Anna's Christening

The main reason I went to CT last weekend was for Anna's Christening. Anna is my niece, daughter of my brother John and his wife Katharine.

The day started off with a nice brunch at my Dad's. Deb was determined to get Anna into the baptismal outfit that Katharine's family were all baptised in. Nobody else thought it would fit, but Deb got her in it, without choking the poor kid! As I mentioned previously, I am the co-Godfather of Anna with Katharine's brother Michael. Deb is her Godmother.

As the priest is getting ready to start the ceremony, everyone was seated except for us. Deb was trying to get Christopher to hang out with Uncle Pat and as she is sitting down, the priest makes a comment and Deb says 'I'm trying to get my 2 year old settled'. The priest replied with a funny tone 'That's not my problem'. At that second Deb realizes the priest is Father Corey, who was the parish priest at St. Peter's when she was in elementary and high school. I also recognized him as the priest who was rather impatient at my wedding, waiting for my parish priest (from St. Joseph's, just up Main street from St. Peter's) to arrive. Story for another time ;-)

Finally all settled in there was a great ceremony, with one small hiccup. Fr. Corey asked the godparents to light the baptismal candle from the Easter Candle and bring it back to the baby. Deb was the first to reach the candle, and we realized that it was at least 10 feet in the air. I was told later that Fr. Corey was joking with the rest of the crowd about how this may take 20 minutes. As I've been known to do, I looked for a quick solution and found the wick they use to light the candle, which had a 5 foot handle on it. I picked it up, and reliving the years of being an Altar Boy, lit the wick, then spread it to all the other godparents. I guess we were the quickest to figure this out in a long time, since Fr. Corey had a comment about it. I didn't hear either comment since we were lighting the candles.

All through out the ceremony Meghan and Courtney were doing their best paparazzi impressions. Courtney snapping pictures and Meghan with the video camera. I've uploaded a lot of Courtney's pictures to the Flickr site here.

All the while, Patrick was keeping Christopher occupied. I know that Christopher really likes Pat since we didn't hear either of them once during the ceremony.

During the pictures Anna started getting fussy, so I took her and got her to stop crying. Honestly it isn't that hard. I just told her that I'm sending her another dozen huge stuffed animals.