4th of July 2008

The majority of our 4th of July was spent in bed, resting... well coughing and hacking and sneezing mostly, but trying to get better from being so sick.

I really missed going to the parade and all the fun festivities in town.

But we did manage to get out of bed for one very special event!

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A Baptism!

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One of my husbands scouts who he has been working with over the past 2.5 years and mentoring on the guitar was finally ready for baptism. Actually he was ready and really excited about 2 years ago when his Mom got baptized.

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But his parents are divorced and his father was not ready to give permission for him to be baptized and since he was only 12 at the time... he needed that to move forward.

So finally with his fathers blessings Luke entered the waters of baptism on the 4th of July, and he asked my husband to do the ordinance, since his Dad is not a member of our church, and does not have the proper Priesthood authority. He had family there with him for his special day, his mom and dad of course, and he has a younger sister, and his grandparents on his fathers side came to be with him also, they are a very quiet shy family, but you could feel how special Luke is to them, and it was really neat to be a part of that. Our Bishop has grown very close to this kid too, and he had such nice words to say about Luke, I could see his grandmother smiling from ear to ear - I know she felt all of our love for her grandson too.

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My Strong Silent Mysterious Man was so honored and excited to be a part of this.

It meant even more to him, since he was not able to baptize our son. So he could kind of relate to Luke's Dad and sympathize with his situation. He was very comfortable with my husband since he had been at a few jam sessions and knew he and Luke had a good relationship. Luke also asked our teenager to give a talk on the Holy Ghost.

So most of our day was spent helping him to prepare that, since he only had one day notice, he was pretty nervous about saying the all right things.

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It was just a very special evening for all of us!

The teenager did a great job presenting his talk... My husband was very moved by the power of the ordinance, we all cried and talked about it together afterwards.

I couldn't think of a better way to spend my 4th of July celebration!

It will be a special day Luke will always remember as well!

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It was still warm and all of us were weak from fighting off the sickness at our house, so we came home and changed clothes after the baptism and would go get a bite to eat for dinner. When my Mom was visiting in May we found some patriotic t-shirts and got them to wear for 4th of July.

So I made the boys put them on, so we could get a picture together in them before the day was over.

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So we changed into them for pictures, and then proceeded out to grab a bite for dinner at Taco Bell... as we got out of the car, the teenager looked down and said out loud "OH GREAT, WE ARE WEARING MATCHING SHIRTS"!!!

We laughed so hard. Here he was on the 4th of July - 16 years old being dragged around by his parents in matching flag shirts!

I will have to add that to our list of most embarrassing moments for the teenager!

It wasn't intentional, but funny none the less!

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Somewhere in time, you do transition from being the embarrassed teenager to getting a kick out of your own embarrassed teenager!

I could feel his pain (because I remember all too well the embarrassment of my parents), but it was still really funny!

So here we all are on our back porch watching fireworks until the mesquitos starting eating on me... then I was back in bed for the night!

Happy Independence Day!!