Queen for the Day!

Well we are off to a very sluggish start today! For once in our lives everyone wanted to get to bed ASAP last night as we were all bone tired. The true measure of how pleasurable the fatigue was the fact that the girls willingly tucked themselves in last night! They knew how wiped I was by the fact that I collapsed onto the couch after the parties (yes plural!) and they were just too tired to wait for me to drag my sorry self up and into their rooms. To the degree that bladders allowed we all 'slept in' this morning :)! After loading 250+ pictures on the computer....(yes Auntie Peggy provided 194 of them!!!!!!!!!) I've put a few for you to celebrate with Julia on the occasion of her First Communion. Mother Nature came through for Julia!! After countless days of rain and clouds this is what greeted us on the morning of the big day! Beautiful, yes but worrisome too when the Queen for the Day is an allergy induced asthmatic!

Auntie Peggy was our hero!! She arose at an unholy hour to go to the morning services in order to 'stake out' seats. Now Mari and Patrick did join her but they are Julia's family and SHOULD do that kind of thing but Auntie Peggy is the family photographer and she wanted clear angles. She snapped this as Julia and I walked over to the church which is right across the street from our home.

Not quite as nice as the one from Mari's big day but it will do.

The sisters!!

Now should you really be high fiving at church Auntie Peggy?

Grandma was up to the day and made it to both the church and the party! Here she is with 3 of her 13 grandchildren at the church.

Nice shot of the BFF/Cousins as they walked out of church for some outside picture taking.

See how glorious the morning was!! Auntie Peggy is both of the girl's Godmother...wonder if that is why she wore white lace too? Just kidding Peggy!!

The 'imported' cake! See the compromise? Julia has the cupcake vote while Deirdre chose the cake. The baker out did herself and as usual the kids vied for the pieced with the most frosting.

The secret inside was that the girls had chosen a tie-dyed cake!!

The party was held at a new pavilion in our community which includes playgrounds, miniature golf, batting cages, and a sprinkler pool. Clearly still too cold to don a swimsuit for the sprinkler pool but the lure of the park on a sunny day was great!! So once the guests had arrived we let them get casual.....

"Torture!" is what Julia is shouting as I removed the bobby pins and combs so that the veil could come off.

Ahhhhh now she's comfy!! Since she was going to miss the Kentucky Derby for the party I made her a horse print cutified overall SKORT. Yep, I figured out how to slip a soft jersey short onto the jumper without making the gather seam too bulky :)!!

After a full day of ceremony and party we cleaned up the pavilion and headed towards home planning only to stop long enough to exchange gifts with her other BFF. Well from the opening of this post you can surmise that we didn't exactly ding dong ditch their party. Really I wasn't thinking when we agreed to 'stop by' because I should have known that we would have too much fun to leave!