Winry's Baptism!

We now have more kids baptized than not!  So I'd say things have been pretty successful.  Winry was baptized this past Saturday, and a whole lotta friends came to support her.  Monica and I are so proud of her.  She's been doing great and reading her scriptures and saying her prayers and has been trying her best to prepare herself, and the day finally came!  We're all so proud of you Winry!

Monica caught this rather gorgeous sunrise sometime this week.

Grayson LOVES spinning.  It's honestly a problem and he usually spins way too much on the ground, but give him a swing?  Well, it's his favorite thing to do out on the playground.  He's recently discovered that I'm willing to be spun up in the swing too, so now whenever I get home from work he wants to head right out to the swing.  I don't have the same resilience for it that he does.  If I'm laying the wrong way I'll feel not so great when I'm done, but I guess it's helping keep me young at heart, right?

We were trying to take apart this cardboard mini-store that we had to put in the recycler because it's falling apart, and Jelly just couldn't resist getting her one last change to climb in.  Even if that means squirming under the roof while it's upside down and popping up in the sun roof.

I got some good pictures of Grayson from school.  This might be from this week, or from last.  I'm never really sure when I get them exactly when they're from.  Grayson's New Year's resolution for 2025 was to cut something every day with scissors, and he did a pretty good job.  It's even carrying into the new year at least a little bit.

Here's his class in a group hug.  I have no context, but it is a cute picture.

Guests started arriving Thursday night, which meant it was party central at our house from Thursday on.  If memory serves correctly, my sisters came Friday, and they all happened to wear all black as their travel gear.  This did not go unnoticed to Grayson who started calling them his "black aunts," and he proceeded to rank them 1, 2, and 3 for the rest of the weekend and had them compete for his favor.  They put him to bed, and he refused to let me in too, so I went and changed into all black so he wouldn't notice me when I came in.  We're like zebras now, you can't even tell where one starts and the other ends, or how many of us there are!

The highlight of Saturday was Winry's baptism.  We showed up a little early to work on setting up and taking some pictures.  Eleanor and Clara were able to travel out from Colorado with Hannah, their mom, to attend the baptism.  It was so great that they could come join us.

Here's Winry and I listening to Brooke's talk on baptism.  She did a great job.

And here's Winry being baptized.  I'll assume that Oriah took this picture at a time when it was okay to do so!  She was managing my phone for me to make sure we captured all the best moments.  But really, pretty cool picture to have.  Also, the turnout was incredible!  We had a lot of people come support Winry from our new ward, and from our previous ward we just left a few months ago.  It was awesome to see so much support there for Winry, especially from her friends.

Our kids, as well as the Cammack girls and Laura sang a musical number together.

And we of course had Winry's confirmation as well.

... there's no cat here.... moving on.

Winry had her butter themed party for real Saturday evening while everyone was still out with us.  There were all kinds of yellow/butter decorations, and for dinner we had soup and lots of kinds of butter with biscuits and crackers.

Here are all the kids that were in attendance. Though as I wrote that, I realized that only Jonathan joined the picture, but Cameron and William were here as well.  So I guess this isn't quite ALL the kids under the giant butter stick.

And we all sang Happy Butterthday to Winry and watched her blow out the candles.  We watched Descendants and ate buttered popcorn and had cake to close out the evening.

The kids all had a great time out on the playground.  It's been really fun to have, and everyone really loves to go play on it when they come over.  It's also nice to have an easy way to get the kids outside.

And that brings birthday season to a close.  It opens in October with Grayson, and ends in January with Winry.  Things should finally calm down around here for a little, though if things being "uncalm" means visitors, maybe it's better to be busy!  Tomorrow's a holiday, so we've got most everyone still for at least part of the day before we have to come back down to reality.  Also, this weekend has been so packed with things it's felt like a full on mini-vacation, not just a weekend!  Thanks everyone who came and helped make it so much fun.