It was such a blessing and a beautiful experience to watch Aaron baptize Evelyn! A lot of the day felt like a flurry to me - I was so busy getting from one thing to another that it felt surreal to me at the end. I didn't even get as many pictures as I really would have liked, but I'm glad I had the camera and tried.
Aaron and Evie before the baptism, before they changed into their whites.
The service was absolutely perfect, in my unbiased opinion. Evie's piano teacher played the music, she had an aunt do a prayer and another aunt leading the singing. Grandma B gave a talk on baptism, including a funny story about when she fell down in an empty but 'pie' filled cowpen. Grandma R gave a beautiful talk on the Holy Ghost and included little gifts to remind Evie of the many roles of the Holy Ghost. Grandpa B got to play a role, too and we were a little sad that my dad was unable to make it. Since he couldn't be there, Evie sang a song he wrote for my cousin's baptism 25 years ago. It was a song I sang at my own baptism and it was beautiful to hear my daughter singing it! My own piano teacher and long-time friend Karen Jeppson who once made a piano arrangement for this song, made me a new arrangement when I requested it of her. I feel pretty blessed that so many loved ones were able to be involved in Evelyn's baptism!
My friend and I arranged to swap services for our children's baptisms this year; she made a beautiful rosette cake for Evie's and I'll be taking pictures of her son to celebrate 8. She did such a lovely job and I'm grateful to have talented friends we can share among!
Here's the cake with the cookies we made up. We did have about 35 people at the baptism, so when I do this again for Lizzie in a couple of years, I'll be sure to have more treats out - either a greater number or a greater variety; we had what I would call sufficient, but it would have been nice to have a bit more.
After the baptism, we took a few minutes and snapped some pictures. I'm totally kicking myself because Evie didn't get any pictures with Grandma, who was there but taking care of other things while my sister and I got eachother family pictures.
Carson was a total silly goose! He kept trying to jump in with LaNita's family. I wasn't too surprised - whenever he talks about his cousin, he says, "my brother, Dallas". He never just uses Dallas' name alone. Some days, LaNita, I feel like you could have him for a little while...
When we got home, Evie went upstairs with a new gift from her B grandparents - a set of her very own scriptures. She also took up some tape and taped up mementos of her baptism above her bed. When I crept upstairs, I found her quietly reading the Book of Mormon. She's so proud to have her own set and she's been pretty faithful about reading them herself!
Another thing I forgot to get pictures of was the lovely table setups that Grandma B was in charge of. She got prints of a few of our favorite pictures from Evie's temple photo shoot with little vases of fresh flowers. We loved the effort she put into making the tables look personal and nice!
Here are a bunch of other pictures that I truly loved from Evie's temple trip!
I love my sweet Evelyn and am so pleased she's making this decision!
