Kendra's Baptism

Back in February, when Kendra turned eight, she also got baptized!  Two of my sisters couldn't make it (one blamed her impending due date???), but the other two did come (as well as a brother-in-law and three cousins!), plus my parents and Craig's, and our friends from Manassas, the Scoresbys, so that was awesome. 

One of the things that delighted me here is that-- unlike our previous ward-- the church leaders here in Charlottesville seem to be pretty lax about made-up rules that aren't actually rules.  So when we asked what day Kendra could be the baptized, the answer was, "Whenever you want!"  (As opposed to the Centreville Stake, where the answer would have been, "The Saturday before the first Sunday of the month, at 9am, whether that's a good day for you and your family or not."  Which is totally stupid and has nothing to do with anything we believe.)

Since our ward is pretty spread out and a lot of the members live an hour away from the church building, we decided to just do it after church on Sunday.  We also provided a light lunch, so people wouldn't be starving.  This had the advantage that a lot of people came, and a lot of people were also really nice about bringing food, too, so it went really well, with only a little bit of stressing on my part.  There seemed to be plenty of food for everyone, but not so much leftover that it was embarrassing, so I guess that's as good as it gets, right?  (Things like this stress me out.  Can you tell?)

The only bad thing was that we were in such a rush to get everything ready-- chairs set up, food laid out, Kendra and Craig in their white clothes-- that we barely had time to snap a picture.  I thought we could take one of the whole family after the baptism, but naturally, the second we walked in the door, everyone changed their clothes and scattered and it never happened.  But at least we got these:

The actual baptism was pretty short and sweet.  My Mom played piano, Tracy spoke about baptism and I spoke on the Holy Ghost (my third time giving this talk, so I'm getting pretty good at it...).  My Mother-in-law held Camille until she finally finally finally fell asleep (Camille, not my Mother-in-law!).  And then everyone got to hang around eating and talking, which is about my favorite thing in the world!

It was such a lovely day!  I'm so proud of my sweet Kendra!!!