Tea, for three!

Spring is on its way here to our house... but sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate as much as we'd like. The other day it was "supposed" to be a nice day out... it rained all day and I think we spiked at about 29 degrees that afternoon.
So it the midst of a rather dreary, and frustratingly housebound day... we decided what we needed was to have a tea party picnic!

I felt very clever about having this idea, because before I made the decision to have a fun activity, the kids and I both were kind of grumping around. The house was mess from playing all morning and I was looking at eating up a good 45 minutes of my (much needed) quiet time as clean-up time instead, after having a disappointing lunch of PB&J, and no going to the park.... : /

as I was making sandwiches.. it hit me...
Let's have a tea party picnic!

So, I changed my attitude around and got very excited as I told the kids what we were going to do. They picked up on the excitement right away, and got very into the idea.
Here's the tray of prepped food all ready to lay out for the munchkins.

Instead of me having to do all the clean-up (like I often do, just to make things easier and faster for myself) we decided that if we all put everything away really quickly, we could lay out a blanket in the middle of the floor for our party. Sophia and Roscoe both cleaned up faster than I have ever seen them do before!

While I made the lunchtime goodies, they tidied up their toys and started bringing me the plates, cups, bowls, serving dishes, and teapot. I washed them up really quickly, and Sophia was very excited about getting to dry them for the food. I love these play dishes we have because they are made in the USA, from old milk jugs... and they are fun colors that make food a little more interesting than the "adult" dishes.
Plus, to up the FUN factor I made everything into small bite sized pieces. We had good old PB&J, but they were cut into small squares, which made them MUCH more fun to pop in your mouth! We also had small squares of plum, cherry tomatoes, avocado cubes, grapes, and a grapefruit(ok not small but the pieces I pull out for them to eat are... in the end! : )...)






We had tea (water) in little teacups. Both of the kids drank a lot more water with lunch than usual... turns out if you want your kids to drink water.. you just have to play Tea Party.. who knew? : )



Although I feel I should mention that if your little people are under the age of two or maybe even three... this is most likely what will occur eventually during the meal... but of course it IS just water, so if you go into it knowing it will happen... it doesn't need to be a huge deal! The change of clothes before nap time was well worth it to me!


We all ended up having a great time of it. I hope to do it often now, as Sophia asks me if we can do it again everyday. I am thinking once a week will make it still fun and not turn it into something drone... but we'll see.

Just thought that I'd share a fun way to spend some time inside your own house..even if that's the last place you wanted to be! : )


the bear got some food too!

















Today I am grateful that we can have fun, even though our plans don't always end up going the way we thought they would! : )