Olivia's First Holy Communion

This past Saturday we celebrated Olivia's First Holy Communion! What an exciting day it was for all of us, and especially for our little lady, who was beaming with joy and spreading it around!

As much as I'd like to say that the planning of this event went on without a hiccup, that wasn't the case because so many things went wrong in the process that we are actually lucky the event was a success....

Where should I start... I bought Olivia's dress about two months ago; it took her weeks to pick it and it was the most perfect dress. A week before the communion I decided to try it on her (thank God I did!) and it didn't fit! I almost had a heart attack and so did she.  We had to run around and scramble to find a new dress at the last minute.  Something similar happened with her headpiece, which I had ordered from Etsy and at the last minute the seller told me she was so busy with wedding orders that she couldn't honor mine, so I had to run around to find another.

When the dress and headpiece situation were squared away, I get a phone call TWO days before the event to tell me that the restaurant where we had planned to have our party had closed down and my party had to be cancelled! I about flipped and cried for a whole day. I then picked up 150 roses that I had ordered for the event and put the boxes in my car.  With all the stress I had going, I forgot they were there and they were damaged by the time I took them out of the car (thank you, Florida heat!)

After clearing my mind and getting some rest, I figured this was God's way of telling me to focus on what really mattered, the fact that my daughter was receiving her First Holy Communion and no matter what went wrong with the party, she would still have an amazing and blessed experience. 

So I relaxed a bit and started to tackle every problem one at a time; I was able to find a new location for our party, saved most roses by ripping off some petals and leafs and Olivia was satisfied with her dress and headpiece all the same. 

The day of the communion was beautiful; weather was perfect, we were on time for the church and Olivia looked so pretty.  The mass was so heartfelt and the kids did a great job performing a song they had practiced for months.  I was filled with pride and Olivia was incredibly happy.  We couldn't even tell there had been so many "issues" in the planning process and we felt so blessed to experience this wonderful moment, which I will forever cherish. 

Here are some pictures...

Olivia and her good friend Alba before the ceremony...

The kids singing their song...

Olivia receiving her communion...

My beautiful little lady right after....

And of course a picture of the amazing cake made by my friend Jenny....

I have a lot more pictures but I still haven't gotten them back from the photographer. 

I want to thank all our family and friends who made this day that much more special and of course I thank God for all the blessings we received!