Blessings

On May 21, 2005 Corpus Christi Catholic Church held it's first Mass in the cafeteria of Celebration K-8 School. My family attended (though I was in Colorado at the time). Zach and I both became altar servers and served often for several months as the church grew.

Later in 2005, we outgrew the K-8 school and moved to the cafeteria of Celebration High School. For over 4 years, we celebrated Mass there every week.

Last September, we broke ground on our new church building on Celebration Avenue.

And finally, on December 24, 2009 we celebrated Mass in our new church for the first time. The regular daily Mass was held at 9 am, and there were 586 people in attendance. Zach and I served with Michael Garcia, another parishioner who's been here since the beginning.

Mom and I attended the Children's Christmas Eve Mass at 5 pm...there were almost 12,000 people there. The whole family came back for Midnight Mass.

It's been absolutely amazing to watch our church grow so much in such a short time, and I feel very blessed to be a part of it all.

Now...pictures! The marble and the wood of the altar are from Spain. The Crucifix is also from Spain and was hand carved from a single piece of wood; it's six feet tall. The stained glass windows were made in Italy.

The altar, all decorated for Christmas

After the first Mass

Our beautiful new home!

The Holidays, So Far

In summary:

Thanksgiving was great. I celebrated with my roommates in Tampa, then came home for Turkey Day. We picked out our tree on Friday and decorated the house, which was lovely. Saturday I was back in Tampa for the USF/Miami football game...lets not talk about that though :(

After Thanksgiving break, it was back to school. I had one last week of classes, then exams. I finished out the semester with straight A's, but I was exhausted. However, even finals didn't put a damper on holiday fun. The Palace was totally decorated with a tree and lights and everything. Plus, Mel bought stockings for us all and we spent an evening decorating them together, which was wonderful. Just like for Thanksgiving, we had our own Mock Christmas Eve and Mock Christmas!

Once all the craziness of being in Tampa passed, I was thrilled to come home. Friends came with me to see the decorations at the Disney hotels and the snowfall in Celebration.

It was great to celebrate with everyone, but now I'm glad to be relaxing at home with my family. There's a lot more going on, but I'll wait until I've uploaded the pictures to my computer. Plus, I'm getting ready to watch It's a Wonderful Life with mom and dad!