Tea for Twenty

It's a Valentine's Day Tea!

And it was all Susanna's idea.

The tea was for the ladies of our church. So we cleaned, cooked, decorated, and then cleaned some more (because by the time you've made it through that list, the house is dirty again).

And by Saturday morning, everything was ready! The table was set...the house was decorated...

The scones-lemoncurd-mockdevonshirecream-fruit-cucumbersandwiches-eggsaladsandwiches-pb&jsandwiches-oliveandfetasandwiches-truffles-hightealemoncookies-browniecherrymoussebites-chocolatecoveredstrawberries-rasberrytea-pepperminttea-englishbreakfasttea were done!

And then, we taught everyone how to make our decorations for us--tissue paper roses!

It has been our experience that people smile

way too much at these sorts of events, so we

played the "smile" game--"it" is the only one allowed to smile, trying to trap everyone else into smiling without touching them. Let me tell you--getting a group of women and girls to hold back their smiles, giggles, and outright laughter is only slightly easier than damming the Columbia River.



Then of course, it was time to serve and eat the scones-lemoncurd-mockdevonshirecream-fruit-cucumbersandwiches-eggsaladsandwiches-pb&jsandwiches-oliveandfetasandwiches-truffles-hightealemoncookies-browniecherrymoussebites-chocolatecoveredstrawberries-rasberrytea-pepperminttea-englishbreakfasttea (all in their proper courses, naturally).

Only nursing infant boys were allowed, and Melanie got to hold Nathan--at his first tea party!

We played Valentine's Day Bingo as Lauren read the story of St. Valentine. We chatted, sipped tea, laughed, sipped tea, cried--and sipped tea. Without planning it, we managed to hear every married woman's unique proposal story, whether on a Sunday afternoon walk, in her beau's grandmother's kitchen, over a picnic lunch, in an unfinished house, beneath three trees at the park, or in the yard outside of her house. Then I read The Princess and the Kiss a wonderful tale that encouraged all the young ladies hoping for a future proposal story to protect their kiss and their purity for one worthy man.

Good idea, Susanna!