Haylee's birthday was on Friday, the day after Mom and Dad arrived, and her baptism on the day after, but the week started equally as busy for us. I really wanted Mom and Dad to be able to stay at our house with us instead of at a motel like last time they visited. So to allow them to stay in what would become Haylee's room, we needed to get it carpeted, and to do that we needed to finish the drywall in the theater since the carpet in both rooms had to be installed on the same day. And as is typical with how the schedule of this project has gone, the carpet was finally installed the day before Mom and Dad arrived, with the drywall having been finished just the night before.
Since we had already had a combined birthday party for the kids earlier in the year, we kept the celebration for Haylee simple. We went to Chuck E. Cheese's for pizza and to play games, and went home for cake and ice cream. At Chuck E. Cheese's the kids seemed to prefer the games where you can win tickets to trade for prizes, and I had fun helping them do it (my favorite token-for-ticket investment being the volcano that spits balls up that you have to catch in a basket -- got the jackpot three times that night). And Mom had the special privilege of being the very first person to ever have the new gluten-free pizza at the Concord California Chuck E. Cheese's (so new they hadn't even put it on the menu yet).
The next morning was Haylee's baptism. Besides being the one to baptize Haylee, she also asked me to play the piano for the opening and closing songs, and for Eve to conduct. This was what had been making me the most nervous leading up to the baptism, for it's been over 10 years since I've played the piano in front of anyone but my family. But I've started giving Haylee and Cameron lessons, and so as Haylee's teacher, how could I bear to say no? But it ended up going well. Mom and Dad gave wonderful talks (Eve's parents had been planning on coming out but couldn't make it at the last minute). Mom did the "baptism bag" gift and explanation, which was special for me as I remember her doing that for my baptism and for others who were baptized in my home ward growing up. Dad talked about Haylee preparing becoming a princess in God's kingdom, which I thought was a very fitting analogy for Haylee with how much she loves everything to do with princesses. And finally it wasn't until right after I baptized Haylee and was leaving the font into the men's room that the whole emotion of baptizing my first child really hit me. I think I was so busy with worrying about everything happening as planned for the baptism that it wasn't until that moment that I fully realized the specialness of the event. I'm really proud of Haylee for deciding to be baptized and for her enthusiasm for it.
Next after the baptism, and the reason for having it at 9 am in morning, was a soccer game for Cameron at 11 am. I had been looking forward to Mom and Dad going to a soccer game (for the first time in their lives) and seeing their grandson play. And it was interesting to hear Mom say that she had also been looking forward to it, as she often hears about other grandparents who regularly attend their grandchildren's sports events and was looking forward to finally doing the same.
To top off the day we went to the Del 'Osso Family Farm near Tracy. I had been wanting to go to some type of corn maze/haunted house during Mom and Dad's visit, as we have not ever gone to anything like that for Halloween in this area. It was a big farm turned Halloween Carnival, with its own corn maze (I had never done one before), haunted house, pumpkin shooting (you blast small pumpkins out of a huge air gun!!), and other games.
This weekend just happened to be stake conference, which for us usually means we attend an auditorium-like venue that is in a stake center right next to the temple in Oakland. It was neat to have a church meeting that was a little different than the normal routine during my parents' visit. And to add to a nice day, we walked around the temple grounds with Mom and Dad and had a picnic lunch up on top of the temple terrace.
The more part of the rest of their visit until Thursday morning Dad ended up helping me a lot with work in the theater while Mom spent extra time with Eve and the kids (Landon insisted that Grandma help him play Lego Star Wars). I had planned for us all to do a day trip down to Monterey Bay on Tuesday, but everyone else seemed to prefer to stay home so Dad could help with the work in the theater as much as possible. And it turned out for the best, as Dad was a great help to me. We bought, cut, painted, and installed the baseboards and crown molding for the room (more involved than I had realized), drywalled the utility room side of the back wall, and installed the TV wall mount and hung the TV on it. And as a 72 year old man it's amazing how hard Dad worked me.
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