Lily's First Holy Communion

- May 14, 2017

Lily had a fabulous 1st Holy Communion! It was so special to have Kathy & Marc, plus Cathy & Richard and James all here from out of town to celebrate the day with us. I remember my communion so clearly; it's crazy that we're at Lily's now. I tried to reinforce the importance of the rite itself and not just the party but it's hard for kids to see the big picture about God and life at 7 years old. Still, I am always impressed at Lily's kindness and thoughtfulness about the world. She told me recently that if she could start a business it would be a van that drives around giving nice clothes to people who can't afford them and "rich people could have them too but they'd have to pay." I think we have a mini-Bernie Sanders in our household. ;)

Maybe it's all the NPR I listen to in the car, but Lily seems hyper-aware of injustice lately. I've tried to tie that into communion and being Catholic because the pie-in-the-sky-jesus-loves-you aspect of religion has always seemed kind of lame to me. I much prefer the idea of community and shared values for the purpose of effectuating positive change, which is probably why I have such a conflicted relationship with the Catholic church, but that's a blog post for another day. Anyway, I think she feels a growing sense of responsibility toward the world as she gets older, which makes me really proud.

But the best part of the day was how little I actually had to do, thanks to Curtis-e-Events (aka Marlene and her husband David Curtis). If anyone is looking for a great party planner let me know! I usually wouldn't splurge on something like that for an otherwise low-key party but work has been so crazy and I also had to do Jason's baptism last month so I just decided to go for it. It was an awesome decision & Marlene made the whole process so fun and easy. We had one conversation & she ran with it from there. Usually the night before a party I am making lists and re-lists & last minute trips to Costco and Vons. Not this time!

As I was telling a friend recently, I'm learning to outsource my life to make things easier on myself. For so long I needed to do everything myself in order to feel like a good mom/wife/worker/person. Something about working my butt off for 10 years, having 2 kids, buying a house, being diagnosed with an autoimmune condition and running my own business has beat that out of me... and I think it's a good thing! Especially since Jason was born I've really started enlisting help. The surprising thing is instead of making me feel deficient, as I feared it would, it's made me feel so much happier because I'm better able to give the kids quality time instead of harried, crazy mom time.

But back to this party... everything was beautiful and I was really able to relax and enjoy time with our guests in a way that you can't when you're hosting yourself. I felt like a guest at my own party! I was actually able to mingle and talk to everyone. Plus everything looked amazing and Etsy-riffic without me having to hand-dip 50 Oreos in white chocolate.

Lily before the ceremony. She was so proud to wear the dress that both Allison and Jacqueline wore for their first holy communions. She told me that she felt beautiful.

Walking into the church with her buddy. We were warned ahead of time that the mass would be very long but it actually wasn't too bad. The main time suck was getting 90 kids their communion.

A picture of all 4 of us together!!!! That never happens. If nothing else went right yesterday this would have been enough.

Grandma Kathy checking out the Clark building all done up .

Marlene went all out with the candy/dessert buffet. The kids loved the candy and the adults loved the chocolate covered strawberries and candy apples. There was so much left over that everyone got to fill a box with treats to bring home with them. My personal favorites were the rice krispy treat pops and the chocolate peanut butter cupcakes!

Lily in awe of the apples.

Another pretty shot.

One of the surprises Marlene came up with was to make a scrapbook out of the photos from the photo booth. So each session in the booth shot out 2 photos- one for the person to take home and one for the scrapbook. The end result was a beautiful book of photos and messages from her friends and family.

We ended up with about 20 pretty blue Mason jars of flowers; we were giving them away to guests to give to their moms for Mother's Day tomorrow!

Everything was personalized, which made Lily feel so special. My one regret from the party was that I only made 2 trips to the photo booth (1 with Matt and 1 with Lily). Actually I have 2 regrets! I also didn't get a balloon animal. By the time I realized it she was long-gone. :(

The photo booth guy brought tons of fun props for some awesome goofy photos.

Lil with her besties.

And Matt with his besties.

Lily got the largest cupcake!

I had to take a photo of everyone on their phones taking a photo. And here you can see sweet Jason, who slept for almost the entire party. It was actually really nice to be able to shower Lily with some solo attention while he slept. He's been having a time with his 2 bottom teeth. Normally he's such a happy guy but he's been fussing and crying a lot more than usual.