First Holy Communion

Yesterday was a tremendously special and memorable day.  Simone received her First Holy Communion at St. Theresa's Church.  We felt especially blessed to share it with so many good friends and family members, but for those who weren't able to join us, here is the review. 

First, getting dressed on the big day.  Knowing it would be a hectic day, we made sure everything was completely ready and staged in her room.  Mommy dutifully steamed both Simone's AND her American girl doll's white communion dresses the night before.


 

Simone's dress and veil.  We looked long and hard for a beautiful dress that wasn't "too itchy".  As much as Simone loves to dress up, texture and comfort aren't negotiable to her. 

The perfect shoe with delicate kitten heel.  Again, comfort was key and these were a winner in that department. 

Simone also decided she wanted to wear gloves, and of course, the requisite cross necklace.  

All dressed and ready to go!

St. Theresa's Church.  Unfortunately, we didn't have the warmest and sunniest of days, but given the forecast we were very grateful that we didn't get any rain!

Inside the church waiting to begin.  Simone needed to arrive an hour early for her class pictures, so we waited quite a while.  By the time it started, the church was standing room only.  There were over 70 children receiving communion with her.

The Communion program.

Simone's name in the program.

The offertory gifts.

Processing into church-- all of the children walked in two by two.

Processing out of church at the end.

An extra yummy cake -- two layers -- at Simone's insistence.  We used the same bakery that made Simone's birthday cake last year.  She makes the most delicious strawberry shortcake.

 After mass, we had dinner and party at our house. Simone was so happy to be able to play with her cousins and friends while the adults ate, drank, and made merry.

God bless our precious little lady on her First Holy Communion and ever after!

Second Grade School Project

We've had an extra busy week with all the routine activities, getting everything prepared for First Communion, and last but not least -- Simone's second grade project on famous Americans.  When she first got the assignment to select a famous American, Simone consulted her iPad and chose Katharine Hepburn completely out of the blue.  Needless to say, the entire family has learned an awful lot about Ms. Hepburn in the last few weeks.  Her project was to make a report, a timeline of her life, and a speech -- which Simone will present to the class in an "American Wax Museum" exercise next week.

After lots of research, practice pages, cutting, printing, pasting, and organizing, Simone finished her project today.  MISSION COMPLETE!

One fun fact we learned about Katharine Hepburn is that even though she has won more Oscars for acting than any other actor -- four best actor awards-- she never accepted any of them.  She believed that she didn't need prizes for doing what she loved to do.  After thinking about it for a minute, Simone thought that philosophy made a lot of sense.

Now just to figure out how to get this big, inky poster to school tomorrow morning -- of course it's calling for pouring rain nearly all day.  It's just never easy, is it!?

Happy Easter!

Hard to believe it's already that time of year again, but....  We had a very tradition-packed, mostly-relaxing Easter weekend at home this year with Uncle Jim, Aunt Jenn, Jack and Sam.  We began on Good Friday with our annual egg dying and made these brownie egg nests.  I'm very seriously considering making these all year round because they maximized the edge of the brownies, which everyone knows is the very BEST part!!  chewy and oh so yummy.

On Saturday morning, we brought our Easter basket to church for blessing.  

Packed full of all our traditional breakfast items for Easter morning.

And on Saturday evening, we once again held our annual flashlight Easter egg hunt in the backyard.

As usual, all the kids just had a blast searching for eggs in the dark.

Amazingly, we were all awake and ready in time to make 8:30 mass on Sunday morning! Talk about Easter miracles.

Simone had little interest in being pals with mommy this Easter.  She and Jack were best buddies all weekend --totally inseparable.

As Uncle Jim would say, we feasted like Romans all weekend, but Easter dinner was the highlight.  Mommy made homemade french onion soup, Uncle Jim smoked a leg of lamb and a prime rib, and the piece de resistance -- a huge homemade carrot cake (with NO WALNUTS!!woo who!)

Easter down, and just a few weeks now until Simone celebrates her First Holy Communion.  We'll be sure to post lots of pictures from that special day!