first holy communion day

I’m still recovering from Sunday…..usually celebrations and birthday parties take me about a week to recover from. But this time I’m recovering from the fact that 2 of our little ones were so sick and the day did not go to plan. I’d spent the week making sure everyone’s clothes were out, that they had shoes and socks to go with their outfit, we had the food sorted, I cleaned the house, thought about timing for the day….just didn’t factor in that we were going to get sick! The night before, I had finally finished cleaning the house and setting things up at about midnight and took myself off to bed. A few hours later we had one little one throwing up in our bedroom. And you know how it goes, you put them to bed perfectly healthy and the next minute they wake up throwing up.

In the morning she seemed perkier and wanted to get dressed, I’d already made the decision I would stay home if I had to. At about 8.30 the kids started calling out that another one was throwing up. Oh no. I’m trying to think what did they eat? Who have been we been near who was sick? I couldn’t work it out. This is the closest we got to a family photo. My big girl was helping her dad with the cake and the baby was inside.

Hubby had headed off to pick up the croquembouche. Usually I order continental cakes for our special events but decided to try something different. Hubby called me back and said the apprentice is still finishing it off as they are behind with orders. He still wasn’t home as I was loading everyone into the van. Vomiting had stopped and we decided to keep them outside for mass away from anyone and take it in turns to mind them. No photos or videos were allowed during the service so I’m glad we could at least watch half each. Eventually as I was getting ready to drive out hubby came down the driveway with the leaning tower of profiteroles. We put it in the fridge and it ended up being stuck to the side of the fridge when we came home from mass. This was despite driving home really slowly and having someone prevent it from falling over.

As we were getting everyone out of the car and into church I called the cake shop and asked them to make me a continental cake. They were so apologetic and had already started another croquembouche for us and we could pick it up after church.

I was ready to cry by this stage, we weren’t able to get photos of us all together because we got to the church at different times and the little ones were looking very pale and then my sister got the church muddled up and was at another church.

Anyway…………despite the dramas it was a beautiful day. The mass went well, the twins looked beautiful and enjoyed their big day. They each had a special job to do, hubby did his reading while I was outside then we swapped. In the end hubby took the little two home after I had gone inside church and they slept the whole day on the couch. The throwing up continued the next day and we still don’t know what caused it as only 3 of the family were sick and the rest of us are still fine.

We had finger food for lunch that I could just throw in the oven and serve, pink champagne and that delicious croquembouche. It looked and tasted amazing and we sent everyone home with a section of it because we still had the leaning tower one in our outside fridge.

The dress is from her big sister’s first communion a few years ago and the suit was lent to us by a friend. All in all a beautiful day and I’m trying not to dwell on the things that went wrong and at least we will never forget it! Also at least we still have plenty more Sacraments in our family and hopefully no one gets sick on those days.