The rest of the family went to south Texas for a baptism, so Catalina and I had a little Daddy-Daughter Weekend. We went to her First Communion retreat, then went exploring around town. Ended up picking up two Round Rock Express minor league baseball games, breakfast at her favorite spot (with chocolate chip pancakes and hot chocolate, I’m a pushover), and Sunday Divine Liturgy at the Maronite parish.

The Round Rock Express, the Triple A affiliate of the Houston Astros, is her favorite team of all professional baseball. Maybe next game, I can help her get the nerve to ask for autographs when they’re leaving the field.

She is having her First Communion next month and so we stayed in town for her retreat. While on the same topic, since it was only the two of us, we decided to go to Mass somewhere else—a small way of demonstrating that our church is much larger than just our particular parish. At first, I was thinking of another Roman rite parish, but I remembered that Our Lady’s Maronite Catholic Parish is in walking distance of our house.

It just happened to be their pastor’s 45th anniversary of ordination, so their bishop was in town for the liturgy, which had additional visiting clergy with deacons and subdeacons and the whole works. We did Safro, Maronite’s Morning Prayer, with the community, then the Sunday Divine Liturgy (e.g. Mass, but ‘Mass’ comes from a particular Latin phrase in the Latin rite, so technically, they don’t refer to their service as a Mass, even though it is common to use the term as it’s better understand in this part of the world).

It was fun little weekend!