it's safe to say that Truett is official!!

Jessalyn came up with changing BrownJELO to TruJELO. I like it.