Veronica's birthday and baptism

Thank you so much for reading along with my recap about our trip to Yellowstone.  Now it's time to catch up on the things that happened after Yellowstone.  

And boy, do we have a lot to talk about. 

The last non-Yellowstone day I talked about was Saturday, September 11th. And now it's October 17th soooooooo yeah. We have a lot to talk about. 

So much in fact that we aren't going to be able to do this post in a normal chronological order.  This is going to be set up more by subject.  

Starting with the two most important things that happened in the last month. 1. Veronica turned 8 years old. And 2. She was baptized. 

Veronica's 8th Birthday

Veronica always has very clear ideas for what to do on her birthday. Very.clear.ideas. This year she talked for months about wanting a store bought cake. She even told me the specific day we would go buy the cake. 

Turns out that a store bought cake was PERFECT for me this year too. I was in the middle of finishing a course during the week leading up to her birthday and I probably wouldn't have had time to bake her a cake.  So I was very happy we'd agreed on a store bought cake.  

The day before her birthday we went to Smiths and picked out a Chocolate cake with Chocolate frosting. 

Veronica's birthday also happened to be the day the school was doing an Active Shooter Drill.  The kids would barricade their classroom doors, and sit very quiet while, police officers searched the school. This was part practice for the children and also practice for the Twin Falls Police Department. I was just fine with the drill, but when Veronica started telling me that she was worried about it, I agreed that it sounded like a major birthday buzz kill. So I agreed to check Veronica out of class early on her birthday. 

And then I thought about it and realized that Derrick probably shouldn't be at school during the drill either.  I could just see him not understanding the concept of being quiet during the drill. Or not understanding that it was just pretend. 

So on the afternoon of Veronica's birthday I checked both her and Derrick out of school 90 minutes early.  (Charlotte and Lydia were both fine with the drill.) Veronica felt like she was getting away with something HUGE and was so happy as we walked home. 

She'd brought airhead treats to school to give to her class and she had some leftover. She had a plan to make a road out of the airheads to decorate her cake.  It didn't make sense to me, but it seemed to make her really happy. So when we got home I let her start decorating. 

She and Derrick worked together. I wasn't involved at all.

My only contribution was to help Veronica figure out how to stick candy corn Traffic Cones onto the cake with frosting. 

Here's the finished product. She added a ton of candy pumpkins to be a "Pumpkin Patch." She also found a car and added it to the "road." Will it make it onto any Pinterest Boards? No.  Did she have a blast decorating it. YES!  And that's really all that matters.  

She wanted Little Caesars Pizza for dinner and once again that was just perfect for me. So we picked that up a little bit before Brandon was due home.  

Then she opened presents.  This year each child gets to spend $100 on legos for their birthday.  (Thanks to Derrick wanting a $100 lego rocket set in the spring.) Veronica loves police things so she picked out about 4 different Police sets that added up to about $100. We picked them out online and had them shipped to us. (I love doing it that way because it's so much easier to keep track of the running total.)

She was so excited to get her Legos and started building them right away. We had to keep reminding the older kids to leave her alone and let her take the lead with building. 

Here she is, putting together a police car. 

Then we had the cake. The actual cake tasted better than our homemade cakes, but the frosting tasted exactly like canned frosting.  So it was about the same as always. 

Then it was back to more legos. Veronica wanted to go bowling for her birthday and we'd planned to go this evening, but the legos ended up being more fun.  (And we were all super tired from our week anyway.) 

On Saturday Brandon's parents stopped by for a little while to drop off gifts. We cleaned really well before they came over and when the kids asked me why, I showed them this cartoon from James Breakwell. 

They gave her a little card game. (Which she had not asked for and so promptly ignored because it didn't fit her predetermined birthday plan.) And a fishing pole which she was very excited for. 

Brandon's parents stayed for a few hours and then had to get going. After they left we drove over the the Bowladrome so we could go bowling.  

We love bowling as a family and used to go once or twice a year. But two things paused our bowling fun.  One was that we moved and we hadn't found a new bowling place.  And the second was COVID. 

But Veronica wore me down and convinced me it was time to go bowling again.  She even pointed out the bowling places in town every time we passed them.  Everyone was so excited to walk into a bowling alley again.

We were all kind of rusty, but by the end I think everyone had remembered how to bowl. I bowled one strike near the end and Veronica got two strikes. 

Here's everyone waiting their turn. 

I love getting pictures like this. 

Here are me and Brandon.

And here's our final score card. I won. 

Charlotte and Lydia have already decided that bowling has to be one of their birthday activities. So we'll be back again. 

Veronica's Baptism

Okay, now let's skip ahead a few weeks to Veronica's baptism. Veronica's baptism was scheduled for Saturday, October 9th.  I was about 75% sure that the baptism would actually happen on this date. Thanks to COVID, Derrick's baptism had been postponed for over 7 months so I was mentally prepared for the same thing to happen with Veronica's. 

But as we got closer and closer to October it looked like the date would stay.  That meant I had to actually start planning some things. 

I was trying to hit a sweet spot between the big, surprisingly overwhelming event that Charlotte and Lydia's baptism had been, and the tiny, blissfully uncomplicated event that Derrick's had been.

Veronica, Brandon, and I decided that we'd only invite our parents and siblings to attend the baptism in person. It was just too complicated to try to invite EVERYONE.  Plus Veronica said she would be shy if there were too many people looking at her. 

Our ward/stake would take care of most of the logistics for the actual event so that was nice.  I also delegated all the food responsibilities to Brandon.  I just didn't have the bandwidth to think about that at all.  

I was focused on the dress. Veronica really really really wanted a Baptism Dress like Charlotte and Lydia's which I found odd because Veronica doesn't like dresses. When she goes to church she wears a shirt and pants and then throws a "dress" on over them. Usually the "dress" is basically a long shirt with a vague skirt shape. I'm fully expecting her to one day just ask to wear nice pants like Derrick does.  And I've started wearing dress pants to church so that she knows that's an okay option. (Plus, I figured out pants are WAY more comfortable than tights on cold days.) 

But she had her heart set on wearing a white dress with a red ribbon. We went to Joanns to look at fabric and she ruled out anything too sparkly. She said she wanted satin like Charlotte and Lydia, but I had my reservations and figured if I did the dress in double knit it would suit her better.  That way we wouldn't have to worry about a zipper and she could just throw it over her head like the dresses she currently wears. 

I planned to just reuse the same pattern as Charlotte and Lydia's dresses, but when I got it out to look at it I realized we had a problem.  That pattern was a 4, 6, 8 pattern. It had seemed so big three years ago when I made Charlotte and Lydia's dresses on size 8 so they'd be able to wear them a long time.  But Veronica needed at least a size 10 - or bigger if she wanted to wear this dress for several years. I would need to buy a new pattern. 

That slowed everything down.  The pattern I wanted was sold out at Joanns so I ordered it directly from Simplicity. (It was Simplicity Pattern 1456 for future reference.) The pattern took forever to come in the mail. It didn't come until Wednesday, September 29th, 10 days before the baptism. As soon as I had the pattern I got online to order fabric from Joanns. But I quickly realized we needed to go there in person to make sure we got quality double knit. So Veronica and I went to Joanns while Derrick was at therapy that afternoon. 

Veronica was fascinated by the whole process of picking out fabric and then getting it cut. She was like, "And these people will just put away the other fabric for us? Wow." She also had many opinions about thread for someone who has never sewed. She very reluctantly let me buy the Sulky thread after I told her it was the very best.

We ran into a problem when it was time to pay. My card kept getting declined. And then when I finally decided to write a check I realized I used my last one months ago.  (It's been so long since I had to write a check I'm lucky I even had a check book with me.)  So we had to leave the fabric at the store and go home to get cash or more checks.  Veronica started crying when we left. She's always conscious about money because me default answer is "we don't have money for that right now." (Meaning we have a budget, not that we don't have money.) And she's always thrilled when I buy something. She'll ask me, "You have that kind of money?" So she got really worried when the card was declined.  

Fortunately, I remembered we keep emergency cash in the car! Technically its for if there was ever a power outage and we had to pay cash or if we were stranded and needed a hotel or something while traveling.  But it comes in handy at times like this too. So I grabbed the cash and went back into the store to pay. Veronica was very happy to see me come out with her fabric. (And the next day I called the bank and found out there had been suspicious activity with my card so I had to get a whole new one set to me.)

I worked on the dress over the next few days. It was actually a pretty simple dress made even simpler by the fact that I wasn't doing a zipper. I did decide to line the whole thing so that kind of slowed things down a bit. I put the most time into it on Monday afternoon after the kids were home from school.  They just watched things on Netflix while I sewed. 

I finally finished the dress around 10:00 PM. Here's the dress!

I'd listened to old episodes of the At Last She Said It Podcast the whole time I was sewing. So when I was done I sent this email to the hosts of the show:

Subject: Thanks for helping me sew a dress

Hi Cynthia and Susan,

I've been listening to the podcast since somewhere in Season Two. I've been slowly working through earlier episodes, but haven't quite caught up yet.

Until today.

My eight year old daughter is getting baptized this weekend. She doesn't like dresses, but she wanted me to sew her a baptism dress like the ones I made her older sisters. So I've been working on that for the past few days. 

Today I spent the afternoon and evening finishing her baptism dress. To keep me company, I listened to many, many episodes from Season One while sewing, and ironing, and pinning.

Thank you so much for all the great conversations. 

As I put together the dress I was grateful I had you to listen to. I also thought about how the ALSSI podcast has helped me navigate my relationship with the church. There have been a few times in the last few years that I've wondered if there really was a place for me in this church. I've wondered if there is a place for my head-strong daughter. I've wondered if staying in the church and having her baptized was the best course for us.

But every time I listen to the podcast I feel like there is a place. That I'm wanted and needed. And if I'm wanted and needed so is my daughter.

So I've stayed. And she's getting baptized on Saturday. And I finished the dress. And you both helped - in many ways.

I've attached a picture so you can see the dress. 

Thanks!

Cynthia wrote back: Valerie, that dress is stunning and the red sash just makes me even happier. thanks for sharing! I'm so glad we have been able to help you in some small way.

With the dress finished my stress levels regarding the baptism decreased quite a bit. Brandon had the food side of things handled so I could just enjoy the weekend. 

Our small guest list ended up very small. Brandon's sister Shannon wasn't able to come. And my sister Emily had just had a baby so we didn't even count her family in the total number of possible people. My sister Hillary was going to drive my parents up to Twin Falls, but she was having some heath issues and she (rightly) decided to just stay home and focus on herself. 

For a while, I was worried that my parents wouldn't make it, but they were able to drive up on Friday and stay the whole weekend which was very nice. This was the first time they've visited us since we moved to Twin Falls.  (They only moved back from North Carolina at the end of June so it makes sense that this was their first visit.)  We ordered Pizza Pie Cafe pizzas for dinner. Veronica was like, "let's get two Oreo pizzas" and I was like, "Why not!" We also ordered pepperoni, cheese, and the spud-o-licous because that's my mom's favorite. 

On Saturday, I helped Brandon prep some meet and veggie trays.  He said it's been so long since we've hosted anything that he was super rusty.  He was looking at the veggies like, "what do I do with these."  He eventually figured it out and did a great job.  

Everyone changed into Sunday clothes and I took pictures.  Here's Veronica in her dress.  She was mortified that I wasn't letting her wear pants under the dress.  She kept saying, "I feel NAKED!" She did like the sandals I'd bought her.  Somehow she is incapable of wearing typical dressy shoes.  She can't walk and keep them on her feet.  She's been wearing tennis shoes to church for months. But I wanted her to have something new and nice.  Sandals ended up being the perfect thing.  She's outgrown the pair she wore over the summer and so she needed new ones anyway. I was able to find the same sandals that Charlotte and Lydia love in white so we ordered those from Walmart.  Veronica was very happy with them. 

Charlotte and Lydia obliged me and wore their baptism dresses.  Charlotte has worn her's recently, but it's been a while for Lydia.  She barely fit it. But she wore it.  

Brandon had made some amazing cupcakes and then we put powdered sugar donuts in "8" shapes on them.  This ended up being the only picture I took of the food which was a shame because we had quite the spread. 

We went over to the church. Several weeks ago our ward was moved into a brand new stake. But our Stake Center is still in the building by the temple.  I kind of knew what to expect because this was the same place we had Derrick's baptism, but that had been in a different stake and had been in the middle of some strict COVID measures. So in a way this was all new again. 

Derrick's baptism service had been in the chapel and we'd walked down to the Relief Society room for the actual baptism.  But this time the whole thing was in the Relief Society room. 

Before Veronica changed I had the kids line up for another picture.  This time Derrick joined in.  He'd even agreed to wear the vest I'd made for him. 

And here's the whole family. 

Brandon's parents arrived and Jacque handed me the towel that she'd embroidered for Veronica.  When Charlotte and Lydia were baptized in Pocatello the ward had given them huge white towels with their names embroidered on them. We've kept that tradition going with Derrick and Veronica by having Jacque do the embroidery with her machine.  Veronica was so excited. 

Brandon's sister Melanie and her family arrived, bringing the total number of our guests to 10. Another girl from our ward was also getting baptized and so her family was there too.  And the Bishop, Relief Society President and Primary president were there as well.  I think we had a total of about 25 people there. 

I helped Veronica change into her jumpsuit.  Then she went into the Relief Society room. For Derrick's baptism the ward had set up a Zoom link. This time the ward didn't do it, but we were allowed to set up our own. Brandon had taken care of that, and my Brother in Law Justin monitored it during the meeting.  My Grandma Mary Ann, my Aunt Vera, my sister Lindsey, and my friend Justine were able to watch the baptism over zoom.  (And maybe some more people, I really wasn't paying much attention.)

Our bishop would be baptizing the other little girl so he conducted the meeting in his white jumpsuit. 

Veronica had wanted me to give the same "talk" I gave at Derrick's baptism which was really just showing a Youtube video about baptism.  I was just fine with that plan because it was one less thing to worry about.  But that morning an idea for a talk had popped into my head and literally wrote itself.  So we had a last minute change.  This is basically what I said in my talk. 

When I was packing things for Veronica today I thought about how wet she was going to get.  She'd need a towel, and dry clothes, and maybe even a blow dryer.  It seemed like a lot of stuff to bring for only being under water for a few seconds. Shouldn't she just be a little wet from being in the water a just a little bit of time? But water doesn't work like that. No matter how quick she comes out of the water, her whole body will be physically changed.

And I realized that's how it is with Jesus.  When you accept him and his atoning power into your life you get completely changed and it can happen in an instant. 

I want you to watch as these girls get baptized today. Watch how quickly they change when they come out of the water.  Now obviously we'll change their clothes and dry them off and you won't be able to see the physical change after a while. But the spiritual change will always be there. 

Anyway, I thought it was a pretty good analogy. 

When it was time for Veronica to be baptized the bishop said, "She will be baptized by my good friend Brandon Illguth."  I wanted to watch the baptism from the Relief Society room so Brandon helped her find her way to the font.  (I'd felt invisible during Charlotte and Lydia's baptism because I'd been waiting in the wings beside the font.) Veronica wanted both her Grandmas to be the official witnesses.  So my mom and my mother in law stood on either side of the font. This was the first time either of them ever had the chance to do that.  (YAY for policy changes!)

Brandon said the prayer and baptized Veronica. She went completely under on the first try. Then I hurried around to help her get dry and back into her dress.  

I'd brought the blow dryer because Veronica had wanted to be warm, but there was no where to plug it in so we gave up on that plan.  Soon we were back in the Relief Society Room and listening to music that the Primary President had on her phone. It was the same play list as Derrick's baptism and so once again we heard the song Miracles. I really love this song. 

After Brandon and the bishop were done changing it was time to Confirm Veronica a member of the church.  I think she kind of forgot about this part. Brandon gave her a beautiful blessing.  Then the other little girl was confirmed.  

The bishop gave a few remarks, we sang a closing song, and were were done.  The whole meeting had lasted 30 minutes.  It was great!

We went back home and pulled the food out of the fridge. We had a nice time eating and talking with our small group. I'd completely forgot about my camera at this point and so I didn't take a single picture. (Note to self: Hire a wedding photographer for the kids' weddings because you are super distracted during your kids' special events.)

Eventually, Brandon's family members left and it was just us and my parents again.  All the adults found different places to take naps.  Here's Brandon passed out on the couch. 

Here's me before I conked out. I really liked how my makeup looked. 

What a great day it had been. 

And you know what.  I think we are going to make this it's own post. I was going to switch gears to ALL the other things that happened in the last month.  But let's just leave this one here.  I'll get this published and start working on another post.  

Thanks for reading!