Birth-o-PrimaryProgram-o-Baptism-o-Ween Part 2

Whew, I'm glad I was smart and already wrote about the first half of our Birth-o-PrimaryProgram-o-Baptism-o-Ween festivities because this second half is pretty action packed.  We celebrated Halloween and the twins' birthday on Wednesday.  And then three days later the twins were baptized and we had a party at our house.  

My last post left off on the Monday before Halloween. that's the night we decided to carve pumpkins. Derrick usually has behavioral therapy and family training on Wednesday nights, but we shifted it to Monday because Wednesday was Halloween.  Usually Derrick's therapist has a little craft or something for the kids to do during Family training.  She'll have Derrick pass out the supplies and tell everyone how to do the project.  This week she helped with the pumpkin carving.  It was nice to have another adult in the room. 

We grew three of the pumpkins in our back yard this year.  Veronica's was the smallest.

The three home grown pumpkins were claimed by the girls so a few weeks ago I took Derrick to the store to pick out a pumpkin.  They were 2 for $10 and he kept trying to pick out small pumpkins.  I told him, "no get a big one."  So we found the biggest one we could.

Lydia had fun hamming it up while she pulled out "the guts."

Charlotte's pumpkin was shaped kind of like an apple.

The kids drew the faces on by themselves and then Brandon and I cut the faces out.  Veronica's turned out really creepy.

Derrick's turned out so sweet looking.  He'd drawn such tiny eyes on such a big pumpkin.  It was adorable.  He'd been talking about drawing triangle eyes, triangle nose and a smile mouth all day.  He was so excited to finally carve his pumpkin. 

 Charlotte drew some really cool eyes on her's.

 And Lydia's was really good too.

 Here are the kids pretending to be scary on the porch. We'd decorated the porch with spider webs earlier.

Here's the best picture I got with the pumpkins on the porch at night.  We were trying glow stick inside the pumpkins and that just didn't work very well. Later we did real candles and that worked better. This was taken AFTER I came home from the dropping the kids off at the bus stop on Tuesday.  I like daylight saving time and all, but I wish it still ended in October instead of November.  It's so dark outside in the mornings during that last week.

Lydia wasn't feeling well when she got up for school on Tuesday. She had a fever when I took her temperature.  So she stayed home.  Veronica doesn't go to daycare on Tuesday's so she was home too.  I kind of expected Lydia to perk up and play with Veronica, but she never did.  She laid down in either my bed or on the couch all day.  She took really long naps too.  I was glad that I let her stay home.

All Tuesday long I did load after load of laundry.  Normally I have the kids help me put their clothes away, but there was so much laundry that I knew they would all freak out if they knew they had to help.  The  Live Halloween episode of Radio Ronin was scheduled for that evening so I decided to listen to that while dealing with the laundry.  The Halloween Episode is always scary so there was no way I was going to listen to it while standing in our basement laundry room so I moved all the laundry upstairs to my bed. It was quite the pile.  It spread all over the bed and still made a huge mound.

I don't know how many times I walked up and down the stairs to get all that laundry up to my room.  I was beat by the end. Here I am amid a pile of laundry.

It took me a couple hours, but I got it all sorted and ready to be put away.  A large portion of the pile was blankets, sheets, and towels.  Once those were out of the way the pile was a lot more manageable.  

Wednesday was the big day.  HALLOWEEN AND CHARLOTTE AND LYDIA'S 8TH BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!

Truth be told, I was a little over Halloween by this point.  We'd already been to a Trunk or Treat, a school carnival, and a family party.  I had to really dig deep to feel excited for Trick or Treating that night.  

But I was not over the girls' birthday.  I'd blown up balloons the night before and they were scattered all over the living room floor.  We also had the presents waiting for the girls. This picture is a good representation of Birth-o-ween.  Birthday presents next to pumpkins. (And a general mess surrounding them.)

We had the kids get ready for school and then there was still enough time for the girls to open presents before we had to catch the bus.

Charlotte had asked for another season of Curious George (we love that monkey) and Lydia had asked for a Paw Patrol movie.  The girls have really only seen Paw Patrol a few times, but they love it.  So Lydia was ECSTATIC to finally have her very own DVD of episodes.

Then they opened the two presents that they will share.  They got lego friend sets.  They were so excited.

I'd been hoping that Lydia would feel well enough to go to school on her birthday.  I gave her a bath and dosed her up with medicine, but she didn't look good.  She was so pale.  I joked that she was already dressed up as a ghost for Halloween.  She was also shivering like crazy.  So she had another day at home.

That was unfortunate because I'd been planning to go Trick or Treating around ISU with Veronica and her class in the morning and go help with Derrick during the first grade Halloween Party.  Instead I had to stay home with Lydia.

Veronica could still go to school of course.  So after Charlotte and Derrick were on the bus I came home and helped put on Veronica's costume and make up (for the 4th time.)  She was really rambunctious and was frankly on my nerves.  So I took her over to the school and little early so she could be wild and excited with her friends.

Then I came home and hung out with Lydia all day.  It turned out to be really nice to suddenly have a completely free day.  I was tired from staying up to near midnight listening to Radio Ronin the night before so we put in a movie and Lydia watched that while I took a nap.

I decided it was a good time to wash all the girls' bedding so I made sure to do that.  And I did a little bit of cleaning.  I also stayed in my pajamas until about 1:30 when I decided it was probably time to take a shower.  I've been running around so much the past few weeks that it was nice to have a day to just stay home and not do much.

It was nice to talk to Lydia one on one.  She kept saying things like, "I can't believe I'm eight!  and It doesn't feel like I'm eight yet!"

Lydia and I picked the kids up from the daycare right when the bus arrived from the elementary school.  Veronica's bucket was filled with candy.  Her teacher said they'd ridden the bus up to the far side of campus and walked the whole way back and stopped everywhere they could along the way.

Charlotte said she'd had a great day at school.  And later I heard good things about Derrick's day.

We came home and the girls immediately set about playing with their new legos. Lydia had wanted to play with them all day, but I told her she had to wait til Charlotte was there.

They love all the cute little animals that come with the sets.  They already had a big bunny so they were so excited to have a little bunny.

I moved them over to the area under the consol table so they'd be out of the way when my parents came over.

When my mom and dad arrived they brought everything to make hot dog mummies.  Which was funny because I'd planned to make the same thing.  We had fun putting those together.

We had dinner and then it was time to get into costumes for the final time. My mom took pictures of me doing Veronica's mask make up. I was basically a professional by this point.

I told my mom I need to reevaluate my make up priorities.  I always put off buying regular make up for myself that I will use all year long.  But I'll buy a tube of Halloween face paint that I'll use 5 times.

Our ward was having a chili cook off and Trunk or Treat that evening.  But we were basically boycotting it. I love my ward, but I hadn't enjoyed the activity last year.  (Except for the part where I won the chili cook off, I liked that part.)  Derrick hadn't like it either. He remembered Halloween from the year before in Alabama when he'd gone trick or treating in our neighborhood.  Last year he'd kept saying, "I want Trick or Treat Houses" which meant, I want to go trick or treating to houses. Not sit at this boring dinner."  And he kept reminding me of that throughout the year.

Plus I honestly don't like trunk or treats.  Everyone always says how they are safer than Trick or Treating but I think they are more dangerous.  Do you know how many kids I've seen almost get hit by cars at trunk or treats?  And they are always in dark parking lots.  I feel like I never know who is handing out candy.  With Trick or treating you can at least gauge the quality of the house before you go up to it.  With a trunk or treat it like, "Hey random person, I guess I'll take something out of your trunk, I hope it's not crack."

Anyway, so we weren't going to our ward Trunk or Treat.  But we couldn't go Trick or Treating in our neighborhood either.  Apparently we live in a "bad neighborhood" which always makes me roll my eyes because I used to live near Killeen, Texas.  So no one goes trick or treating where we live.  I often counter that by saying, "maybe if everyone wasn't at the trunk or treat they would be home and we could go trick or treating to their houses and the neighborhood would seem more friendly.

We decided to go trick or treating in the neighborhood near the kids' school.  Lydia has her Ukulele lessons in this neighborhood and she and Brandon figured it seemed like the type of place where it would be fun to trick or treat.

That turned out to be an excellent hunch.  There were lots of other families trick or treating and everyone gave out good candy.  We even got some King Size candy bars which I always thought were a myth. Derrick's favorite house was the one that gave out cans of root beer.  Derrick was so happy to be "Trick or Treating Houses."  He had so much fun ringing door bells, getting candy, and saying, "thank you, Happy Halloween."

This was the first year I'd ever gone trick or treating with the kids.  In Alabama and Texas I would stay home to hand out candy while Brandon took the kids around.  It was really fun to go with the kids.

The weather was cold and threatening to snow.  I even heard from people who had seen snow.  The kids were all dressed warm under their costumes, but their hands got really cold.  Note to self:  We need gloves for next year.  Lydia was especially cold.  She'd felt better thoughout the day, but she wasn't 100% yet.  I went back to the car and found an extra jacket for her.  She liked that she could put her hands in her pockets.

We'd started at 5:40 and by 6: 20 the kids were all cold.  The all had pretty full buckets so they were willing to call it a night.  We went back to the car and drove back to the house.  The ward trunk or treat wasn't even supposed to start until 7:00 so we could have hit that up on our way home, but I didn't want to break our boycott.  So we just went straight home.

My parents had stayed at the house to hand out candy to any trick or treaters who came by, but no one had come. We did have one group stop by after we came home, but that was it.

The kids dumped all their candy out and started sorting and eating it.  We were so impressed by the quality of the candy.  There was so much chocolate.  Veronica had fun unwrapping all her candy and putting it into baggies. And I had fun eating the unwrapped candy.

Charlotte and Lydia worked on their legos and ate their candy.  It was a pretty great birthday for them. 

My parents got ready to leave around 8:30.  We realized we hadn't sung Happy Birthday to Charlotte and Lydia yet so we hurried and did that.  Derrick went to bed a little after 8:30, and the girls went to bed a little after 9:00.  

The next morning I let the kids sleep in.  There was no way I was waking Derrick up at 6:30 the day after Halloween.  I knew it would be better for everyone if I let him wake up on his own.  I e-mailed his teacher and let her know not to expect him on the bus that morning.  

The kids ended getting up around 7:15.  We had breakfast and got dressed.  It was about 8:20 by the time we made it to the school.  I signed them in and put "Halloween" as the reason they were late. I took Veronica to daycare right after that and then I went to my appointment for donating plasma.  I haven't donated since I got hit by a car since I figured I needed my plasma to heal.  But since I was doing better I decided I might as well start donating again.  It was time for my annual physical and it takes a while s I wanted to get that done before I started back at work again. It ended up taking even longer than usual because they had some staffing issues so I was glad I took care of it while I still had free time. 

When the kids got out of school I picked up Charlotte, Lydia, and Veronica from the daycare.  Derrick has therapy at the daycare on Thursday so I left him there for that.  I thought that he'd throw a fit when he saw me take the girls and leave him, but he was totally fine with it.  

I took the girls to Shopko and met up with my parents.  My mom and dad offered to buy the girls shoes and tights as their birthday/baptism gift.  I came along because I know the sizes. It was so nice of my parents to do this.  They girls look a little sad in this picture, but really they were so excited.  They each got shoes with little heels because they've wanted those for a long time.  

We came home and tried everything on.  I still had some hand sewing to do on the dresses, but I was so happy with how everything was coming together.

Thursday night I tried to get the motivation together to finish the dresses, but I just couldn't do it.  I cleaned up the Halloween decorations and then made a big to do list for the next few days and went to bed.

Friday was the last day before the baptism. I woke up knowing I had way too much to do in the next 36 hours.  I wasn't sure how I was going to fit it all in.  Here is a partial list of everything I needed to do on Friday.

1.  Take the girls to their well child doctors appointment
3. Clean the house
3. Finish the hand sewing on the dresses,
4. Go to McDonalds with Brandon and the kids. (We watched the McDonalds by ISU get demolished and rebuilt since June and it finally reopened so we were excited to go see what it looked like inside.)
5. Go to a bird club with the kids (The Museum of Natural History on the ISU campus had a bird club and I signed up for it when I was more optimistic about how much I could handle on the day before the twins baptism.)

Brandon was already helping with the grocery shopping, the birthday cake, and the food for the party so he was busy too.

I felt very overwhelmed.

There was nothing to do, but just start doing stuff.  The girls appointments were in the morning so they didn't need to get on the bus.  It was kind of strange putting just Derrick on the bus in the morning.

A little bit later I got a call from the special ed teacher.  She said Derrick was acting sick and saying his stomach hurt.  She wondered if that's what Lydia had had earlier in the week.  I told her no, Lydia had just had a fever.  I said I'd check on Derrick when I dropped the girls off later. She said she'd call me if he threw up.

We dropped Veronica off at daycare and then headed to the doctor.  We'd been in such a rush that I brought a brush to the doctor and I did the girls' hair in the waiting room.

The visit went well and the girls are healthy. We'd already done the flu shot so we didn't need to worry about that.

When we got to the school I signed the girls in and went to check on Derrick.  He was feeling better and so I went home and started working on the dresses.  I needed to figure out a way to put the sashes onto the dresses.  I'd actually dreamed that someone had shown my how to do it the night before.  In my dream someone had shown me that if I sewed a button onto the back of the sash I could attach the sash with just a little bit of embroidery floss as a loop. I wasn't sure if I trusted the dream, but after thinking about it for a few minutes I realized it was a good idea. So I tried it and it WORKED.  I'm calling that dream divine inspiration.

I finished the sash on Charlotte's dress and was working on Lydia's when I got a call from the elementary school principal. That's never a good thing.  She told me Derrick was being very aggressive and not calming down.  She asked me to come pick him up. This was a first.  When I got to the school the special ed teacher told me she thought that Derrick wasn't feeling well and just couldn't express it appropriately.  So I checked Derrick out of school.

On our way home we stopped at my parents house to borrow their vacuum.  Ours had been on it's last legs and I wanted to make sure the house had a good vacuum before the party.  My mom also let us borrow a high chair for baby Walter.  Derrick thought that Walter was at my parents house and he walked around saying, "Walter, where are you?" for a little bit.  Then we went home to work on things for the party.

I couldn't sew with Derrick around, but I had plenty of other things we could do.  He didn't seem sick and I didn't want him to think that going home early was a fun thing so I made him help me clean out the fridge.  When we were done with that he helped me clean up the branches we'd used for Halloween decorations on the porch.

Then he and I worked on putting balloons up around the living room.  We'd done this together the year before and I'd actually been feeling a little sad that we wouldn't have a chance to do it together again.  So part of me was secretly happy that he was home with me.  I would ask him to get me three balloons off the floor and then I would tie them together with string.  We put them up around the room as decorations for the party the next day.

They looked really nice and were much better than having them all over the floor.  Now we could vacuum.

Brandon had gone grocery shopping as soon as he finished school at noon.  He came home with tons of groceries around 2:00.  Our original plan had been to pick up the kids from the day care and go to McDonalds with them.  But in that plan I had expected to have a perfectly clean house and be done with the dresses.  Neither of those options had happened yet.  So we decided that I'd pick up the girls at the day care and bring them home.  We'd clean the house together and then go get ice cream followed by going to the bird club at ISU.

No matter what, at least one child completely freaks out when I mention cleaning the house or putting away laundry.  And I never can predict which child it will be.  It's like the kids have meetings and decide who is going to be the uncooperative child of the day. So I wasn't surprised when one child lost their mind over the fact that we had to clean the house.  But somehow we coaxed that child into playing the cleaning game.  

We had the house clean in less than an hour, but the kids were all in various stages of tired so I decided that going to the bird club wasn't the best idea.  Brandon and I decided we'd stay home and have a good dinner and then go to McDonalds for ice cream.  We put on the new Paw Patrol DVD and the kids were glued to the TV for the next 90 minutes.  

Brandon worked on dinner while I worked on the dresses.  I finished Lydia's sash and then sewed on the hooks and eyes at the top of the zipper.  I had the girls try on their dresses so I could adjust the elastic in the sleeves and then I sewed those.  

We had dinner and then we got in the car to go to McDonalds.  Everyone was so happy as we drove over there. The McDonalds by ISU is where we bought ice cream when we were done house hunting when we found our house in August of 2017.  That's a really happy memory so I was sad when I found out they were tearing down the McDonalds to build an updated one.  

They tore the building down in June.  We drove by the construction lot every day after daycare and it was always fun to see what progress had been made. The past few weeks have been especially fun as the finishing details went up.  

The new McDonalds opened on October 31st so we talked about going there for the girls' birthday. But that seemed like just too much.  So we decided to do it on Friday.  

We were very impressed.  As far as McDonalds' go it's really nice.  It has a wood and stone theme and feels very modern.  

We ordered hot fudge sundays.  This was the first time the kids ever had hot fudge.  They were a little suspicious of it at first, but I told them it was like frosting and so they liked it.

We came home and put the kids to bed.  Brandon had been working on the cake while I was sewing earlier so he went back to work on that.  It turned out so great!  Another ward in our building had a pirate cake at some cubscout activity or something.  They had a picture of it on the builitin board that the kids walk by on their way to primary.  So that's where the girls got the idea. Lydia wanted the pirate ship cake, and Charlotte wanted a beach cake so Brandon decided to combine them into a Pirate Ship Wreaked on a Beach Cake.

I finished up the elastic in the sleeves and then started hand sewing the lining in a spot around the zipper. Part of me wanted to just leave that part undone.  None would have ever known the lining was unattached in that spot.  But another part of me wanted to know that I had completely finished the dresses.  So I kept going.  I sat on my bed with Brandon and he turned on Jimmy Fallon clips on Youtube.  I listened to those while sewing.

Finally at probably 11:00 pm I finished the last bit of hand sewing.  The dresses were done!  I laid down and fell right asleep.

Are you tired yet, because I sure was.  But this party was only just getting started.

Saturday was the day of the baptism.  The baptism started at 10:00 but we had to be there around 9:30.  There was still so much to do!

Mostly we had to prep food and get the girls ready.  Brandon went to work on the food while I ran around feeling like I was doing 100 things.

I had Charlotte and Lydia take baths.  My sister Hillary and her family came up for the baptism.  She'd offered to do the girls' hair so she took over that.

Hillary had also offered to do a little photo shoot with the girls.  I was so glad she offered to do that because I wouldn't have had time to do it.  City Creek runs through our church property and it's really pretty so I told Hillary to take the girls there to take some pictures.  

The pictures turned out so cute.  The dresses had been a lot of work, but I'm so glad I made them.  They looked so great on the girls.  Oh and I can't forget to mention that my Aunt Diane gave us money to help buy the material.  She'd offered to buy the girls dresses.  When I told her I was making them she offered to send money.  That was very nice of her.  

 Look at those pretty braids.  Hillary is so talented.

 Sisters!

 They were both so happy to finally be getting baptized.

Here's Lydia.

And here's Charlotte.

They went inside the church and took some pictures there.

I arrived and helped the girls change into the jumpsuits they would wear for the baptism.  (it wasn't until later that I realized we'd put them on backward.  I'd never even noticed.)  Here are Brandon and the girls in their jumsuits.

And another one.

And here's the family picture.

Our stake took care of arranging the baptismal service so we didn't have to find anyone to do things like play the piano or give talks.  I was asked to say the opening prayer.  

We had lots of people come support the girls.  I hope this is a complete list, if I forgot someone please let me know. 

• My parents and Brandon's parents.  
• My sister Hillary, her husband Joe and their baby Walter. (who is almost toddler Walter)
• Brandon's sister Melanie her husband Justin and their kids Wally Weston and Wyatt
• My Grandma Mary Ann and my Aunt Vera
• Elder and Sister Coombs from Idaho Falls/Fort Hood Texas.  They were our Military Relations Missionaries back when Veronica was born.  When Brandon went to Korea they came to our house at least once a week and Elder Coombs always mopped my kitchen floor. 
• My friend Sarah from Idaho Falls/the internet and her kids Adam and Avery and maybe Ben, but now I can't remember if he was there or not. 
• Our friend Sherylee came up with her sister from the Ogden Area.  Sherylee was in our branch back in Bountiful.  She was the Relief Society President and I was one of her Counselors before Derrick was born.  I was so touched she came to the baptism. \
• The girls' babysitter Monique came with her new husband. 
• From our current ward we had Brother and Sister Paige and their three daughters, the full time missionaries, my friend Robin and her son Wesley who was in Lydia's 1st grade class, the primary president Sister Capson, one of the primary presidency counselors Sister Orton, and the primary Secretary Sister Wilson.  I couldn't believe Sister Wilson was there.  Her husband had died a week earlier and had been buried on Tuesday, but she came to the baptism.  What a great lady. 

We started out in the Chapel where we listened to two short talks.  There were three girls getting baptized and the talks were both by people in the other girls' family.  Then that girl and her family were excused to go to the Relief Society Room where the font was.  She would be baptized and then it would be our turn. 

  

My favorite parts of the service were sitting by my Grandma Mary Ann for a little bit, watching the girls turn around on their bench, listening to Walter laugh, and not being in charge of anything on the program. 

I kept thinking about 15 months ago when we were house hunting here in Pocatello we stopped for a picnic on the lawn of an LDS church.  We didn't realize at the time that the building would be our new church building.  And that the twins would be baptized there.  We just thought it was a cool place for a picnic. 

Later when we went to our first Sunday church service at the church I realized we would live in the ward when Charlotte and Lydia turned eight.  Over the year's I'd wondered what church building they would be baptized in, and we'd finally found it. 

Then it was our turn to go into the Relief Society Room.  At this point things just got surreal for me.  Part of me wanted to take in all the emotions I was feeling; happiness, pride, excitement, honor, and joy.  But there wasn't time.  And I probably would have just dissolved into a puddle of tears. So instead I just pushed all the emotions to the side and helped the girls through the door into the baptismal font.  Brandon went in the other door and went into the font.  

Charlotte was baptized first.  Lydia and I watched from the stairs.  Then it was Lydia's turn and Charlotte and I watched from the stairs.  

They both came out of the water saying things like, "that was so great!" and "I want to do that again!"  A little later Lydia told me, "Now I feel eight!"

Without sounding too melodramatic I was really happy that the girls had made the decision to follow Jesus and be baptized.  We've talked a lot over the past few months about what it means to be baptized. I hope the girls have listened to me reiterate the point that because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ they can have his help throughout their lives.   

I helped change the girls back into their dresses.  This was easier said than done because it's hard to put tights onto wet legs. 

After the girls were in their dresses we went back into the Relief Society Room and Brandon confirmed each girl a member of the church and gave them the Gift of the Holy Ghost.  Each blessing was really good. He spoke so clearly and distinctly that I thought that maybe he had a microphone.  But he was projecting really well.  It's good he was speaking loudly because the font was draining behind him and it was making a loud sucking sound as water went down the drain.  It was kind of funny. 

As soon as Lydia's blessing was done Derrick jumped up and tried to get into the circle.  He said, "Derrick's turn."  Veronica loudly said, "You have to be eight Derrick."  I said, "just wait 17 more months."

After that there were congratulations and hugs and just a general blur of happiness. I wish I could have been more present as I talked to everyone, but I was just out of it. 

We went back to the house and had a luncheon for everyone.  This was the first big event we've hosted in this house.   The next one will be Brandon's graduation party in almost exactly 6 months.  

We had soups, rolls, and veggies.  After everyone ate we pulled out the Pirate Ship birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday to the girls.  

It's almost a shame to eat things this cute looking. 

But we did it anyway.

The party was really good, but again I was in a general blur.  People would hand me things and I had no idea who handed me something or what I was supposed to do with it.  

My biggest regret is that we didn't have the girls take pictures with the people at the party.  That would have been a good thing to do.  I'll have to remember to do that at Derrick's baptism party.

People gradually began leaving.  When it was just my side of the family remaining we sang happy birthday to Walter and he opened his present from my parents.

Hillary gave Veronica a quick hair cut and then she had to be on her way.  My parents were the last to leave.  

After that Brandon and I looked at each other and realized we had NOTHING planned for the rest of the day.  Like nothing.  Brandon didn't even have to prep for a lesson on Sunday.  We'd been so focused on Birth-o-PrimaryProgram-o-Baptism-o-Ween that we hadn't put any thought into what to do when it was over.

It was a nice feeling.

Brandon ended up taking a 4 hour nap.  I took a 2.5 hour nap.  And the kids watched the Paw Patrol DVD at least two times through.

That evening we had fun just relaxing and playing in the kitchen.



After we put the kids to bed I remembered that I had to make a flier for a Relief Society Activity.  So I made that on the computer.  It's for a craft night so I decided it would be fun to put some cross stitch X's as a border. And then I decided that I should print one out on card stock and actually cross stitch the border on to it.  This would be the one that hung on the bulliton board outside the bishops office.  When it was done we scanned it so I could put it on Facebook.

This is the type of stuff that happens when I get bored.

Daylight Saving Time ended so Sunday morning was like waking up in Paradise.  Everyone slept in and we still made it to church on time.

Charlotte and Lydia sat on the stand during the first part of Sacrament Meeting and were welcomed into the ward.  Later Charlotte went up and bore her testimony all by herself.  She was so poised and confident.

After church Brandon helped the girls make cases for the scriptures we'd bought them as a baptism present.  I didn't feel like the girls were responsible enough for a super nice set of leather scriptures so we bought them a mini set.  They like them a lot.

And that brings us to the end of Birth-o-PrimaryProgram-o-Baptism-o-Ween.  Whew.  It has been a crazy celebration, but it's also been really special.  Charlotte and Lydia are such wonderful girls and we are so happy to have them in our lives.

Thanks for reading!