Christmas Tea Party

A few weeks ago, the girls wanted to have a tea party... they had been asking for a couple days, so after dinner one evening, Ben decided that we better do it - we pulled out the tea cups and our menu was dictated by what was in our pantry... so we had apple cider and toasted English muffins. As we enjoyed our spontaneous tea party, I said to the girls that it would be so fun to have a Christmas themed tea party. We got excited about the idea and decided that they each could invite one friend and we would plan out a fun Christmas Tea Party. Our tea party day arrived yesterday and it was oh so great! The girls were all so good and fun- makes me think that the next time we have a birthday party we'll just invite 2 or 3 friends - it's just so much more manageable - and with a small group we were able to have all sorts of funny conversations together. Thanks to our special friends, Eden and Sarah, for making our tea party so fun (and to Jake for napping so nicely during the whole thing)!

Our pretty peppermint tea table...






When our guests arrived we started by decorating some gingerbread cookies. The spinkles were everywhere...




Then we gathered at our tea table to eat our cookies and other little finger foods- holiday shaped pb&j sandwiches, grapes, and hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream.




I told the girls to use their candy canes to stir their hot chocolate. They were amazed when their candy canes disappeared into their hot drinks.... mmmm... minty hot chocolate...


Emma helped me make a Christmas conversation jar that morning... so while we ate our treats and sipped our drinks, we got to answer holiday questions of great importance - like "what color is the grinch?", and "how many reindeer can you name?", and "what do you think is Santa's favorite cookie?".


After tea time, we colored...


Then played Christmas Bingo...


And finally, what ended up being the girls favorite game- pin the carrot and buttons on the snowman...

Getting ready to play

We thought our snowman friend was so friendly looking :) The older girls were much too good at this game, and we all suspected they could see somehow through the blindfold... but Eden and Becca were all over the place trying to place the carrot and buttons on in the right place. At one point Becca was trying to put the carrot on the lamp - that's what was going on in one of the pics of her veering wildly off to the right. :)

Other Christmas happenings this month have included Advent each Sunday with Ben's family. This most recent time the kids were dressed in their Sunday best and so cute...




Becca continues to make progress on her reading skills, using the same family reading program that Emma used. She recently completed her first set of 5 books and she was rewarded with cupcakes (which I lazily bought from Walmart)...


This week we also visited the park... in December! Arizona is a crazy place! And notice that Jake climbs all over the place - he climbs up on the big kid playground and slides all by himself... he makes me nervous, but I love that he can enjoy the park so much now.