It's Great to Be Eight!

Olivia has been so excited to turn eight... she's been looking forward to her baptism and has been excited to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. We had a wonderful day with family and friends being with Olivia for such an important occasion.

She looked so happy all day long--it was so neat to see her preparing for such an important event.

Our little family just before the baptism...

Liv with Grandma Stover... she said a wonderful opening prayer and played her violin during the closing song while the kids sang "I Love To See The Temple."

Grandma Harper flew in from Connecticut to be with Olivia and celebrate some of our family birthdays in June. She gave a really nice closing prayer, but she said that next time she wants to give the opening prayer, because after seeing all those cute kids sing she got too emotional... I don't blame her, I was pretty teary too.)

Ryan and Liv... what a blessing to have him be able to baptize her!

This is Olivia's cute friend J.D. They have been friends since they were babies!

Grandpa and Grandma Cole were there too. We love having them live close by.

We were excited to have Liv's cousins there too... this is Abi who will be baptized next year.
We were so glad Megan and John could come. Meg's been pretty sick for a long time, so it was nice that she was able to get out and be with us.

Olivia and her uncle Tim... he played the piano for us and did a great job, especially for having never played one of the songs before.

We didn't get pictures with all of the special people that came... we were especially thankful for Kristen who led the music, Scott who gave a great talk on baptism (and mentioned something that has been on all of our minds--that our loved ones who have passed on were surely in attendance today), and David who gave a wonderful talk on the gift of the Holy Ghost.

We are so appreciative of all of our family members and friends who supported Olivia in this decision, even if they couldn't be with us.

After the baptism we had some lunch at our house and I couldn't resist taking a picture of the desserts... I especially love the square plate of "8" cookies that were made by my ever-talented and generous friend Jessica. They were a hit!

Olivia's great-grandpa Denver and great-grandma Jan visited us earlier to give her their gift--a new set of scriptures, complete with tabs and her name engraved on them. Olivia is so excited to have her own full set of scriptures.

It was a great day, filled with the Spirit, family, friends, and good food... what more could we ask for?


(Ryan took some beautiful pictures of Liv a couple of weeks ago that I need to figure out how to get my hands on so I can post them... he got some great ones of Coleman too... stay tuned!)