Catherine's Baptism

We welcomed Catherine into God's family this weekend... It has been a busy week leading up to it ... but in the end, the day was full of much beauty, love and joy and shared with our family and friends.

Phan's parents flew up on Friday night (Elizabeth had been counting down the sleeps until they arrived since Monday) and it was just so, so wonderful to have them here... I just loved seeing how happy they were to see the girls and seeing them play and cuddle with the girls just made my heart smile... Elizabeth loved having them here to play with... She was up at 6:15am on Saturday morning at the same time that Ong woke up... Apparently the first thing she did when she saw him was give him a big hug! Ong Ba loved getting cuddles and kisses in with Catherine too... I've got some casual photos of them which I'll have to share later.

Catherine in her christening dress (it's the same dress that Elizabeth wore are her baptism):

Family Photo - excuse the grumpy big girl... she was just grumpy for no reason and we couldn't snap her out of her bad mood!





Some photos from the service taken courtesy of our talented friend Ko (thanks Ko, you were fabulous!)... -























After the service, we had a great big lunch get together back at our place... we had so much food (which I forgot to take a photo of!), but Phan's mum had made and brought up frozen spring rolls, stuffed chicken wings, and sugar cane prawn... It was awesome having catering from interstate! I had made a vegetarian quiche, and 4 kinds of salad (potato salad, pasta salad, garden salad and baby spinach salad) and we had a few sizzle steaks and sausages too... Oh and I was rather chuffed with how the christening cake turned out (and it tasted pretty good too...)-





(I'll have to write a blog post about "Project Christening Cake" at some point... but just let me share with you that there was approx 2.5kg of chocolate involved in that 26 inch cake!)

And couple of extra photos -

Vicky, Catherine's godmother got her this -





and this:





Aren't they just beautiful? I love, love, love them and I'm sure Catherine will love them just as much as she gets older... (Elizabeth also loves the train!)

And this gorgeous signature bear and some other things from all the family -





All in all, it was a wonderful day... Sad to see Ong Ba go home today, but it'll be Christmas before we know it!