Our Freshly Blessed Baby

We finally blessed Cole at the ripe old age of 3 and 1/2 months! (In case any of my 5 readers are not LDS, a blessing is sort of like the Mormon version of a Christening). There was some confusion about where we would be doing it, which is why it took so long. In the end we did right here in Virginia. Matt's dad came for the weekend and we had a really good time. We almost forgot to take pictures of Cole on his blessing day, which just goes to show he is the second child! We did get some in the end, though, never fear.

Rachel was already down for a nap, so we didn't get any with her.
Grandpa Ratto and Cole

Matt's parents came for a long visit last summer and did a lot of the tourist stuff in DC, so this past weekend Matt really had to be creative. The very first thing they did was go to the NRA museum that is just a few blocks from our apartment. I stayed at home with the kiddos (don't worry, I wasn't too sad to miss it). I saw that they bought something at the gift shop and asked what it was. Steve said it was a surprise. You should have seen the gleam in their eyes at dinner when Matt said, "Dad, I think Rachel needs a bib for this dinner!"

Very funny, guys! The NRA likes to start them young, I guess. By the way, this was dinner:

A dish involving 4 different pork products, red potatoes, and sauerkraut. Matt's been wanting to make it every since he read about it in "The Man Who Ate Everything" (a great book, by the way) and it turned out really delicious. And so healthy too :)
We also drove downtown for the first time (we always take the metro) to go to the Good Stuff Eatery, a yummy burger place that a friend told me about. The owner was the competitor on Iron Chef America on Sunday. Here we all are getting ready for the drive:

You can see we had our faithful GPS with us. And did you notice I got a hair cut? I've been doing a great job keeping it straight and haven't worn my old stand-by ponytail in two weeks! At 26 I've finally decided I can put a little bit of effort into my appearance.
Anyway, it was a fun weekend and we're happy to have our sweet baby boy blessed at last. He seems to have inherited his father's calm and happy disposition, thank goodness! Matt did a great job with the blessing and we are also so grateful to have so many great friends in the ward to share the experience with. So different from 2 and 1/2 years ago when we blessed Rachel here without knowing a soul in the ward.