A CHILDREN'S Tea Party!!

Wednesday was our Tea Party Day!

I had the table all ready!

Each child would have their very own tea pot!

Pardon the jerkiness of this video!!

The kids are always so excited when they first get here and so are WE!!

We spent a few minutes sitting out on the driveway visiting with Amber!

I am amazed she doesn't run out of here like her hair's on fire!

'Free' time is  valuable and she always has so many things to DO!

Still, it's nice to catch up and Harrison enjoyed getting to play in the front yard, gathering sticks and his 'precious' stones while we were out there!!

I introduced the kids to JACKS this week!!

Thanks to a thrift store purchase, I have a dozen balls the perfect size to play Jacks with! 

It's not as easy as it looks, is it?

I still have some metal jacks!

 Most of the new sets are plastic now.

Remember how it feels to step on one?

Yup! It happened to Kailey!

Wednesday was a good one to play outside. The temps went up to 84 degrees!

The kids are still upset about the tree falling on the gazebo!

We did a small art project together.

Stencils are a great thing to do and they turn out so pretty.

The morning flew by and it was time to put on tea dresses and have our party!

It was a short day and the quads would be leaving not long after naps so our High Tea doubled as lunch! It had all the components!

Sandwiches - PBJ, Cream Cheese/Olives and Cream Cheese/Strawberries.

Tea biscuits - Lemon Thins and Cookie Butter Cookies!

Harrison took one look at this platter and announced, "I am TOTALLY going to have some of THOSE!!"

Fresh fruit.....

AND pastries!!!

This plate was emptied!!

I didn't have time to bake so Louis Dean went up to the local donut shop and picked out the prettiest ones he could find!

It was a fun party!!

Tea Party Fun!!

They poured their own tea and would you believe it??? Not ONE spill!!!

No, not ONE!!!

You can see they use their napkins! Such good manners!!

I sat at one end of the table.......

and Louis Dean at the other.

The kids asked Louis Dean why he took his hat off before coming to the table.

I love the teaching moments that simply 'happen!'

Sure enough, we were home alone by 4:30!!

Amber had already warned them that they would be eating dinner at their own home so it didn't come as a surprise! As long as children know what is going to happen, they are pretty good about it!

Granddad used his extra hours working on taking down more of the gazebo.

The quads were upset this afternoon when he nicked his hand, and since he is on blood thinners, he bled - a LOT!

I used my time to stitch up a denim Bible cover for Rayne.

I'm going to give that to her for Easter,

Normally, I host a Good Friday dinner every year but, what with the gazebo being destroyed and me promising Louis Dean that I would not schedule anything that would put pressure on him as he takes it down and cleans it all up and then starts over again complete with a new deck, I reluctantly told the family I was not hosting anything for Easter this year. Amber came to the rescue and said SHE would!!! So I am thrilled that we will still have a time to celebrate Easter with family.

I chose Good Friday several years ago since most of the family had the day off and that left Saturday for the other family activities and Sunday for church. 

Today was cold and windy outside and I'm sure glad it wasn't this way yesterday!!

Rain and hail swept through the are last night but, once again, it went around us! We got rain but no hail and I am so grateful!!! I don't think we can handle any more repair projects right now!

We lit what may well be one of our last fires of the season this morning as we had our coffee.

We spent pretty much the entire morning in the den! We got up at 9:00 (I know!! Early for us!!) and didn't get started on our 'day' until after 2:00.

I watched back to back episodes of Fixer Upper as I cleaned and puttered around.

I put the puzzle down where I could work on it - but never put in even one piece!

Louis Dean had put a big chicken in the pressure cooker as soon as he got up this morning and the house smelled so GOOD!!! Chicken Salad is on the menu for this weekend but I thought some comfort food like Chicken and Dumplings would be perfect for today!

It WAS!

Poor fellow is used to me taking a picture of something before he can eat!!

It's been a slow day for us.

I never even made the bed up as I kept going back in there to 'rest' a bit!

Even so, Louis Dean managed to get the last bit of the gazebo down!

It's hard to break old habits so when he asked me to join him in a glass of wine 'out in the gazebo' - I said yes! We sat where the gazebo USED to be!

It is a work in progress. Now that it's down, LD will prepare a new 'home' for the freezer. For now he has it covered with a tarp. There's a good overhang at the back of the house and he is thinking he will level the ground back there and lay a deck for it to sit on. This is unused space and has a fence in front of it. The sandbox, walkway, fence and then on the other side will live our freezer!

Win! WIN!!

THEN he will have to find somewhere to put the fridge temporarily. That will go BACK in the new gazebo, once we get it! THEN he can have a professional come in and make the tree doesn't cause us any future problems! THEN he can tear up the deck and start working on a NEW one. And THEN we can buy a NEW gazebo!!!

I'm tired just writing this!!