Isabelle's Baptism Day

Izzy got baptized! She was so excited for this special day. It really was a wonderful day, and we were so happy to share it with many friends and family.

I will never forget the look of pure happiness on her face when they opened the font doors, and there she was standing with Ben ready to get baptized. Her eyes were so big and beautiful looking around at everyone there to watch. She actually had to get dunked in the water twice! Ben had accidentally had his left arm to the square instead of his right. She had no problem with that, she told me later she liked it!

I felt the Spirit there very strongly, right from the beginning of the meeting. I really loved the words spoken during her confirmation, the Spirit really touched my heart, hearing her receive the Holy Ghost. This is a day that she has been waiting for! She asked Lily to give the closing prayer, and Lily did a really good job. It was just a sweet, simple prayer.





It was so nice to see my Nana, her Great Nana. It was great she was able to make the trip up.


She had asked each of her grandpas to speak, on Baptism and The Holy Ghost.

Here she is with Nana and Grandpa Herget:





And here she is with Grandma Gwenn and Grandpa Dennis:






I love Chloe's face here!





With all of her sisters before. Chloe is sure excited!




All the girls:






With some flowers we gave her. We also gave her her first set of "real" scriptures with her name on them, and a blue sparkly CTR ring she had asked for.





Here is a picture of Beckam after the baptism having some cookies. He took a bite out of one, put it back, took a bite out of another one, put it back, etc, etc. It was too cute! I just wanted to throw that in there!





It was a wonderful day! Baptism is the first ordinance you perform that leads you to eternal life eventually, and also to eternal family. We love Isabelle so much and are so happy she is baptized and confirmed a member of our church! She was so happy to go and sit with the bishopric this morning at church, which is customary in our ward. She got to sit up there with her friend Jordan. She is a little girl in Izzy's class who was also baptized yesterday, a couple of hours after.





Here we all are Easter Morning. I love these people so much!:

Easter Weekend with the Andersons

A lot of Ben's family came down to see us the Friday before Izzy's baptism, and so we went to the zoo, and then back to their hotel to go swimming and have pizza. It was a lot of fun! I didn't take a tonne of pictures (like I usually do!) but I did get a few.

Here are Olivia and Corbin giving each other a hug. They are about 3 weeks apart in age:

At the zoo, Katy with Chloe and Izzy:

Grandma Gwenn with 6 of her granddaughters:

Emily, Olivia and I with the giraffes:

Emily and Olivia:

Olivia LOVES Babies!

This weekend we got to meet, for the first time, our two newest nephews/cousins, Kessler and Sawyer! Olivia was on cloud 9! She absolutely loves babies. Before she went to Nursery, she LOVED all of the babies in Relief Society when she came with me. Sawyer and Kessler were no exceptions! She wanted to hug them, kiss them, hold them, give them their soothers and bottles, touch their eyes, foreheads, everything! It was so adorable we got a few pictures of it all!

It's Great To Be Eight

Isabelle is 8 years old! This is such a special birthday as it is when she is old enough to get baptized. She is so excited and happy to be baptized next weekend. We can hardly believe she is already 8! She is such a wonderful little girl, everyone loves her so much. She has been blessed with many talents and strengths. One of them is her love of the gospel. She loves to bear her testimony in church, go to Primary(she is really looking forward to Activity Days), read, mark, and look up scriptures, and be a missionary. She has a wonderful spirit about her that brings a lot of happiness into our home. She also really loves wall climbing (her latest activity), Irish dance, piano, swimming, making crafts, reading, writing, making up stories, coloring and drawing.

She is our eldest daughter, and she is a fantastic big sister. She is a strong leader with them and with other children, and is creative and full of great ideas. She can easily entertain herself and keep herself busy and happy.

Here are some pictures of her today on her actual birthday:

She was happy to wake up to a big "8" balloon and a panda googly eyed stuffie:

Her school had rollerblading lessons a few weeks ago, and she LOVED them! So we thought we would give her her own pair for the summer, or for when we go to the roller rink in town.

She was also really happy with the little purse and webkinz we gave her, something she told us she really wanted:

Happy 8th Birthday Isabelle! We love you so much and are so glad to have you in our family!

The Fizz Inflator Experiment (Part Of Isabelle's Birthday Party)

Isabelle's Science Birthday Party

Isabelle loves all things science, and this year she wanted a SCIENCE birthday party. I was so excited to do this party, I love science too! It was fun to come up with and plan all of the fun experiments. Here are the invitations we sent out. We just rolled them up into these colorful test tubes and sent them out! Even the goody bags were fun to do. I printed out this Biohazard sign, and taped it onto all of them.

We did the following experiments:

-The Imploding Soda Can (heating a can and dunking it in cold water, and it crushes instantly.)

-Blobs In A Bottle aka homemade lava lamps (dyed water, oil, and Alka Seltzet tablets to make the bubbles)

-The Fizz Inflator (baking soda and vinegar reaction that blows up a balloon)

-The Pepper Water Experiment (touching a soapy finger to peppered water and watching it disperse)

-Vacuum In A Bottle (flame in a bottle sucking in a peeled hardboiled egg)

-Soap Foam Creation (microwaving Ivory soap turns it into a giant bubble, did you know?)

-and for the grande finale, Diet Coke Geyser (diet coke and mentos)

I had everyone write down their Hypothesis first, and then we watched the experiment and then they wrote down the actual results. It was like a little classroom! They all loved it though, and it was fun to hear some of their predictions.

Here is the flask cake I made. I got the idea off the internet. The "foam" or "smoke" at the top is cotton candy. Isabelle was happy with it, and the kids all loved it too.

I gave each guest a little "lab coat" to protect their clothing. I just cut a plain white T shirt down the middle front, and voila an instant lab coat! We gave each child a name tag to wear too that read Dr.______---SCIENTIST.

Even Olivia wanted a name tag!

We also had "engineer scientists" and made marshmallow toothpick towers:

Here is a shot of them writing their hypothesis before an experiment:

This is the imploding soda can. I knew what was going to happen and so my eyes were closed because I was expecting the big pop sound.

We did that one twice, and I LOVE this picture of the girls' reactions when they saw it implode!

Their homemade lava lamps:

The ivory soap foam. Crazy!

Here they are doing The Fizz Inflator. They all really liked this one:

The Pepper Water Experiment:

Here is Ben performing the Vacuum In A Bottle. Definitely need an adult to do this one!

Cake time!

Presents!

And the big finale, the Diet Coke/Mentos Geyser! It worked great! Ben was a great sport to go out in the cold!

All the little Scientists:

It was a great party! Happy Birthday Isabelle! We love you so very much!