Baptism and Hawaiian 8th Birthday

This kiddo turned 8 years old! She is gorgeous inside and out, thoughtful beyond her years, a caring friend to have adventures with, and loves God with all her heart. She decided to be baptized, which happened to be the day after her actual birthday so we had an all-day event including her baptism, luncheon, and a water activity!

Baptism

Our daughter was able to share her baptism with another little girl she had made friends with when her Mom and I served in Activity Days together. The welcome table had a framed photo of each girl in their beautiful white dresses. It was so heart warming seeing them include each other, share pictures together, hug each other every chance they got, write each other notes for their baptism… I certainly felt the love and light of Christ when they were around. Since we were sharing, we only had to prepare half of the program, too! Uncle Thad gave the prayer, my sister led music, and Aunt Tori gave an amazing talk on the Gift of the Holy Ghost complete with visuals. And of course she got to have special time with Daddy.

The highlight for me was being able to be behind the scenes where they enter the water—such a unique vantage point to witness her baptism. I felt so proud that she was brave and only needed to do it once because she went all the way in the water (as a child I had to go under at least a couple of times since my feet popped up!). She radiated and had a beautiful smile as she retrieved her glasses and I welcomed her right there with a fluffy towel and a damp embrace. Her confirmation where she received the Gift of the Holy Ghost was so touching and powerful, with both the words of the actual blessing and also the spirit and love that could be felt there. She was encircled by so many of the wonderful men in her life who love her—her father, Uncles, great-Uncles, our bishop—united to bless her. Afterwards she gave me the biggest hug and there was so much love from friends and family.

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Baptism Luncheon

A full house of Lloyds was awesome! There wasn’t time to prep food before serving at the party, so I made stuff the night before or heated it in the morning. On the menu was a classic Hawaiian plate lunch! We did white rice in the Instant Pot, crockpot smoked pulled pork with BBQ sauce, cut up fruit and grapes, mango peach salsa and organic tortilla chips, a couple of bags of our favorite sunflower crunch salad, Hawaiian style macaroni salad, and purified ice water infused with watermelon and lemon! Instead of individual food labels, I just had a menu printed and framed.

Miss L handmade friendship bracelets that we attached to favor bags of dried mango as Thank You’s

This cake makes me both proud and mortified. I spent at least 4 hours last night salvaging a failed guava cake—the cake stuck to and crumbled in the pan! It was a special blend of guava and strawberry, so it took me a while to make the batter and I didn’t have time to redo it. I was able to piece together one of the layers with frosting. My heavy whipping cream had frozen solid in the fridge so I had to put all the other parts on hold while I bought more at 2am. The guava sauce set the first time, but after I reheated it after coming home from the store it wouldn’t set and I didn’t have time to remake it! The cake sat in the fridge unevenly because of all the other stuff jammed in there so it didn’t come out level for the sauce … absolute disaster. It was a tiny cake for how many people we had, but it was yummy!

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Water Activity

We were tired from the party earlier and everyone said they wouldn’t make it, so I was going to cancel this part of the birthday. However, I got a call from some friends who had already driven down so we met them at the park. It was really windy and a storm was coming in, so all my table decorations blew away and we ended up packing up 15mins in when thunder and lightning showed up. The girls were able to get some sand time and rode in the float before we left. We moved it to our swimming pool so they could continue playing until the scheduled end. The girls had a great time!