Baptism for Rosemary

A couple of weeks ago, on September 26th, 2009 we had Rosemary baptised at a local Lutheran church. Her baptism weekend was very special to us! Leah and Kris flew in from California to spend the weekend with us and also to be Rosemary's godparents.

Rosemary was a little nervous about the actual ceremony and cried (a.k.a. screamed!) during the part where our pastor held her and doused her head with water. Typically, Lutheran pastors hold the baby and walk him or her around the church, showing off to the congregation. Instead of strolling around the church, our pastor was flexible and had Alina hold Rosemary at the front of the church while he finished the baptism ceremony, speaking about the significance of baptism.
(Special thanks to our friend Emilie who took the photos at the church).

Although most of the weekend was rainy, we had some nice sun on Sunday. Our church left us a yard decoration -- a wooden sheep with the words "Good Shepherd Lutheran Church welcomes Rosemary Heckard to our flock". Elliott and Rosemary loved having the sheep in our front yard. Elliott was sad the day we returned it to the church "for other babies to have a turn".

Steve took extra care to make Rosemary's baptism as special as possible! He made a two-tier cake, using Alina's Mother's buttercream frosting receipe. Steve also sculpted a pretty dove to sit on top of the cake.
Coincidentally, we were lucky to have our friends Jay and Laura in Chicago for the weekend, too. They are Elliott's godparents! What a wonderful afternoon, to have both sets of godparents at our house at the same time, even though they both live in different states! Jay and Laura attended the church service and also spent a little bit of time at our house enjoying cake and chicken wings before driving back to Wisconsin. We love having Jay and Laura and Kris and Leah as part of our extended family.