Eight is Great!

A bit late, but it is about time we talked about a super important event that happened in our family early this month, Merrick's birthday.  This wasn't just any birthday, this was the year Merrick turned 8 and decided to get baptized.  I guess because it was such a big birthday we decided to really spread out the celebrating.  We celebrated as a family on his actual birthday, celebrated with our extended family and friends as he was baptized, and celebrated with his friends at a car engineering and racing birthday party.

Merrick was supposed to have soccer practice on the big day but we have had such poor air quality due to forest fires around us that they decided to cancel.  That meant we had a little extra time to celebrate.  We had homemade mac and cheese (the birthday boy's choice), cake and of course presents.

As special as Merrick's birthday was, it was nothing compared to what was coming that weekend.  On September 9th, Merrick was baptized by Jeremy and confirmed as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Grandpa, Lollie, Uncle Jensen, Aunt Emily, Tala, and Kai all came into town and the special day was made even more special by sharing the day with his bestie cousin, Kai, who was also baptized.  My heart swelled and I had a difficult time controlling my emotions as these two boys made this great decision.  I could not be more proud and I hope Merrick knows that.

As icing on the cake, we rounded out the celebrations with a joint birthday party for Merrick and his friend Jacoby.  It must have been because of sheer exhaustion after all the events of the previous weeks, but I neglected to take pictures of most of the party.  You will just have to rely on my description of what was a super fun party.  The idea was for the boys to engineer and create cars out of skewers, toothpicks, straws, tape, and wheels.  Once they created their car they could race it down a ramp track we created and then fine tune and tweak their car to make it better.  The kids got really creative with extra wheels, spoilers, fewer wheels, and sometimes just racing wheels down the track.  I think everyone had a great time and Merrick and Jacoby were definitely spoiled by their friends.

It has been a whirlwind!  We love Merrick and couldn't imaging our family without him and were so excited to get to celebrate him...for a nice long time.  Now I need a nap.