Lessons Learned While At Tea

Buttercup wanted to have a tea party with a neighborhood friend before we leave for our new home. So we invited the friend over once she returned from her summer vacation with her family.

I go out to a teahouse with Spinster Beth and Slick once a year for a birthday celebration. At our little teahouse, we have goodies like finger sandwiches, fruit, scones and little desserts to go with our high tea. I had a slightly toned down idea of this sort of tea for Buttercup and her friend, but being that I'm still packing and moving I didn't make it to the store to get the goodies to serve. On top of that, it occurred to me that perhaps the friend won't like actual tea so lemonade might be a better option.






I sent Maestro to the store to get some goodies and Chef decided that he wanted to be the one to put the shindig together. He was very pleased to be able to do something so nice for his sister - and I was happy to let him give it a try! Maestro came back saying the store didn't have several of the things I had hoped he would bring back for me, but he came back with other goodies, so that worked out.

Chef took great care to make a tasty, home-made lemonade; he put aaaaalllll the cookies from the package in a special arrangement that was very pretty; he cut up peaches and mixed in some blueberries and laid it all out on the table on the back patio. As the young girl-friends sat in sparkly-eyed expectation, Chef poured the lemonade from the gallon-size jug, the tab on the lid broke and catastrophe struck as lemonade went all. Over. Everything.




I happened to be out front, saying good-bye to another friend when this occurred and Chef's wail of upset was even greater than the girls'! He felt so badly about "ruining" their cookies (they were a soggy, lumpy, gross mess) and their quesadillas (they were fixable), and their tea partyyyyyy!

Tea Parties are sometimes about life's lessons.

So in a (if I do say so myself) Stellar-Mom-Moment, we washed the fruit, re-cooked the quesadillas (lemon is great on quesadillas, by the way), had ice cream for our sweet part and moved things inside. Big Brother Chef helped save the day. The girls, dressed up in their little scarves and special necklaces, had a fantastic time being... girly. Bruiser's friend happened to be over as well, and when the girls were done, the foursome decided to play "house" with some of the bigger moving boxes. (Kudos to them for not thinking "house" was too girly!)

A picture from last year, but I didn't get one of the girls this time 'round!

Tea Parties are sometimes about fun and fellowship.

I was so impressed that the boys wanted her time with her friend to be special. And the chance to teach that we aren't perfect, that bad things happen and we make... lemonade (sorry, but I had to!) was priceless.

I just had to brag a little, in the difficulty and stress that comes with a move already, I had to brag just a little about my boys and their good-natured treatment of their little sister.