Gemma's Blessing

One of the many joys of being a father and a Priesthood holder is the opportunity I have to give my wife and child blessings from time to time.  In our faith a Priesthood holder gives a child a blessing shortly after they are born.  It's not so different than a Christening in other faiths, for example.  Ever since Jody and I found out that we were pregnant we've been looking forward to this moment.  Jody, with all of her creative and crafty abilities, decided to make this an extra special experience.  She decided to take her mother's wedding dress and use it to sew Gemma's blessing dress.  I honestly thought this was pretty ambitious when she first told me about the idea but I told her to go for it.  The final result was absolutely beautiful.

This is a pic of Jody's mom and dad on their wedding day...

First Jody had to soak the dress in Oxi Clean (Billy Mays would be so proud!).  You can see how yellow the water turned from the soak.

This was her mother's dress after it had soaked for 6 hours in the Oxi Clean bath.

One of the many downsides of living so far from our family is that we couldn't share this moment in person with our loved ones.  Thankfully, though, we were blessed to have some very dear friends and at least one family member join us for the blessing.  My very good friend Steven George stayed the weekend with us.  For those that don't know Steven he has been commuting back and forth between Arkansas and New Jersey for several months now waiting on his house to sell.  During this time he's had to spend a considerable amount of time away from his 3 kids and his wife.  It was great to have him with us and we are thankful that his wife allowed him to stay with us instead of traveling back to Arkansas for the weekend.  Our friends Conrad and Jill Tompkins from Arkansas also joined us for the blessing along with their 3 kids and dog.  Fortunately for them the trip was quite a bit shorter as they live in Southern New Jersey.  Jody's oldest brother, Jared, and his oldest daughter, Hannah, also stayed with us for a few days because Jared had to attend a conference down in Bethlehem, PA.

Here's the Tompkins oldest daughter, Ella, holding Gemma...

The Smith and Tompkins families.

Geeking for the camera...

Jody, Gemma, and me with Jared and Hannah...

I can't take these guys anywhere...

All the lovely ladies...

The Tompkins family also brought along their little dog, which didn't exactly get along well with our dog (Mia) and cat (Chloe)...

It's amazing how the Lord blesses you during these important moments.  All this time we thought that the blessing would be a moment that we could only share with our friends at Church, but we were blessed to have close friends and some family with us over the weekend.