Emma's Blessing

Emma smiling - I might photoshop this and take out the socks!

Michael looking smart, but showing the consequences of the face paint

Seems like emma's the only one who can work out where the camera is

Emma looks to be enjoying grandma's scarf

Granddad Adam, Grandma and Emma

Auntie Alyson things about eating Emma, and Alan looks on like a victorian villan

Emma with Uncle Neil and Auntie Maggie

Emma and Elmo (no relation to either the blacks or the adams)

Granny, Isla and Sandra

Emma with Granddad and Scott

Emma at the end of a long day with Maggie

After much tooing and froing going back to April this year, we've finally held Emma's blessing. We'd continually put it off to give me time to recover and other things, but eventually just chose a date and went with it.

Sarah had picked out a nice outfit for emma, which included matching gold shoes. She even attempted to control Emma's hair, and was pretty successful.

There were actually 3 baby blessings at church in Alloa on Sunday, which is the first time I've ever seen that many in a day. Ella Blyth and Joel Guscott were also blessed.

For those not familiar with the Latter-Day Saint practice of baby blessings, it's roughly equivalent to a christening. There's no godfather/mother, as we don't baptise children until they are 8. The blessing is really just an opportunity to name the child and speak a blessing as you feel it's appropriate. Michael screamed all the way through his one, but emma was very well behaved. Not a peep! Given, she's the oldest baby getting blessed that I've ever seen (it's usually done on the first sunday of the month following the child's birth and emma's 9 months old), but I was still pretty impressed. Uncles Neil, Lee and Alan helped out, as did both Granddads.

We got to go first so that I had as little time as possible to get tired by being at church. My highlight of the day was George Stewart saying "We'd like to ask those blessing the black baby to go first". Makes me chuckle just thinking about it.

Emma spent most of the remainder of sacrament meeting with Clair and Lee, who had to shoot off after church back to Dundee.

Everyone else piled back to our house, where there was some great food available. It was almost as if we were of italian descent, as the food was mostly pizza, macaroni and lasagne.

Michael had a bit of a rash on his face from the day before. He'd had his face painted at Liahona and Rebekah's birthday party. It seems he had a bit of an allergic reaction to the face paint.