Charlie gets baptized!

Guess what happened this weekend?  Our baby boy got baptized.  Here is what baptism means according to our church:

"Holy Baptism is a Covenant between an individual and God.  It is God’s word to us, proclaiming our adoption by grace and our word to God, promising our response of faith and love."

So that's a pretty big deal right?  Absolutely because that means little mister Charlie officially is one of God's beautiful children.  I mean he already was (duh, all little babies are), but it was a nice ceremony with our family's to make it official.  He was baptized at the 5PM on Saturday service at Church of the Resurrection in Leawood.  Loved that all our families were able to come together at the service to see his baptism and then celebrate after.  It meant a whole lot to us that everyone came to the full service and took time out of their Saturday night!! And of course, the pictures!

Charlie with Aunt Lyndsay - his godmother

A great family picture!!! Love it!

The Bruns family

 

 

 

Jimmy's parents

Those were all taken before the service started and then at about 5:20, we were called up to the main stage and were on the big screen.  My sister in law, Lindsay, had told me earlier in the week that our niece, Maren, was just so excited for us to be on the big screen it was almost like we were celebrities.  So funny!!

Jimmy, Charlie and I went up there along with my sister, Lyndsay, who is his godmother and Jimmy's brother, Mike, who is his godfather.  It was so nice to have them up there knowing what great influences in Charlie's life and spiritual journey of his own that they will be!

Steven was the pastor that baptized Charlie and he is so nice and wonderful and we were blessed to have him!

After he was baptized, the service continued and it was a great sermon by Steven all about the true meaning of Thanksgiving and really shifting your thinking and mentality to be thankful for things that come about in your life - good or bad.  He even mentioned thinking of his 18 month old's poopy diaper as a "gift".  Which sounds like a stretch, but when you put it in perspective and realize that a poopy diaper means you were blessed with a sweet baby that is hopefully healthy, eating food...food that you can afford likely from the job that you are blessed to have.  You get it right?  The list goes on and on.  Just changing your frame of mind to be thankful for all things - good or bad - was a great message this time of year and always to remind us to thank God for all we are blessed with.

Charlie made it through half the sermon and then kept coughing (yep, he has a sweet cough.  He coughed mid-baptism too...oh boy...) and squirming around so that was this mama's cue to get up and go to the infant room.  I fed him right before the service and he was pooping a lot - so I was just thrilled that he didn't ruin his cute baptism white shirt before he actually got baptized...these boys.  We made it through the rest of the service in the infant room and then he started snoozing right when the service ended.   When we went out to meet all our family, it was so nice to see other familiar faces of friends that had come to see Charlie get baptized too!  Courtney and Ashley's mom and fiance were so sweet and came just to see him get baptized!  So nice of them.


And what event is complete without a nice little family party/get together to top it off? We had invited everyone to come to our house following his baptism to eat some dinner.  Everyone did come - except Bobby and Hillary because they were going to the Bruce Springsteen for Hillary’s birthday after.  It was so nice that they squeezed in coming to church to see Charlie get baptized first!!!  Oh and on a side note, Jimmy bought tickets with his friends a long time ago for the Bruce concert.  But when we were looking at weekends that were available for Charlie to get baptized, this was the only one.  So he was a good dad and sold his ticket to another friend and we were all together for Charlie’s baptism.  I’m sure his friends had fun and Jimmy was sad to miss out on the concert, but those are sacrifices that a parent has to make and miss out sometimes and he had such a great attitude about it and never mentioned it once!!  My aunt, Susan and cousin, Brett even made a special trip into Kansas City from Colorado to see him get baptized.  My grandma Stephens actually had eye surgery the Thursday before and wasn't able to make it to the baptism, but it was nice to have family in town to keep her company while she recovered.  We were all thinking about her!!

All right, now for some party pictures.  I will tell you that Jimmy thought I might have gone a little overboard with the décor and getting everything ready at our house, but I mean this is for Charlie, so it was all worth it.  Plus, I resorted to buying everything so there was no DIY here…which made it a lot easier to throw everything together! First off, I knew after seeing these delicious cookies at Vanessa’s baby shower, I had to have something like that.  Unfortunately, when I tried to order them from the same lady, she was booked like 2 months in advance.  While I planned ahead by about 3 weeks – I was definitely not thinking about this 2 months ago.  So that is when I found these cute cookies from Sarah’s Sweets Shoppe.  I called her right away and got my order in for similar cookies, but just a little different and not so girly . And they turned out SO awesome.  I could not have been more happy when I picked them up on Saturday morning.  Sarah runs this shop out of her home and did such a great job!!  Check out her website for some of her great other cookie designs and use her for your next event . You won’t regret it – the cookies were so cute, very reasonably priced, AND so delicious.  Best of all worlds!!

Loved this cookie with his full name

Super cute packaging!

Here is the dessert table before we left for church (was waiting to put the desserts out).  The balloons hanging from the ceiling with marbles in them to keep them down was totally a pinterest steal and then I got the little pinwheel things from Hobby Lobby at the last minute because I wanted something else.  The banner (you will see the original banner) was just a buy from Party City and was so awesome because you could personalize it to say whatever you wanted with cute little stickers. And I had some leftover and was going to put “treats” or “desserts” but didn’t have enough “S” stickers left – so I went with “enjoy”. 

Then here was the main banner that said “God Bless Charlie” on both sides.  For $6.99 – I thought the personalized banner was a steal and looked great and was much easier than me making my own!!!

And finally – I hurried to get the cookies and cupcakes on display after we got home from church (my sister was sweet enough to make the delicious cupcakes!!).  I thought the whole table turned out great and I loved it!!!  I really loved that I put the invite on display in a picture frame and his school picture.  Yep, I love that picture and am that mom that bought school pictures…

Ok so I’m sure that most readers wouldn’t notice, care or wonder where this table came from in the dining room, but it was a last minute change in our normal dining room.  After searching pinterest for all these super cute baptism parties, I knew I wanted a little dessert table to showcase the awesome desserts we were having – but couldn’t figure out where we’d put it.  Well – then I got creative and curious if the hutch on our china cabinet would easily come off.  And it did.  So I took everything out of the hutch, took the glass shelves out and made Jimmy help me move it.  And wa-la…we had a dessert table.  And I loved it!  This space sure looks different from where it started….

Spring 2011 after getting the china cabinet

Early 2012 after spray painting the china cabinet, chairs and new table

And the nice little display

Overall - we had a great time!  I took no pictures of the party at our house (trust me, there were people there), but I think it was a good time!  Our nieces and nephews all have a great time playing play station or wii or getting on Netflix.  Their new thing is going to play in Charlie’s room – so when he fell asleep in my arms mid-party and I took him upstairs to put him to bed, they were all surprised to see us up there when they ran in.  It was pretty cute because all the girls gave him little kisses goodnight.  So sweet. 

The party ended on a sad note with the number 1 ranked Wildcats losing their first game of the football season to non-ranked Baylor…there were not too many people left watching it because it didn’t look good at halftime.  Charlie had a blast getting held by all his wonderful grandparents, aunts and uncles and even great aunts and uncles that made it over.  Such a fun time celebrating such a sweet little boy.  Just love him so much and we are so blessed with such a wonderful baby, wonderful family and a great and memorable baptism.  Thanks to everyone who came to help celebrate!