Ryder's Baptism!!!

Ryder turned eight in November, so we needed to plan his baptism.  My parents were planning on coming to see us in January, so I was hoping that Ryder would be okay postponing his baptism until then, but this was something that I felt needed to be handled delicately.  I didn't want to force him to wait on this momentous occasion if that wasn't what he wanted to do.  So I carefully asked Ryder how important it was to him that people came to his baptism.  And he totally surprised me by announcing that the person he MOST wanted to come was his cousin Eliot.

This made things even more complicated, because Leah and her family aren't members of our church, so I wasn't sure that Leah would even want to come.  Also, Leah has been very leery of making the trip all the way to Charlottesville with her kids, and hadn't yet come to see us in the 3 1/2 years we've been living here.

Fortunately, Leah was very gracious about all this and agreed to come, but only if we could do it during Christmas break.  We were happy to make that happen.  And when my parents learned that Leah would be coming, they were happy to change their plans and come at Christmastime, also!  So that was all set.  And then, we got the also-happy surprise that Craig's brother and his family would ALSO be coming for Christmas, so suddenly we had a whole TON of family in town for the holidays AND for Ryder's baptism!

And then, just because nothing can ever be easy, our bishopric changed the times for our church meetings for that Sunday, forcing us to re-work the timing on our own plans and it was at that point that I turned into a complete stress case and came down with an awful cold (I always get a cold right after a choir concert-- it's like my body refuses to be sick until that's over with) and I never did manage to get my house cleaned up for people or anything.  Ah, life!  We were so busy trying to figure out what TIME to hold Ryder's baptism, that it wasn't until the day before that it dawned on us that we needed to plan the talks and food and all that other stuff as well!  D'oh.

But we got there.  And everyone came.  People from our ward came, too, which was really nice, considering they had to come to our far-away building twice on the 23rd of December.  I really appreciated them being willing to do that.  We actually had to set up more chairs, there were so many people there!  And the whole thing was absolutely beautiful.

And Brian took pictures for us, so I have way better quality than you would have seen from my phone!  Enjoy!!!

Bentley's comment on this picture: "It looks like Ryder and I actually like each other!"

Look at these cute cousins!  (Also, we were very proud of Eliot for overcoming his fear of buttons and wearing that shirt for us!)

Eliot and Theo

The Madden family (Thanks for making this possible, Leah!!!)

Smiths, Maddens, and Bentleys, oh my!

There was only one hitch in the whole day.  And if you're really looking closely at that last picture, you might be able to figure it out...?  Craig left his cell phone in his pocket.  And walked into the baptismal font that way.  Buh-bye, phone.  That killed it.  And since it was a work phone, it meant Craig was phone-less for the rest of the break, which was sort of a pain.  (But also meant he was WAY less distracted than normal!)

Thank you to SO MANY PEOPLE for coming to Ryder's baptism and making it such a special day for all of us!