Elise's Baptism

Elise got baptized on Saturday.  It has been a LONG wait for her.  The baptisms in September were on the 1st, so she missed it by 5 days.  She was a little bitter for a while that I didn’t have her on my birthday.  She thought it would have been so cool to have her birthday on the same day as mine and my mom’s (30 and 70 years apart respectively).  Plus, she could have gotten baptized on her birthday (like Emily was).  She came to terms with it after I explained that moms don’t just get to pick the day their babies are born, but she still had a hard time waiting a month and seven days after her birthday to get baptized.  I didn’t mind the wait since it gave us more time to get everything ready, but I wasn’t in love with the idea of her getting baptized on the 13^th.  I got over it when I realized it was the mirror image of Ben’s baptism date . . . 10-13 and 01-31.  Phew.

The day of her baptism was pretty busy.  We went to Abby’s last soccer game in the morning and then headed home to get the house and food ready for company.  With Ben and Emily, we just had everyone come over for some treats after the baptism.  A couple of my friends said that we should really feed people dinner if they were coming over afterwards and I foolishly gave into peer pressure.  The dinner turned out fine and Elise liked having everyone stick around longer, but it was sure a lot more work than baking a few batches of cookies and making rice krispy treats. 

The baptism itself was great.  Elise had lots of family and friends there to support her and she loved every minute of it.  Nothing ruins a perfectly good Saturday for Ben like getting in church clothes and going to a baptism, but even he did fine when he saw that his friend Korbin was at the church.  We were the host ward again, so we were the last ones to the font.  The water was warm and it only took one dunk.  Elise was lots faster getting dried off and ready than the little boy in our ward who got baptized right after her.  She was so happy that she finally got to wear her baptism dress. Grandma Reatha took her shopping for it in August and it was the longest two months of her life to have to wait to wear it.

We kept up the tradition of making a slideshow.  It takes a ton of time to pick the pictures and put it all together, but I always love the final product.  It is fun to have eight years of life wrapped up in a nice little 11 minute DVD.

We sure love Elise!  She is a happy, funny, spontaneous girl.  She has a big heart and is the most naturally generous kid I have ever met.  We feel blessed that she is part of our family.