Bronwynn turns one!

Who would have thought that a year could fly by so fast with three kids, two dogs, one cat, two full-time jobs and almost thirty college credits. Whew!

However, here we are celerating the addition of Brownie to our family. We are lucky in many ways. The luckiest thing is that when I get sick carrying my children, my body takes it out on me and not them. We are even luckier that this time I noticed the pain right away and it was able to be treated quickly....although I do think I had the longest ride back from Truckee ever!!!

So this Mother's Day, we celebrated. I always keep "Happy Birthday" signs around for just such an occassion. This year, however, I had to break down and buy some new ones....with butterflies. Somehow, the dinosaurs just didn't seem right. Everybody liked the hats.

I didn't make the cake this time, but it came out pretty. The lady couldn't figure out for the life of her why I was having her put something about dessert on a dessert until I explained that my daughter's nickname is "Brownie".

We had great friends-like the amazing Wamre women-come out to the house.

And Nana Shelby was around, too. It was a wonderful day!!!

Grandparents Visit

In honor of Brownie's baptism, Mamina & Grandpa Bill came to visit. Because the kids were out of school for Good Friday (and I was not...) the Grandparents got to take the kids to the Wilbur D. May Museum for the Dragons and Dinosaur exhibit. As you can see, a good time was had by all.

Bronwynn's Baptism

This year we celebrated in Easter in the most amazing way~we baptised Brownie. Our church was recently closed due to a lack of membership. So we have started attending St. Catherine's of Sienna which is held in the beautiful chapel of Bishop Manogue High School.

My amazing friend, Cheryl, along with Papa Bob and Nana Shelby agreed to serve as her godparents. Cheryl has been a blessing to me as a friend for a long time and I am so excited to have share such a special place in Brownie's life now, too. Cheryl befriended me when I started teaching at Mendive and as it turns out, we were pregnant at the same time with all of our children (except her oldest). It is so wonderful to have a friend like her!

Probably the best part was being able to have all of the kids together for the Easter egg hunt. We all had a great time!

Despite the gact that Brownie is almost a year, she was still able to fit into the christening gown, which is made out of the remainder of the fabric that my wedding dress is made out of. It also is beaded with the same designs from the bottom of my dress. Mamina made it for us (as she did my wedding dress) it is perfect!

Brady's 5th Birthday!

Brady has had a long-standing love of pirates (or Raiders) and so this year for his birthday we thought it only fitting that he have such a party. It was complete wtih a scavenger hunt for buried (well, not actually buried in our case) treasure. In fact the kids were so excited about the process that they forgot all the extra loot that we had for them. Brody got to be the official map reader.

We had Pin the treasure on the map, everyone got to get some new "ink". There were pirate hats and lots of goodies. We had a great time erupting a volcano at the end of the day (after all, aren't there volcanos on deserted islands). Brady was happy. That was the best part of all!