Holy Eucharist, Batman!

The First Communion weekend has been put to bed. My dishwasher is humming, the garbage has been picked up and the table linens are in the dryer. (Do you still call them linens if you bought them at Target?)

It was all good. mGal was GORGEOUS, if I do say so myself. I am even posting some rare photos that include her actual face. And check out that bun! It is a thing of beauty. And solid as a rock. It still hasn't moved.




The service itself was... well... I'm sure it was good. I wasn't really paying attention because I spent the whole time trying to wrangle Her Highness (Little One) into the pew and get her to keep her mouth shut. Favorite Little One quote during the service, "You STINK, man. YOU STINK." Accompanied by look of odiferous assault and directed at Big Guy who was whispering for her to be quiet.

On a whim of foolish unbridled optimism, I bought front-row seating to the ceremony at the school auction. Note to self, don't ever do this again. (Random aside that isn't really random as you need to know this later.... At the auction they were also selling a hockey stick signed by Washington Capital's star Alex Ovechkin. Big Guy did everything he could think of to try to get me to cough up several hundred dollars to buy it for him. He even promised to be good for the rest of his life. If I thought he was capable of it, I totally would have taken him up on his offer.)

It was clear that we should NOT have been sitting in the front row. Little One does not have an inside voice. Or inside behavior for that matter. She is as cute as they come, but she can act like the devil himself. She was climbing and kicking and rolling on the floor. Screaming and talking and barking out orders. She tried to escape several times and go running with glee down the center aisle. She even threw a rosary into the aisle on the pretense of going out to "pick it up." She went into the aisle and tried to make a run for it, but realized I had a big handful of the back of her dress. So she threw herself on the floor, pulled her dress up over her head and kicked her legs back and forth. (For the record, she was wearing hot pink princess underpants. Lovely.) I think her head also spun completely around at this point.

Somewhere during the service, Big Guy leaned over to me and said "I TOLD you you should have bought the Ovechkin stick." Then I laughed so hard, I got a dirty look from the priest. In the end, it was all worth it to have a front row view of mGal receiving communion for the first time. (Something she has been trying to do every.single.Sunday since she learned how to walk up in the communion line.) Near the end of the service, I brought Little One to the back and stuck her in a confessional. She might as well get used to it. I imagine she will be spending a lot of time in there eventually.

After the service, we had the party in my clean house with the wonderfully landscaped yard that Rocket Man spent all day Saturday beautifying. It was gorgeous and so lovely to look at out the window since it was RAINING and we had to stay inside. But I managed to get the house relatively (airquotes) "clean" by staying up until 4 in the morning and shoving about 5 tons of crap miscellaneous things I didn't have time to put away into my bedroom. That was great until about 14 kids piled in there to watch a video on YouTube. Oh well. I think I fooled most of the parents anyway.

The food was great, even though, true to form, I ordered way too much of it. I even halved the amount I thought I would need. (I guess I will never make it as a wedding planner.) It was reminiscent of the Great Sandwich Debacle of 2005 in which I ordered enough sandwiches to feed the entire 82nd Airborn for Little One's baptism party. There were so many sandwiches left over that they wouldn't even fit in my TWO refrigerators. I had to leave some in the garage (it was December) to keep cool. I thought I was on Candid Camera when the guy showed up with the food. They kept bringing in platter after platter of sandwiches. For days after, I was driving around the neighborhood at lunchtime handing out Ziploc bags of sandwiches to total strangers. This time, it wasn't that bad. Everybody left the party with bags of sandwiches and I have about a 1/2 a tray left.


It was a great, albeit exhausting, day. The next time we will have a sacramental bash for mGal will be her wedding. And I've got three years to rest until the next First Communion.

(After Little One's behavior in church, I decided it was pure folly to think that I should drive 5 hours to my aunt's funeral service. Surely it was all a sign from the Actual Big Guy. "Keep your wild freaking kids at home." So tomorrow I will raise a Bloody Mary to toast my aunt's voyage home and wish her godspeed - family tradition. Someone will have to link me in by cellphone for the actual timing though. It will have to be the next best thing to being there.)