Winter Ball - 1st High School Dance for Brenna

Brenna and 4 of her friends began the beauty preparations around 3:00 (well, earlier if you include showering at their own homes), threw dresses on at 5:15, welcomed 2 boys at 5:30, began the photo sessions with visiting parents at 5:45, ate a taco bar dinner at 6:00, welcomed the limo driver at 7:15, loaded the white roadster at 7:30 and waved goodbye to 2 anxious parents (well, actually only one - one was in the car following the limo to the dance) . . . carload of kids safely returned home at 11:45, boys left at 1:00, tired mom went to bed by 1:30 . . . enough said about that . . . all in all it was a great First Formal for Brenna, our soon to be 15 year old!

Merry Christmas!

We had a really wonderful Christmas this year in MONTANA! It had been awhile since we were able to celebrate Christmas at home, and it was a great week of fun, happiness, smiles, and cheer. My sister, Stacy did a beautiful job documenting the week on her blog, so I am going to include the link in my post - http://thebugsstory.blogspot.com or just click on the link on the right hand side of the blog. I told her I was going to copy her blog and paste it into mine, but I'll attempt something in addition to hers! It is hard to believe that last year at this time, we were just revealing to the family that little Amelia was on the way! Now she just celebrated her first Christmas as a 5 1/2 month old little girl! It was a special season all around. Here are some of my favorite snapshots. Enjoy and Happy New Year to all!

Six beautiful girls

Yummy peppermint package!

Most special gift!

Grandma and Grandpa with all the granddaughters!

"The Gown"

The Baptismal gown has been worn by all 4 of our girls in addition to their two other girl cousins, Hannah and Sophie! Very special indeed!

Amelia Grace Gabriel - Baptized December 18, 2011

The date was set and our special friends answered the call. Shelly and Chris made the trip out for Amelia's baptism, and the weekend was perfect. Shelly traveled from Arizona and Chris from Colorado to become Amelia's Godparents this past weekend. She is such a lucky little girl!!! We are feeling very blessed on this special occasion for our youngest little girl. She was a perfect angel!

5 Month Photo of Amelia

Our beautiful baby is 5 months old!

It's Disneyland days baby! Woo Hoo!

There's really not as happy of a place as Disneyland! It's just something about being there that brings a smile to people's faces - even with humongous crowds, long lines, tired feet, rain - nothing can dampen the good times had at Disney.

And we had it all - turns out that the week of Thanksgiving is one of the busiest weeks of the year at the Magical land of Mickey Mouse! No worries - we still got to see pretty much everything and the kids had a great time. We got rain on the first day, but the lines were down. Sun on the second day and the lines were LONG! Unfortunately, we didn't even catch one glimpse of Mickey, but that only means that we have to come back!! DARN! :)