Baptism and Birthdays

Off the top of my head I couldn’t tell you the exact day my older kids were baptized.  I can tell you the month and the approximate date but that is about it.  Vincent was in mid November, Joel was around Vincent’s birthday and Cecilia was around Joel’s birthday.  But Dean’s I will never forget because he was baptized on my birthday!  That wasn’t our original plan, but it ended up being the date that worked for everyone and we have a lot of people with busy schedules in our immediate families.

Before church the kids gave me the present that we had bought the night before.  They didn’t know I knew about the gifts and were super excited to give them to me and sing happy birthday to me!  It was very cute.  During all the celebrating in the morning my grandma wasn’t around.  She had slept in the new air bed in the basement and she usually gets up early.  I thought maybe she was just getting ready for church.  At 9am she comes upstairs (we had to leave around 10am or so) and is wondering why we are in a hurry and getting kids in church clothes etc.  She says “It is only 7am” Brad told her that was what time it was in Arizona but in Illinois it was 9am.  Apparently she never changed her watch and her phone was dead so she didn’t see the time on it either.

We were all a little concerned about getting him baptized after the fiasco of Cecilia’s baptism, but I was pretty sure it couldn’t be any worse.  Brad actually was hoping to wait until he was 5 so that the other kids would be older and better behaved…he was half joking.  The older kids did relatively well.  No candles were knocked over.  Cecilia may have jumped off the pew toward Grandma Diane as she was up front singing.  And Joel and Cecilia started grabbing her music stand while she was singing, but Vincent grabbed it and stopped it from rocking so it all worked out.  I was very proud of him for not only recognizing a potential problem, but quietly stopping it before it got out of hand.

Reverend Betty did a great job with the service and having all the young kids in the church up close to meet their new “brother”.  That was probably my favorite part.  The other cool parts were that my father-in-law present Dean for baptism and my niece, nephew, and brother in law were the greeters, ushers and readers that day.  They had signed up before we even had picked the date to get Dean baptized.  Thanks to my wonderful sister in law Sarah we had a very delicious lunch at the church following the service.  Then everyone headed to our house for drinks, dessert and visiting.  Brad even got Ray out to give rides for a little bit.

After most of the crowd left we surprised my grandma pat with balloons, cards, and Giordano’s pizza for her 80^th birthday! They weren’t just any balloons they had family pictures attached to the bottom of each of the 10 balloons.   She was definitely surprised!  Her birthday isn’t until the end of the month, but she will be back in Arizona and we can’t all fly down there to see her on her birthday.  The kids loved the balloons but they kept letting them go and they would go up to the ceiling…our very tall vaulted ceiling in the living room.  Brad told the kids he would throw them in the air and they could grab the strings.  Cecilia was the only one brave enough to do it.  Brad had to throw her high and the first time a balloon went up it took her 3 tries before she grabbed it.  The second balloon rescue took her 2 attempts.  The third balloon rescue only took her 1 attempt!!!  She is by far our most naturally athletic kid.  Someday the older boys will read this and not be happy I wrote that but it is true.