The teacup set

The ladies at our church exchange names for secret prayer pals. For one year we pray for our prayer pal and send cards or small gifts to them for their birthday and anniversary and other holidays. We reveal the previous year prayer pal each spring and get a new one at that time too. When we get new ones we have a short questionnaire to fill out with our birthday and anniversary and our hobbies. The first year we were here I wrote on mine that I liked tea because I figured that was an easy to get gift for me that I would use. It is so fun to do this in secret.

The second year we were here my prayer pal was a 90 year old that pulled a teacup out of her cupboard and gave it to me as a birthday present. She was slightly embarrassed that she didn't do more as my prayer pal, but I loved the old teacup.

The next year we were here my prayer pal went to a thrift store and purchased a teacup for my birthday. I also loved it. I realized when I received this second teacup that I was beginning to collect teacups from the ladies at church. I love that I will think of them when I use the teacups.

When that prayer pal was revealed last spring, she also revealed that she had cancer. I felt so humble that this woman was ill, but she found time to shop for gifts for me. Once the secret was revealed she asked about the gifts she gave me and was curious if I liked them. I sent her a few cards and prayed for her. She was receiving treatment and doing well. Everyone, including her family, was shocked when she died the week of Christmas. 

I was even more shocked when after Christmas her husband brought me this set of teacups. He said that she had planned to give them to me for my anniversary which was the end of December.  I was so touched that in his time of grief, he remembered the teacups were for me. It meant so much to me that he carefully wrapped them up and delivered them.

They belonged to her grandmother and all her husband knows about them is that they are very old.

I miss her and I will think of her every time I use these teacups.

Ewe's early birthday presents

Last night when I got home from the church bazaar I looked at my house that was in desperate need of attention after getting ready for Halloween and the bazaar last week. I turned the heat on for the first time this year. I ignored the dishes and laundry and straightening up that needed to be done. Instead I curled up under my new Pooh quilt made by the church ladies that Ram purchased as a gift for me, drank hot tea, and read Katie's new book. Do you have Katie's new book yet? It was quite an enjoyable evening (and so far a great book!) and now I'm recharged to tackle the housework today.

Tea Party

Something that I have thought of a lot since I went to the He Remembers the Barren retreat last year is how I can help others since my boys are getting older and more independent. When we came up for the idea of Girls Club/Boys Club/One mom break, I was excited to have a chance to do girly activities with girls since I am the only female in our house.

I had the girls first in September. I spent my Labor Day weekend making the girls aprons. I have not spent much time sewing since Lamb 1 was born so they took longer than I expected. I'm a perfectionist and I know there are mistakes, but they were completed and acceptable by me to give as gifts.

I dropped my boys off and picked up the girls. I was surprised that the drive home was conversation about all the times in their life they have puked. It wasn't what I expected for GIRLS club!

When they got back to my house there were presents waiting for them.

I had asked them their favorite colors and the presents were lime green, turquoise, purple, and pink just as they requested. I had a difficult time choosing the purple and pink-do you choose light or dark purple and pink? I had purple and green wrapping paper and I found some tissue paper that was turquoise and pink. I was going to buy bows but I figured out I had ribbon in the right colors.

When the girls opened the presents, they couldn't believe I had made them. Joelle's daughter seemed shocked that I knew how to sew and made them myself. It made the time making the aprons worth it when they appreciated them so much. They were excited to put them on right away. I made them large, the 12 year old's is an adult pattern, and hopefully they can wear these for a few years.

We then spent some time discussing our plans for the rest of the afternoon. I chose to have them make the food and we would have a tea party. I gave them some options for sandwiches and desserts and they got to work making the food.

I will forever remember E, the 5 year old, just climbed right up on my counter and got to work on the egg salad. Of course it was important to them that everyone got to do everything for an equal amount of time. My plans were to break them into two groups and assign different tasks to each group. That didn't work because everyone wanted a turn to smash the eggs for egg salad and each thing we were making. The girls were a little disappointed that they didn't do much baking, I had store bought cookie dough to bake etc. I told them next time we will do more baking, but this time the focus was to have a tea party. It ended up being good to have this time so I know better how to organize a baking day with them next time.

The girls made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, ham and cheese tortilla roll ups, and egg salad "boats". I made very small plain scones before they came and they baked some frozen store bought chocolate chip scones. We made whipped cream. I required them to try one homemade scone with lemon curd and there were lots of other toppings for them. For dessert they made chocolate cookies and s'more cookies and we also had frozen chocolate strawberries and chocolate bananas. One girl chose apple juice but the rest chose iced tea. I couldn't convince them to try hot tea-they had my iced tea before and wanted that again!

Egg Salad Boats

Ham and Cheese Roll Ups

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

Homemade Scones on top, Store Bought Scones on bottom

Top: Frozen chocolate covered strawberries and bananas
Bottom: Chocolate cookies and S'more Cookies

I had asked the girls to bring dress up clothes for our tea party. They all wore skirts as play clothes when they came to my house and my first thought was that they would not have needed to bring dress up clothes. But they were very excited about dressing up. I was the waitress and served them during their tea party. There was a lot of food and they were full quickly. I suggested they change back into their play clothes but they wanted to stay dressed up. 

I had planned to have them help me clean up but I could see from what happened when they made the food that wasn't going to work very well. 4 girls and 1 adult in a kitchen that wasn't familiar to them wasn't going to make clean up very smooth. I had got some china and special dishes out and didn't want anything to get broken during clean up. Since they didn't want to change clothes I let them talk and play while I quickly cleaned up. They went upstairs and it sounded like it was getting pretty wild. Again, not what I expected with girls! I suggested they come downstairs and we play a board game or card game together. I suggested several games but they saw my boys had scores from the Game of Life listed in our schoolroom. They got the idea to play Life and couldn't be talked into a different game. So I ended up playing Life on the girls day which is something I often do with my boys!

One girl didn't want to play but we talked her into it. We ran out of time and did not get to finish the game. Looking back, we should have played a quicker, easier to learn the rules, game. But we had a lot of fun anyway.

By my entryway they had a mess of clothes and shoes, again not what I expected with girls. But they were all ready with everything right by my front door when it was time to go. The time went quickly and before we knew it my boys were home and it was time for them to go. My boys enjoyed the tea party leftovers for supper that night.

We had a fun day and we all look forward to the next girls club at my house, probably in January. I have promised that next time will be a baking day. Joelle, I have these files of pictures all ready to give you, you don't need to ask for them!

Two Sisters Tea

We went to pick up my sister from the airport a week ago Tuesday. We had a long day shopping after we picked her up (Costco and groceries etc.). The next day I had our babysitter come and we went to the town 15 miles away and had high tea. It was great to have some sister time without the Lambs (and Ram). It was fun to get dressed up for the tea. Unfortunately I caught the cold that everyone else in the family had had before me so I blew my nose through the whole tea time. It was still fun even with a cold.

The morning of the tea I decided to clean out my closet and remove all my nursing clothes. This turned out to be a bad idea because I was overwhelmed with nothing to wear. My sister finally agreed that I should wear this black skirt and red top. Then she helped me shop online for an Easter dress. She thinks I need to do some serious clothes shopping. I had very nice nursing dresses but nothing non-nursing in a size that fits. It's easier to say to go clothes shopping than to actually do it-I never find anything I like whether I am shopping online or at the mall. Add in that we live 3 hours from the mall and it gets even more complicated. I can sew, but I haven't set up my sewing supplies (or unpacked them) since we moved here almost 7 years ago. It would be a major project to find everything to sew something for myself. If shopping keeps being so difficult, I may have to do that major project whether I want to or not.

Two Sisters Tea Room just opened on Valentine's Day. We were their first high tea customers! We had finger sandwiches, cantaloupe, oranges, watermelon, grapes, brownie dessert, banana pudding dessert, chocolate covered strawberries, and of course the tea of our choice. It was delicious! Hannah is allergic to strawberries so we brought them home for the Lambs. All that fruit was a special treat for us during winter time. We didn't make it back before it was time to take our babysitter home, so Ram was nice enough to take her home so we had more sister time.

Sixth Week of School Report

We actually got quite a bit of school accomplished this week. The Lambs were sick with colds-runny noses and mild fevers. Thankfully Ram and I never got it. They are also working on our town sewer system so at the beginning of the week we had lots of interruptions to watch the workers cut down our tree in our back yard and lots of trucks, excavators, and other equipment. The boys loved all the excitement. They would run from window to window in our house and there was activity out all the windows. It was a nightmare for me-most of the trucks say "beep beep" when they back up. Once I decided to count how many times I heard "beep beep" in one minute, but I got mixed up between imagining I heard it and actually hearing it because I heard it so often. Plus every time the excavator picked up a load of dirt and dropped it there was a big noise and sometimes it even shook the house. They started at 7am (we usually get up at 8am) and worked with lights until 8pm. We got quite a bit of rain on Wednesday and they continued working through it. Finally on Thursday there was too much water so they quit working. Now we are left with quiet (hooray!) but a big pile of dirt behind our driveway and water standing in the street behind our driveway. I haven't left the house since Thursday so I'm not quite sure what we will have to deal with when we do leave. Because they were sick and they couldn't go outside and once the activity outside quieted down, we accomplished a lot of school. They felt well enough for our babysitter to come on Friday so we didn't do any school then. But we did school all the rest of the days and had complete school days doing all the subjects then too. Ram went to St. Cloud on Saturday but we stayed home and did school. Here's what we did accomplish:
Math: Finished MUS lesson 3.
Handwriting: Lamb 1 practiced writing October. We have lots to do in handwriting with him!
Phonics: We did quite a bit of phonics this week. We are finally off to a good start. We reviewed vowels, did the consonants b,c,d,f,g.
Religion: Memorized Philippians 4:6 and 1 Kings 18:39(for Sunday School), worked on memorizing the second and third commandments and the hymn A Mighty Fortress is Our God, Did the Bible stories of Noah, God calls Abram, and Abram rescues Lot.
Science: We read several science books on fall topics like leaves and pumpkins.
Reading: We did quite a bit of reading aloud this week. Finished Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel. Continued How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. Read a few stories from My Book House and a few poems, recited Whole Duty of Children by R.L. Stevenson daily.
Latin: Worked on Lesson 2 and 3 from Prima Latina. Lamb 2 is getting really good at answering questions about Latin vocabulary words we have studied. This bugs Lamb 1 so he is paying more attention in Latin. I now know competition is really working to motivate our boy Lambs!
Art: Painted trees with the babysitter as recommended by Five in a Row with the story Mike Mulligan. Did other painting and got paint in our hair too!
Lamb 1 has been asking about having music in our curriculum. I guess I need to get organized and at least do some music appreciation with them.
Tea Time: My friend Heather said that they have tea time daily. I thought this was a brilliant idea and I don't know why I never thought of it before. It sounds so much better than saying snack time! So this week we added tea time into our schedule. I had the Lambs look at some of their children's cookbooks to come up with tea time snacks for a few days. One day we had ants on a log and one day we had moose lips (apples, peanut butter, and mini marshmallows) from this. Every day we had tea (Ram's mom loves tea and has given us a lot. One year we were in the tea of the month club. When they traveled to India they went to a tea plantation and gave us lots of tea from there.). One day we had peanut butter crackers and one day we had apple pie. I found that after tea time is a great time to do Latin and Bible story. We are all gathered together and it's a great time to finish up the few little things we didn't accomplish before lunch. After tea time (and finishing school) they are free to play until supper. We have all started to look forward to tea time. Ram was here for tea time some days and some days we did it by ourselves. It reminded Ram of having tea time while he was at Westfield House at Cambridge University in England. I like it because I have my together time with Ram before bed and now I have time with my boys in the afternoon too.