Catholic Little Girl's Dream Come True

Behold what I just received this weekend:

Ryan went with his go to skeptical look

Up close and personal

Back in August, I convinced Chris that we should go in for a photo for the parish directory. He was kind of confused since the family portraits in them are not exactly the style when it comes to the family photography I naggingly consistently point out to him. But I really, really, really wanted to do it. This was going to be a dream come true for me. Boy, you are probably thinking I have set the bar extremely low if one of my dreams is to be in a parish directory. But it is!

Growing up, I was a voracious reader and read anything that I could get my hands on, unlike now when all I can seem to read are short blog posts. Well, the list of books that I read didn't exclude our parish directory. I would look at each family photo (skipping over my own, since I always managed to look extremely unfortunate in them). What can I say, I was a weird child.

I couldn't wait to some day be in a parish directory with my husband and children. Trivial? Yes. But to me, the overly posed portrait with a boring studio background is like a rite of passage as a Catholic family.

So I'll gladly display the free 8x10 even though the photographer barely tried to get Ryan to smile in the five shots that he took and it looks nothing like these photos or these. And I don't care that I seemed to have forgotten that I had a teensy weensy half moon of hot pink nail polish on my thumbnail (Chris pointed this out to me...I thought he was staring lovingly at our family photo as opposed to noticing why I never wear nail polish).We made it into the book. And that is a dream come true.

Anyone else dream of being in a directory? Or am I the only weirdo?

Full disclosure: Here I am harping on how wonderful it is to be in a parish directory when we hardly even act like parish members since we never go to Mass there. We belong to the church that is in the crypt of the Basilica. You can still put your parish donation envelope in the baskets of the Basilica and it will get to the parish office, but the Basilica isn't the actual parish. We are just kind of in limbo; we love, love, love going to Mass at the Basilica for the reverence and holiness and are so attached to it, but I do kind of crave being involved in parish activities like a fish fry or a bazaar and knowing the parish like a family which we could do with our technical parish...but we never go there! I guess this photo and the directory have been in the back of the crypt for so long we were one of the last two photos that hadn't been picked up and a kind lady had to drop it off in our mailbox. Yikes.