Colin's Baptism

There really is something magical about being 8 years old. Most of my childhood memories start about then and it freaks me out that I have a kid that old! Colin has matured a lot in the last few months, especially spiritually. He has become very very honest and always tries to do the right thing. He won't say if he has a favorite teacher or friend b/c he doesn't want to make anyone feel bad.

A good example is when he and Brannon accidentally found one of their gifts hiding in my closet. Brannon told me first b/c he figured since he saw it he should get to play with it. He PROMISED me Colin hadn't seen it yet and then again PROMISED he wouldn't tell Colin. Well a couple days later Colin said something that made it sound like he knew about it too. I pulled Brannon aside and AGAIN Bran PROMISED Colin didn't know. Well, Brannon needs some help with honesty because the next day Colin came up to me about in tears saying he needed to tell me something wrong he had done. They were playing hide and seek and found the gift and he felt SO bad that he hadn't told me yet. He hadn't even tried looking at it again and it was a total accident but he felt he hadn't been honest about it. (on a side note I again asked Brannon and only after telling him Colin told me he knew he finally spilled the truth. We had a good talk about being honest. He has 16 more months to mature up and I home it happens! :)

So on to the actual Baptism. I wasn't very happy when I found out they have to get baptized on a STake Baptism day. In my head I imagined something like an assembly line for kids. One in, one out and noting personal about it. So I will admit I threw a fit to myself for a while over it. But it ended up being perfect. We were sure Ben would have the day off since the baptisms are the first Sat of the month and his schedule doesn't come out until right before that but I prayed and prayed it would work out and it did. He only had 2 days off in Feb. and that sat was one of them. And the only other kid getting baptized was Nathan Garner, his friend at church, so it was really cool for them and everyone there was just from our ward so it really was a neat experience (I went to one with two different wards and it was like 2 diff. baptisms happening at the same time. No one talked to eachother and one talk was directed to one kid and the other talk to another. It was a strange feeling. I was so worried Colin's would be like that.) And it ended up being GREAT that it was a Stake thing b/c I didn't have to do a thing. We picked a song, asked my dad to say the closing prayer, and Colin's primary teacher Brother Edmunds, to give a talk and that was it. The Stake organized EVERYthing else so it was a really great stress-free day.

He was baptized on Feb. 4th, 2012 which happened to be exactly 34 years to the day since my dad was baptized as a college student at BYU. We thought that was pretty neat.

We had it in the Stake Center (our regular building) that is on the 3200 block of Pulaski Ave. in Chicago. You drive down a really busy Mexican street full of venders and stores and sales and people, then through a run down neighborhood before getting to the building. On the other side and like 10 feet away are train tracks and then factories. In the middle of the baptism we had to pause while a train passed b/c it was too loud to talk over :)



Colin and Nathan Garner

Colin and Calib

Washburn boys, Colin and Calib Beemster

Everyone who attended: The Edmunds, Staleys, Garners and their family, Quijanos, Hickmans, Washburns, President Cannon, Morales, Cottrells.

Sandra Morales and Shannon Cottrell, the Primary President and counselor

We have some friends who the boys LOVE. The Quijanos and the Staley's at church. Neither couple has kids but they are all so good with kids. The husbands offered to since a musical number during the baptism and it will forever remain a sweet memory for us. They say with just a simple guitar and no piano. They sang "Baptism" and "When I am Baptized".