The Peytons: Caroline's Baptism

On Easter Sunday, we baptized sweet Caroline. We believe that in baptizing her we are placing a symbol of hope on her as an extension of God's promises to the children of believers. It is mine and George's hope and prayer that she will grow up and never remember a day that she didn't know the Lord as her savior, companion, and friend. The gift of Caroline's life has already blessed our family in so many ways and we feel so honored and humbled to be entrusted with her care. Here we are above before the service. Caroline is wearing the same gown that Ainsley wore four and a half years ago. In so many ways, it feels like we were just standing, smiling, and rejoicing in God's goodness in giving us baby Ainsley... and then baby Bailey... and now baby Caroline. It still baffles me how greatly we have been blessed.

Below Bailey is dancing to the opening music as the service started. He usually doesn't join us until the end of the service so he thought it was extra special that he got a cross cookie (for easter) and got to be in "big church" right from the start. He is our dancing boy and was giving us all sorts of good moves!

Shortly after the service started, Caroline fell asleep in my arms. She amazingly stayed asleep until right before our pastor took her from me to pour water on her head. I was thankful she slept but also thankful that she woke up independently rather than being startled awake by water. Here we are below saying our parental vows that we will raise Caroline according to His will with the help of the Lord. When Ainsley was being baptized, I remember being able to really focus on these vows as we were saying them.... now I'm just glad that we are given them ahead of time to pray over because at the moment, all we can do is make sure that the older two kiddos aren't running around like crazy in front of the church. And as these next few pictures show, we can barely do that! I think it is a hilarious series and I'm so thankful to our friend Michelle for capturing what was really happening, all the twirling, secret telling, posing, whining, etc. I'm also of course grateful that our church is so excepting and used to little people!

Caroline was baptized by Tim Frickenschmidt, who is now our church's head pastor. We have been blessed to have him baptize all our children. As he held Caroline he said a few words about how even though all our children are blessings, Caroline felt like an extra special gift because of how bad my back was after Bailey was born we weren't sure if I was going to be able to have more children. This choked me up then and does again now as I'm typing. On Caroline's birth announcement we included the verse "Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens. Your faithfulness to the skies." Psalm 36:5. And that is truly how we feel. Caroline is such a testament to the Lord's love and faithfulness in our lives.

Here is Tim placing water on Caroline's head, giving her the sign and seal of Christ.

As I mentioned above, our church is full of kids! They let all the children come forward and have a front row seat for all the baptisms. Ainsley has taken part in these 'viewings' on several occasions which made her extra excited for Caroline to have her turn. I love seeing her and Bailey's intent faces in this picture.

And here is sweet Sydney, our sitter, who came to be a part of our family's celebration. Ainsley was clearly thrilled that she was there! I am so fortunate to have an extra set of hands that loves our kids so much.