Yesterday was the day of Daniel's baptism. We all really enjoyed the ceremony. We'd been worried about Daniel would react to the whole thing and felt awkward that we'd left it so long - he's well over 2 and most babies in our church are baptised when they are only a few months old. We'd chatted to him about it over the previous week and luckily he had warmed to the idea by the time yesterday came. In fact there were a whole bunch of older children baptised yesterday, including two children of some friends of ours. I found the ceremony very moving - seeing all those beautiful little children at the font one by one. Despite my various religious doubts and hang-ups and ambivalences and opinions I wouldn't discuss with a large proportion of our church, I still definitely feel some sort of spiritual connection with Someone, and yesterday I felt an immense sense of gratitude for my family.

Back at the house after the service we all had lunch together. I made a lasagne following a new back-of-the-box recipe. Seems the pasta company cut a deal with the chutney company because on reading the fine print of the recipe I was instructed to put more than a whole bottle of chutney into 750g of mince. In the end I put about half the quantity in, and it was still rather too chutneyish. The rest of it was good though - included in the layers were grilled vegetables (peppers and butternut) and spinach. The kids were in the element with all four grandparents at their disposal and turned the dining room into a 12-seater train. Peter got into the act and served drinks from a wooden toy trolley and even provided passing scenery outside the dining room window.