What a Big Weekend!

 We had some special visitors come for our special weekend!  Friday Peter turned ONE!  I just can't believe my baby is one.  We had a great day!  We have a tradition in our family that the birthday boy/girl gets to blow out candles and get sung to every meal.  We made this tradition because getting sung to and blowing out candles were our kids' favorite part and we felt bad they only got to experience it once on their birthday.  Needless to say, Peter had no idea what to do with the candles.  He kept trying to touch them, but he sure did love our singing to him! We had pancakes for breakfast, jelly sandwiches, string cheese and blueberries for lunch and mashed potatoes with chicken gravy and green beans for dinner, all of his favorites!  We took him outside for a while, his favorite place to be ( can't all parties be this easy??) We waited for Grandma,Grandpa, Great Grandpa and Aunt Melinda to have our little party.

staring at his candle on his pancake.

clapping after hearing "Happy Birthday" being sung to him.

"what's in here, dad?" 

The cake.

He loved his cake!  He couldn't keep his hands off!  He wanted those skittle so bad!

Mmmmmmmmmm.  He LOVED the icecream.  

I have wanted this birthday wreath for a long time and I made one for Lindsay's birthday, but after pinning 180 balloons, I ran out!  So I finished it a week later for Peter's birthday.  The total balloon count? 480 balloons!!  Whew!! But I have to say.... I LOVE IT!

 The second part of the weekend, Saturday, was Lindsay's baptism!! This girl has been so excited for her baptism since she found out about it in January that she started planning it right after the "8 is Great" program was over.  Lindsay was the only one getting baptized that day so we were in charge of the whole she-bang. She decided to ask her grandmothers to speak.  Gramma Shelton spoke on Baptism and Gramma Cracker gave a talk on the Holy Ghost.   Personally, I struggled with how much to do/not to do.  I wanted the day to be about the baptism and not everything else.  There seems to be so much associated with this occasion now and that made it hard for me to find the line that worked for us.  Announcements?  Refreshments? Decorations? Gifts?  The Dress?  How to do her hair?  Pictures? I felt overwhelmed and I REALLY didn't want this day to be stressful at all for us. In the end we skipped almost everything. Of course we got her a dress, but I just decided to take a few pictures and so we framed them and put them on the table with some flowers.  That was it.  And for our family, that was perfect.

After her baptism interview, she told me she was going to cry because she felt so much joy!

We were all so grateful that Great-Grandpa Zenk was healthy enough to come!!!