Shea is 8!

My baby turned eight a couple of weeks ago, and a week later he was baptized.  He didn't want to be baptized a single minute before he turned eight, and I told him that 7:57 p.m. was rather late to be starting a church service, so he agreed to wait a whole week.

This was an extra special baptism for our family because Cody was able to perform the ordinance.  Papa did the confirmation, which was special because it closes a family tradition.  Steve had baptized and confirmed Ben as a child, and he did the same for me when I became a convert.  Then he baptized and confirmed Cody, Autumn, Michayla, and Sean.  It seemed only right that he confirm Shea too.  I'm so glad he was willing and able!

Another tradition in our family is to buy the newly baptized person a set of scriptures.  Shea is too young to remember when Sean, or any of the other kids, got his scriptures so he didn't see it coming.  A few days before the baptism, we ran into some friends at the grocery store who congratulated Shea on his decision and asked if he would be getting his own scriptures.  This was the first time the idea was put into his head and it occupied his thoughts quite a bit after that.  He asked me about it several times, but I never let on that I had purchased them for him back in January.  He was pretty excited to get them after the baptism, but the best part of all is that he is actually using them.  I've caught him independently reading them more than once.  And this morning he announced that he is through the seventh chapter of Genesis already!  

There are a couple of reasons why this is amazing.  The first is that Shea has always struggled with reading and has always hated it.  To find him reading any book at all without being coerced is almost unheard of.  Secondly, Shea has never been a huge fan of church.  All of the kids have gone through phases of thinking church is boring, but Shea's phase seemed to go on forever.  Only in the past six months or so has he really taken an interest in church and started to get super excited about being baptized.  So reading the scriptures on his own? Amazing.

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On Shea's actual birthday, we went to OMSI.  We saw the Mythbusters exhibit which was pretty cool.  All the kids had a blast, except for Cody who was being a moody teenager that day and opted to stay home.

Shea also got to spend some special time with Gramma and Grampa.  They gave him a set of blocks that he was just ecstatic about.  I gave him a watch, which he'd been asking for for months.  Aunt Samara gave him an Angry Birds game.  And Papa gave him a calculator because he asked for one.  Yes, a calculator.

Daddy took him to the beach for a day where he apparently had his first experience with hypothermia, and which resulted in a gift of snowpants on the way home.  I guess the ocean was too much to resist.  I think somebody should have given him a thermometer for his birthday!