Labor Day and Sean's Baptism

It's been over a week since we said good-bye to Velvet, so I guess the blog will go back to regularly scheduled posting.  I don't think I have it in me to make any more Velvet posts right now.  Maybe later.  I still have some video I need to process and put up.

I've been waiting for Melissa Mitchell Barnhisel! (ahem) to make her post about Sean's baptism first, but who knows when she will catch up, so I guess I'll go first.  Hers will be way different from mine anyway since she's the mom of the baptism boy.

We were home from Salt Lake for about 2.5 weeks before we headed back up for Labor Day.  This time, we left the puppies with Grandma and Grandpa and went without them for a quick trip.  We headed up on Wednesday afternoon, slept in Farmington (holy nice Marriott in Farmington, NM! - too bad we only stayed there for 7 hours), and then drove the rest of the way on Thursday so that David could make the Utah football game.  He wasn't complaining about the trip too much when he realized he could go to that game with Jared.   He was pretty stoked to go to the stripe-out the stadium event.  Looks like the fans did a pretty good job of it.

Friday, I drove David and Brian up to the top of Guardsman's Pass and dropped them off with their bikes.  It was a gorgeous drive up Big Cottonwood canyon, but I still had the sinus infection from the previous trip and I thought for sure that my head/ears would explode before I got back to the bottom of the canyon.  Altitude air pressure changes are real!
They had a good ride and eventually made it back to Salt Lake.

The rest of us just spent some good cousin and Grandma time.  Oh, and miss Kate got a new kitten the week before.  How VERY lucky for us that we got to be there when the little thing was still tiny and ultra cute.  Harriet about had a heart-attack over the cuteness.  I barely escaped having to get her a kitten by the skin of my teeth.  I have to admit, there are very few things on the planet as cute and fun as a kitten, especially, an orange kitten named SUNFLOWERS (yes, the s on the end is important!)

Kate was such a good cousin and did a really good job of sharing her brand new kitty.  I couldn't believe how much time she gave up to Harriet so that Harriet could hold and play with her.  

Grace and Sean... always bonding...

Grandma Primmer and "baby" Sloan.  Yo, Jess, that baby is like a toddler!!

 The little girls really love their "mo-Deb"

 perfection on the cuteness scale

the girls tried to drown baby cousin in the hot tub, but he floated

Saturday was baptism day.  We got everyone dressed up and looking their best.

Since Melissa had done a lot for Grace's baptism, we returned the favor and the girls did a lot of the program in the chapel before the baptism.  Grace played the primary song "When I am Baptized" on her acoustic guitar for the musical number.  She learned it just for Sean and did such a great job playing it.  Harriet gave an amazing talk on baptism. The talk itself was just something I wrote for her to give, but the amazing part was how great she was at reading it and speaking in front of the entire chapel.  I could not believe how brave she was or how well she could read it without hesitating or stumbling over words.  There are few times I have been that proud of her.  This was also at a time when she was struggling with serious anxiety and self doubt.  No one could believe it that she just got up and read it flawlessly with a strong voice.

Sean was a total star.  He was also very worried about the whole thing - getting in the water, getting dunked, etc.  But, when it came time, he just got in the water and was ready to go under before it was even quite time for the dunking.  He was so awesome and it was cool to see him so happy and proud of himself.  David ended up being the lucky uncle who was chosen to do the baptism.  I know it wasn't ideal, but I know he was flattered to be asked and to be trusted by Sean.

For me, the really cool thing was to be with my whole family.  It is getting rarer for all of us to be together.  Having both my parents, all my living grandparents, all my sisters and all the cousins together at once is just so nice.  My family never fails when it comes to supporting each other, no matter the situation.  I wish my dad hadn't driven away so quickly before we had a chance to take a picture outside of the church.  But, we have a bad track record of getting full family photos to turn out anyway.

I love Melissa and her family to death, and I'm so glad she let us be such a big part of Sean's baptism.  It's hard to live so far away from them sometimes, but times like these almost make up for it.