pne | A name and a blessing (Reply)

Today at church, we gave Amy a name and a blessing; I performed the ceremony and my father and Stella's stepfather also held their hands under her.

Quite a few relatives came to witness the blessing; they had to open the folding wall at the end of the chapel to accommodate additional benches and chairs in the cultural hall. Most also stayed for a luncheon afterwards.

Those who attended were: Stella, Amy, and I; Daddy and Inka (my father and his wife); Ireen, Felipe, and Emily (my sister, brother-in-law, and niece); Gesa and Martina (two aunts of Stella's); Debby (Stella's sister); Eva and Helmut Alt (my aunt and uncle); Edith and Detlef (Stella's parents—well, mother and stepfather, though she grew up with Detlef since she was five and calls him "Papa"); Peter and Eliane (Stella's biodad and his wife); Karl-Heinz, Melanie, Torben, and Christian Goldmund (friends of Stella's parents'; they had brought them from Kiel in their car).

I took several pictures at the gathering afterwards; I'll try to put (at least some of) them up in case anyone's interested. One I especially wanted to take was of Edith and Peter since it was the first time they've been in the same place at the same time for quite some time and who knows whether it will happen again; but they're the child's biological grandparents and she might want a photograph of them together with her mother. I also made a picture of Stella, Debby, Edith, and Peter—the original make-up of Stella's family.