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!

It's a NEW Small World

While my favorite time I have ever ridden on the Small World ride at Disneyland was the time that I ran into someone from The Dalles, we were very excited to ride it this time. We had not seen it since they had renovated the ride. It did not disappoint!

Spring Trip to someplace warm~Disney

Well, it was a long winter and we finally decided it was time to take Brownie to the magical kingdom and our favorite place to relax and enjoy family time. We spent a lot of time in line to see the amazing Toy Story ride. While we were in line we enjoyed turkey legs...which the kids thought were cool because they thought they were getting to act like "knights of the round table". As you can see, Brownie was really enjoying her trip. The biggest news of the ride was that one of the boys (we don't know which one...) managed to beat Tim's score on the ride...they will never live it down.

Visits from family

At the end of January, we were blessed by another visit. Tim's Aunt Susan and Uncle Steve came to visit us.

We had a great brunch at the Nugget with Uncle Tom

The kids get to take one silly picture for every nice picture. This was the silly one.

This was the family picture that Steve and Susan offered to take of us (this is actually a hard thing for us to orchestrate).

This was the nice picture that we took. It came out great! I love getting to visit with the Champa's when they come out to visit!

The Harlem Globetrotters

Brody is such a huge basketball fan that we thought we would take him to the see the Globetrotters do some trick ballin'.

It was a very small crowd, but the boys were really impressed with all the fun things that the players did.


It was actually so great that Brody wrote his first full page story about it. However, he did make an amazing attempt to keep it to one sentence. But with a little work, I think we turned it into a pretty decent piece of writing.

It's hard to prove that Brownie and I go places because we're usually the one working the camera. I managed to get a picture of us at the game, tho'.

The boys were really happy about the cotton candy and popcorn that they got to have for an after dinner snack. Overall, it was a rather amazing experience.

Build-A-Bear workshop

As a reward for the boys working hard to learn to read, we took them to the Build-a-bear workshop.

They very carefully picked out their new animals. Brody chose a World Wildlife Federation wolf and Brady picked a coyote.

They very carefully stuffed thier animals and made their special wish. After that they bathed them very gently and...

then they picked outfits (via a fashion show) and then they made birth certificates. We had a great time.

They also insisted that Brownie get a special animal of her own. She picked a blue bear covered in peace signs. We were very proud of all of them!