Sugar, Spice...

and everything nice.


And the tea party was just that. We had a grand time at our first real tea party put on by long-time friend and party extraordinaire, Mary. You can see her beaming below with one daughter on her lap and the other (the birthday girl) swishing around in her beautiful dress and hat.

Mary has never done anything half-way. The girls sat at tables with real china, real tea, tea sandwiches, scones, fancy teapots, fresh flowers, and more. Girls and moms both recited poetry (I crammed the night before :) and it was delightful. It's hard to be stuffy when there are chubby little fingers digging into cake and delicate cucumber sandwiches squished into hungry mouths and handfuls of cookies being grabbed by eager little hands as the silver tray passed by.

Here's the birthday girl in the middle. These girls aren't posing but they sure are falling into their roles easily! It was a treat to watch all the girl swish about and pretend to be ladies. What fun they had!

Some were not quite as enthused (hello dear Evie)...but don't they look glamorous?

These are the things that fill a girl's fancies.