A new tradition and other happenings...

Little Miss Smiley enjoying her rocking chair for the 1st time.

Elyssia's room after the cleanup.

The girl's reading and tea time table.

Another shot of that cute grin.  This mama can't resist her baby sweetness!

The boys room after the cleanup(watching an episode of hoarders is scary!)

Kiersten's tea(her cup and saucer came from Holland).

Yummy honey toast(sorry, no crumpets:()

Garrison enjoying his "spot of tea" and honey toast.

Caleb loved his tea and had seconds!(why am I not surprised:)

Elyssia is loving our tea time.

The little dutch sugar girl.

  Most of the above pictures have a story to tell, but I'll try not to make this an epic post.  The ones of Kiersten are posted simply because I find her irresistable and want to capture as much of that cuteness as possible!  The clean room pictures are not just because of the hoarders episode, because all who know me know that I love to have a clean and organized house. Recently we watched Hoarders and it gave me the creeps, plus the urge to clean and re-organize the kids rooms again.  I half jokingly told Elyssia that she'd have to pay me money to clean hers.  She payed me $1.30!  Do you think I earned my wages?:)  To her credit, she did help clean quite a bit, it was just a little overwhelming in knowing where to start at first.  I should have taken before pics.  The main reason for her was because her bookcase was in the closet and she wanted it out like the boys. That required some furniture shifting, which happens to be my specialty:)
  The last set of pictures are from our new 2:00 tea time.  We're going through a health and manners course with Elyssia and I thought it was a good time to start something like this.  The first one was with just Elyssia, but then the boys wanted to join in.  I told them that they would have to clean up, comb their hair and put on a nice shirt.  Elyssia put on one of her fanciest dresses even helped Kiersten get dressed.  They all enjoyed the tea and toast more than I thought they would.  Caleb had seconds!  A new friend kinda inspired some of it and the desire to make more memories with the kids did the rest:) Our new friend, Karyn Ironside has a tea house in Alberta and it looks like everyone that comes has a great time and makes many wonderful memories. Our goal has been to help our girl and boys become the young ladies and men that God wants them to be and manners do play a part in the way that we conduct ourselves.  Today, Elyssia was helping to stir sugar into Garrison's tea and is practicing pouring too.  In the coming days we'll be trying to teach the boys to pull out the girl's chairs and stay standing til the ladies are seated, etc.  Garrison loves to remind us not to put our elbows on the table and not to talk with food in our mouth.  He is usually guilty of the second far more often than any of the rest of us though:)  So, a quick story behind the tea cups and sugar girl. The young gentlemen are using tea cups and saucers that my Grandma gave me.  They are from England and aren't the cheap assembly line ones either.  In case you're wondering, I was a bit hesitant to give them to the boys, but I will be on the look out for some special ones that would be uniquely theirs.  Elyssia's set was given to me by my mom and I have to say that I'm not sure where she acquired it.  It's also a nice one from England.  Kiersten's set is a collectible from Holland.  My parents purchased it for me when I was about 8 and they went to England.  The little Dutch sugar girl was given to me by Mrs. Hanks.  She and I shared the same birthday, although she was at least 60 years older than I was.  She used to give me $20 every birthday, but one year it got lost in the mail.  The next time we went to her house she offered to let me pick something from her china cabinet.  There is a little boy creamer and I also have a tea pot to match the boys tea cups.  Today we used Elyssia's tea pot.  I found one for both of the girls at a yard sale and I think that we'll rotate between the 4 that we have each day. Who knows? Maybe the girls will start collecting those someday:)  Overall, it was really neat to see each of the children sitting up straight, doing their best not to spill.  We'll have to see what interesting conversations we can get started in the days to come.  Maybe have Garrison do some poetry recitations.  See if we can teach them to talk like those in the Victorian era.  Does anyone know a good book for children that highlights the Victorian way of doing things?  As many may have noticed, we're not exactly the normal, put 'em in front of the tv kind of family.  We do enjoy a good movie now that then, but find that it's nicer to read together and focus on other things.  I have to say that Homeschooling is turning out to be far more enjoyable than I ever imagined it would be!