Kenzlee's Special Day

Let's see, how do I explain this.  Rather than go all the way to the beginning, I'll sort of start right now. I wanted Kenzlee to have a baby blessing, and due to Matt's 'faith transition' (never explained or wrote about that on the blog...so continuing with the starting right now explanation), Matt didn't want her to have a blessing because it would put her name on the records of the church and he wanted that to be her choice.

I started thinking about why I wanted Kenzlee to have a baby blessing.  Tradition (the other kids had one), setting apart a special day for your new baby, telling your baby the hopes/dreams/wishes for their life in a blessing.  I knew that someone could give Kenzlee a blessing, but I also kind of wanted it to be something special from Matt, from a father to his daughter, because that's what it had been like for the other kids.

This was actually really stressful for me for awhile and finally I asked Matt about it.  We went back and forth for a long time (for me, I don't think Matt worried about it a lot) and finally I told Matt I would like to do something while my Grandma Buttercup (or Grandma Cardall) was here visiting for Thanksgiving. I wanted it to be a special day for Kenzlee.  I wanted the dress and the cake and everything! :)  He thought about it for awhile and came up with this idea:  A Hope Journal.  It was all Matt's thinking.  He said we could get our family together (and sorry, we just did our family, we kept it small), and have everyone write a letter to Kenzlee.  It could be whatever they wanted.  It could be blessing like (write their 'hopes/dreams/wishes for her), it could be advice, it could be just a letter.  Matt said, and I agree, that Kenzlee would probably like that better because she would be getting a hand written letter from important people in her family who cared about her.  From her grandparents and a great-grand parent. From her siblings, parents, aunts and uncles.  We took lots of pictures of the event and are putting all the letters and pictures together in a book that we call her "Hope Journal."

We can even add letters to the journal as other relatives/friends write them.  I love the blessings my first three children had, but I honestly wished we had done this along with them. It was so fun to have this special night for Kenzlee and be able to give her such a wonderful gift later on when she is older.

The Group

December 2, 2013

The cake

Kenzlee with Grandma Buttercup

In her pretty dress

Aaron and Kayla

These are pictures taken later, but I wanted some more of her in her dress