A Name and a Blessing

12:27 PM

^^I'm just gonna go ahead and own up to the fact that I replaced our not-so-pretty carpet with a nice hardwood picture I found on google images using Photoshop. Hahaha! As bad as it may be, I promise even my hack-job edit looks better than it did before with the carpet. (Oh the struggles of living in a basement where you have limited places that actually get decent natural light.)

The day after Thanksgiving we had the opportunity to bless Lydia at Stephen's aunt and uncle's house. Although in the LDS church children are not baptized until the age of 8, it is customary to give them a blessing within the first few months they are born. Since my parents were already planning on coming to Utah for Thanksgiving and Stephen's parents were able to get a good deal on flights (and because they were dying to meet little Lydia for the first time) the timing worked out really well to do the blessing just two weeks after Lydia was born.

It was a beautiful blessing attended by loving family and friends, as well as Mom Olson's DELICIOUS chocolate chip cookies (seriously, of all the moms in the world that make chocolate chip cookies, hers are the best). Mom Olson also made THE MOST BEAUTIFUL blessing dress and brought it with her from Iowa. Before the blessing, Stephen expressed his love for Lydia and me, and I bawled like a baby.


^^All the men that stood in the circle.

^^HAHAHA This picture cracks me up. Just add a little speech bubble that says, "Aw! Get off me, Mom!"

^^Four Generations :)


In the blessing, Stephen blessed Lydia with health and strength, the ability to feel the love her parents have for her, and a sharp mind. He blessed her to be an example for her future siblings and also to feel the influence of the Holy Ghost. The blessing was beautiful and perfect.

Many people have asked us if Lydia is a family name...it isn't, we just both really liked it! I've never personally known anyone with the name Lydia, but on a family roadtrip, when I was probably 10, we listened to a few of the books in The Work and The Glory series on tape, and one of the characters in the series is named Lydia. That was the first time I'd really ever payed attention to the name and I liked it. Then, many years later when I was studying abroad in Jerusalem, I read the verse in Acts 16 that mentions a woman named Lydia. Before that I hadn't realized that Lydia was a Bible name, and I again remembered how much I liked it. I also liked that Lydia of the Bible was a seller of purple and I had recently been convinced that my favorite color was actually purple (after years of thinking it was orange).

When Stephen and I got married, I started making a list of potential baby names on my phone and would write down names whenever one of us came across one that we liked. When we found out I was pregnant about two years later, the list had a dozen or so names on it, but the only one that we both REALLY loved was Lydia. (Stephen really liked it because he's big into nicknames and really liked the nickname Lyds.) As soon as we found out we were having a girl, we knew her name would be Lydia. 

Lydia shares her middle name, Lynn, with my mom, who is one of the most faithful and selfless people I've ever known. 

We love our little Lydia Lynn! We are grateful to everyone who made it to her blessing, and also to Uncle Paul and Aunt Camille for letting us have it at their house!
_ _ _
han.

PS It is crazy to see from these pictures just how much Lydia has grown over the last few months!

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