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!

Second Grade Musical

Last week was Simone's school musical that she's been looking forward to for months.  She was so excited about mommy and daddy coming to her school to see her in her very first school show, as well as mommy staying for lunch in the cafeteria afterwards.  

The name of the show was "Music All Over Me" and each of the second grade classes performed a song and then a big finale all together.

The school had tshirts made for each class, and you'll notice Simone's class was in orange.  I couldn't zoom in any closer, but here's a short video of her class song, called "Hop Till You Drop".

Sitting with her class.

A smile of excitement and relief after the end of the show.


Definitely the scholastic highlight of the month.  In April she'll be focused on her school research project on a famous American.  Never a dull moment!

CLIMBING!!!

With this week's weather and school cancellations, the kids had a LOT of pent up energy waiting to burst out.  So what better way to cure a case of cabin fever than.... climbing!?!?!  This climbing center was the perfect place to chase away the winter blues.  Simone, daddy, Uncle Jim and Jack spent about two hours climbing the dozens of super neat walls that were practically sculptures of art.  Such a fun Sunday afternoon!

First getting harnessed and a quick lesson on the trial wall.

 Then everyone was off to begin conquering all of the steep and sometimes very challenging walls.

This Eiffel Tower wall was the first wall that Simone made all the way to the top.  Mommy was nervous just watching her!!

 The Lincoln Memorial wall was a family favorite.  Both the kids AND the daddies spent a chunk of time on this one.

But once again, it was no match for Simone.  It took a while, but she made it up to the flag!

And who wouldn't love to climb a GIGANTIC bookshelf?  Daddy tackled this one with ease.

A pose with Simone's favorite cat on the Alice in Wonderland wall.

Victory!  all the way at the tippy tippy top.

This cool wall had light up balls that blinked.  It was a harder climb than it looked though.

And this one was just plain cool.

And that was our Sunday afternoon!  Daddy was excited to get a good workout (although he may be less happy in the morning), Simone loved playing with her cousins(and getting all of her energy out) at such a cool place, and mommy (terrified of heights) had fun taking pictures of everyone having fun!  Success for all.