Zion Joel's Dedication

Even though this post is about Zion's dedication, it is so rare to get good pictures of Mercy that I had to include these that my father-in-law snapped of her before church.

We had Zion dedicated to God on August 8. All the grandparents, aunt and uncle, as well as friends came to the service. Poor Zion should get a "do-over." Brother Alvin was out of town (we love Brother Greg very much, but we would have liked Brother Alvin to be there as well, since he's dedicated the other children), and we couldn't change the date because it was the last weekend Benjy's mom and dad were available before school started. When we went up front for the ministry to lay hands on Zion and pray over him, Judah had one of those why-did-I-think-wanted-children meltdowns. I have no idea what precipitated it, except that Mercy and Judah both were gaining momentum down the slippery slope of behaving as badly as possible to prove to family and friends (and ultimately, the entire congregation) how inept we are as parents. Anyway, my mom had to whisk Judah out of the sanctuary, so we are missing both Nana and Judah in the pictures. But then, our photographer, who shall remain nameless, apparently didn't realize the camera had  zoom function, so the pictures are so far away that you can't even see who the subjects are (love you Jeremy!) Try to imagine it:

 We did manage to get one (out of about three thousand tries) decent photo, between Mercy's consistantly uncooperative scowl and nearly having to tie Judah down to keep him from running away. The outtakes would be funny if Benj and I weren't the ones being irritated. I really am resigned to decent, as opposed to ideal or perfect, pictures most of the time...they're babies. But every once in a while my compulsive perfectionist roars to be let out, and I get really irritated at how difficult they are. Today was one of those days. At least we're all in the same frame. Sometimes that doesn't even happen.