Vivien's Baptism

Today was a special day as we celebrated Vivien's baptism with our church family, our extended family, and some favorite friends.

As you can see below, we have a little sinner on our hands! This funny picture turned up out of my little photo shoot on Friday. Of course, our inner-middle-schooler likes to laugh at it but we find it to be a good representation of our attitude towards God without the working of His grace in our hearts. Yet by His grace, we can say (as we reminded in today's sermon), "We are great sinners but He is a great Saviour!"

Sweet Vivi Leigh, we pray that you are awakened from the stupor of sin and that you know the perfect grace that our God has promised to us. Our love for you is enormous but God loves you greater still. We will be imperfect parents but He is a perfect God and Father. You are a joy to us and we look forward to seeing the fruit of God's grace at work in your life! Yummy food...pretty flowers...cute girls!

Talking to KK (we missed getting a pic of GG and KK with Vivien but they were here and worked hard to help us make this day special)

Our family minus Amity

The Deans

The Connells

The Beldings

The Browns

Lots of love from sweet cousins

Playing outside...a beautiful day

Video of the baptism to come later!

Can you tell me how to get...?

How to get to AMITY'S STREET?
When Amity woke up from her nap (a very long Benadryl-induced nap), she came into the dining room to see her party and gave some sweet hugs to her Sesame Street friends.

The table was prepared with placemats and stickers.

The balloons were a favorite thanks to GG!

Grover and Elmo were ready to par-tay!

Even Baby Vivien got dressed up for the occasion...

and received a kiss from Big Sister. Friends arrived and received hugs.

Cousins came.

Yummy pizza was consumed.

And then...(drum roll)...the cake was brought out! Famous "Aunt Gecky Cake" as Amity calls it.

Even though Baby Vivien didn't get any cake, she got to enjoy some snuggles with GG.

The cake was as yummy as it was cute!

And so were the cake-eaters!

Then we headed outside for bubbles...in honor of Ernie!

There was swinging as well.

And more bubbles.

All for a very cute two-year old! Happy, happy times Miss Amity! You are blessed to have such sweet cousins and friends to celebrate with you!

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The mommy of this little girl:

emailed the mommy of this little girl:

and organized a morning playdate for these girls that WILL be good friends! :)

Even after several peptalks and telling her daddy at the pre-playdate breakfast, "I share toys!", Amity had to spend a couple of minutes in timeout when she realized what "sharing toys" really meant. All in all, it was a fun time and the mommies (both real and pretend) had a great time together! Let's do it again soon!

Morning at the Museum

Our friends Rebecca and Ella had the fantastic idea to spend the morning inside at the Museum of Nature & Science at Fair Park. Having gone here on quite a few field trips over the past ten years with second and third graders, it was hard to believe that our little 15-month-old girls were actually big enough to go to a MUSEUM! As you can see, they loved it and, for the moms, the best part was not having to ride a school bus on the way home!
Are these eggs or balls? Thankfully, these chickens laid wooden eggs!
This was Amity's typical position for most of the morning. She still prefers knee-walking. The museum should have paid US for cleaning their floors!

Our little farm girls liked carrying around "purses" full of vegetables.

This pumpkin made me ready for fall! I can't wait to take Amity to the pumpkin patch again!

My favorite part of the water tables was the cute smocks the girls wore.

Ella has, apparently, never met a waterdrop she didn't like!

After spending lots of time in the big kids' area (0-6 year olds), we discovered a little area just for toddlers. It was so nice and peaceful without any of those pesky kids and teachers on field trips! :)

These mats were perfect for Amity to crawl/knee-walk/walk all over!

Our little techies didn't seem to notice that the computer was frozen.

Thanks for the great idea, Rebecca and Ella! We always enjoy our time with ya'll! According to Google Maps, the museum was just 12 minutes from our house. I think we will be visiting it much more often from now on!