Grace's Baptism

We recently had the honour of celebrating Grace's baptism in my church.  I'm Roman Catholic and we normally baptise our children as new babies, however I chose to wait.  I had no intention of having her baptised when we first got home, it would have been just one more scary experience for her.  I wanted to wait until she was more confident and secure around large groups.  That took a little longer than I expected, well, actually a lot longer but in the end the wait was the right thing to do. 

During the ceremony Grace was her usual monkey self, crawling all over me and wanting to chat but she wasn't scared.  She was confident and excited about being baptised.  Her two cousins were her god parents and except for a completely rained out garden party and a frozen lasagna that took about two hours longer than I thought to cook, everyone went really well!!! 
 
Aside from the fact that she is now an official member of our church and God's family, the hightlight of the day was the shoes.  Yes, the shoes!  I had bought Grace's baptism dress a year ago and it was stunning.  An ivory colour with tone on tone flowers all over.   A week or two before the big day I got the opportunity to shop for accessories and I got a lovely little "crown" for her hair, a matching purse and a pair of gold ballet slippers from Payless.  Well, Grace took one look at those shoes and that was it, she wore them day and night for the week before the ceremony.  The cute part however was that she was convinced, I mean CONVINCED, that the shoes could make her highland dance! We had been to my niece's highland dance recital a few weeks prior and Grace was mesmorized by the dancing.  She already idolizes her older cousin F and to see her up on the stage dancing, she became like a star in Grace's eyes.  Ever since that recital Grace has wanted to highland dance.  I play a few notes on the piano and Grace jumps around the living room, arms in the air, kicking her legs up convinced that she is doing all the steps she saw her cousin do.  Now she had special shoes that made her even more sure she was highland dancing.  It's hilarious to watch, I will try to get it on video!  Anyways, back to the importance of the ceremony.   
Here's a few photos of Grace's special day.



She wasn't terrified, but she wasn't exactly keen on the water part!

Starting to get a little antsy.  It was a long ceremony, taking over an hour.  We had already been through Mass for an hour and with waiting in between, Grace was starting to lose patience

Grace and I planted pine trees to hand out to our guests, honouring the occasion.