Hannah's Baptism!

I feel like I just barely posted about Chance getting baptized - and now it's Hannah's turn!  Hannah's birthday is March 14 - meaning she could be baptized the first week of April.  But since the first week of April was General Conference, baptisms were scheduled for the second Saturday of April.  That day happened to be Hannah's first dance competition of the year, and I did not want to rush from competition over to baptism.  I wanted it to be a special, relaxing day for her.  So we moved the baptism to the first week of May - May 4.  I told her she will always remember her baptism day because it is "May the Fourth be with you."  LAME haha!!  

I took Hannah to "Just Girls Stuff" to pick out a dress to wear after she was baptized.  They had the store all set up just like a bridal store, where the girls could try on dresses in front of giant mirrors and twirl around on the pedestals.  She was in heaven!  I think she tried on every, single white dress in sizes 6, 7,  and 8 dress in the store!  There was one dress that looked really similar to my wedding dress...so I told her that.  I didn't want to sway her opinion at all, but I think I did.  After lots of trying on, she narrowed the dresses down to the one that looked like my wedding dress, and this other one with little flowerettes all over.  She tried both of them on two or three times and couldn't decide!  I told her she needed to pick the dress that SHE loved, not what I thought.  So she picked the one with all of the flowerettes on it.  It was perfect - it was so "her"!!  We picked out some sparkly high-heel shoes, a little jewelry, and her baptism outfit was compete.  She looked beautiful.  

I was lucky enough to take Hannah's and Esi's baptism pictures together at the Brigham City temple.  I told Hannah she could choose anywhere she wanted to have her pictures done, and that is where she chose.  I am thinking she might have chosen the Ogden temple had it not been under major reconstruction.  So fun to have two best buddies at the temple together in their baptism dresses.  They looked like little angels.  

We decided to have the baptism dinner at the church, similar to what we did for Chance's.  It was so nice to not have to clean the house and stress out if there was going to be enough room.  Hannah wanted to choose all of the tablecloths and decorations herself.  She wanted "spring colors", so she had purple, pink, green, blue, yellow, and orange tablecloths.  We made number "8" donuts buy putting two little mini donuts on top of each other on to a colorful stick so they looked like the number '8'.  Then we put them in little colored buckets in the centers of the tables.  I was not thinking, so I have zero pictures of the final product, but we thought they were cute!  We had meatball sandwiches (same as Chance's) and Grammy's famous chocolate cake.  

On the big day, Hannah got into her baptism jumpsuit and took some darling pictures with her brothers.  She was all smiles.  Then, she walked into the water and Shawn baptized her.  When she came out of the water, I expected this magical, fresh-and-clean smile.  Instead, Hannah squinted up her eyes, scrunched up her nose, and stuck out her tongue in the worst face I have ever seen!!  I about died!!  I didn't prepare her and tell her to smile when she came out!  I didn't think I had to??  She said it was because she got water in her mouth and it tasted gross.  Oh well, it gave everyone a good laugh.  Then Shawn confirmed her with a beautiful blessing.  I asked Hannah how she felt after the confirmation and she replied, "Safe.  I felt really safe with all of those people around me."  I completely agree - one of the best feelings in the world is to simply feel "safe."  All-in-all, I think it was a great day.