The Baptism of our littlest guy and our oldest turns 17 on the SAME DAY

"Getting baptized today! November 26th, 2021  It's the same day as my biggest sister turns 17 years old!"

Seventeen years after our firstborn made her big debut in the world, our youngest got baptized.  Our longtime dear friend was supposed to be in town to baptize him at our parish, but his father had emergency heart surgery earlier that week and he wasn't able to come.  He has been at every other one of our children's baptism, and actually baptized everyone since he was ordained the day before Drew was baptized by him in 2011.  So the last minute change was for our deacon to baptize Roman.

It was a tiny ceremony in the baptistry, but my absolute favorite thing was that my sweetie pie gave me the happiest smiles during most of the ceremony!  His joy was contagious!

Godparents

My five handsome boys!

Love this!

Hannah was quite the trooper with her birthday being a bit usurped by the little man, but we did manage to take her out after the baptism to eat Chinese food and later to sneak out with the girls to get special Boba drinks which is Hannah's current obsession.  This particular place has cups with two sections so you can have two different flavors at the same time which is why I drove so far to go there, but they were out of stock of the cups!  Happy birthday, Hannah!  We love you!

 

A New School Year Begins

The big kids started school on a Wednesday, and so we took the rest of that week at home to finish getting ready for school at home to begin.  The first day of our homeschool was on the following Monday and we finished by 1pm so we went down to our neighborhood pool for an hour in the afternoon to celebrate the first day of school.

The first week went well minus the regular stuff like just getting back into the swing of things and forgetting basic multiplication facts that they haven't used in a while.  The second week, however, we hit a little hiccup with Drew's Composition work.  Nothing that couldn't be fixed with a lot of extra copywork assigned.  By Wednesday of the that week he was saying Composition was better than the copywork.

This is a random picture of Bobby and his new found "muscles."

Genevieve is still teaching Bobby how to play the piano at a very slow pace.  He is now playing Old
MacDonald daily.

Our newest godson was born and we had his baptism after church one Sunday.  More pictures should be coming soon, but I took this one during the reception.

Genna holding our newest godson

The second week of school Genevieve's DPS appointment finally arrived and she was able to get her permit.  Now we have two drivers in the house!  That exclamation point implies more fear than joy.

Genna and her permit!!!

 

The Godfather Again

A year ago Brian was asked to be the godfather of the little boy in the picture below and I missed the baptism because Hannah was going into surgery for an emergency appendectomy as the baptism began.  This year I was able to attend the baptism of his next godson.  He's a popular guy!

So both of these boys in this picture are his godsons.

Brian and his Godson

It was a beautiful baptism, and I am almost finished with his saint doll that I am making for his gift.  I have come to just accept that I am always three steps behind these days.

Rome Sweet Home: Part 3, The Baptism!

Father Brian Reedy has been at all six of our children's baptisms, and has now presided over half of them.

 Saturday morning we got up and started getting ready for the big day!  We took the Metro over to the church, Santa Susana, an English speaking parish near the embassy.  Bobby took a little nap in the Ergo on the way and woke up ready to receive the Holy Spirit and enter the Church.  Some friends of ours that just happened to plan a Thanksgiving trip to Rome were able to join us for the baptism as well.  It was a cozy little group of us that was made up mostly of children.

Getting ready for the big event

 It was a beautiful ceremony, wonderful friends, and memories to last a lifetime.  Too bad Bobby won't remember it.  Good thing I have so many great pictures.  I have more and better photos from this baptism than any other child's because there were lots of people taking pictures with really good cameras instead of my plain old camera.  I'm no photographer.

Drew was tracing the sign of the cross on Bobby's forehead.

One of our friends that had planned that Thanksgiving Rome trip that I talked about.  Little did he know that he'd end up doing one of the readings.

I adore my angel baby!

Here are some of those precious children witnesses I spoke of.

All the boys have worn this gown I bought in Belgium, and every one of them has tried to eat the ribbons that tie in front.  I was trying to untangle them from his grasp.

The older three children were sitting in the pews and the two two year olds were taking advantage of their parents having their hands full and wandering around a bit.

Oh, look we have an extra two year old!  My godson sneaked in this picture.

 We had some trouble getting a decent picture of the six of them.

 Bobby is blessed with some pretty amazing godparents too.  They are really faithful and faith-filled friends.  What a beautiful picture of the three of them!

 After the baptism, we walked over to the Capuchin Crypt decorated with bones.  The kids were not nearly as impressed as I thought they would be.  Then we went next door to Eataly that serves hot dogs, hamburgers, and, of course, craft beers.  I was not a big fan of the food, but the french fries were good and the beer was pretty good too.  It was probably my fault for ordering the spicy barbecue sauce in Italy.  It was more like a sweet and sour sauce, and not spicy at all.  I had a pumpkin beer.  Normally I am not a beer drinker, but my husband is trying really hard to make me one.

A celebratory beer...I'm not a huge beer fan, but if it's easy on the hops then I can handle it better.  From the look of it, Bobby may be a beer drinker one day, huh?

Then we took a quick tour of Santa Maria Maggiore and went to St. Ignatius of Loyola for a Mass of thanksgiving for Bobby at the altar that is on the relics of St. Robert Bellarmine's incorrupt body.  How crazy is that?!  The very saint he named for!  A couple of Father Brian Reedy's friends that were visiting Rome the same week all the way from Texas came to the baptism and held Bobby for me for the Mass.  that was a huge blessing because my back was killing me by this time (now 4pm) after having him in my arms or in the carrier the whole day.  The cutest part was that he was so elated and happy during the whole Mass, making the sweetest giggles and coos.  It was perfect.

 I should mention that Bobby pooped out of his diaper right before I put him in his baptism gown all over his white, adorable outfit he was going to wear the rest of the day.  So we had to default to the extra outfit that had been in the backpack all week which was orange and pretty much ruined this last picture.  :(  The bright side was that he didn't ruin his baptism gown.

Saints Robert Bellarmine and Cecilia, pray for us.