The tea that almost wasn't.

   There was a time in my life, not so very long ago, that if you would have told me, "Shelley, one day you will enjoy wearing fancy hats and skirts that twirl and taking your little girls to tea parties." I would have laughed in your face.  Not that I never wore a skirt, on the contrary I ALWAYS wore them.  But I didn't really enjoy it.  And tea parties and all that they entailed seemed far to frilly and frou-frou for my taste.  And as for little girls?  Well, I always thought God would give me boys.  I always liked exploring the woods and swimming in the muddy creek and driving four-wheelers, and so I just assumed that God would give me sons that would enjoy building forts and playing in the mud as well.

 

via

   Fast forward all those years to now, where I find myself a mama to two delightful little ladies, and am quite enjoying being a feminine specimen myself.  I love dresses, hats, scarves, Downton Abbey, tea parties, and all things "WOMAN".  I am not who I once was.

    Nevertheless, there is a wild part of me that will hopefully always be there, and trust you me, I am going to take my girls exploring and swimming and 4-wheeling and mud-slinging and all sorts of wild wonderfulness.  One day.  But some times, like last Friday,  it's just good to be a lady, and sit down for tea.

  
   I had been looking forward to this tea, and taking my girls, from the moment we got the invitation.  But leave it to me that the day of the highly-anticipated tea, I would GET THE TIME WRONG.  And not just a little bit wrong, but as in, I thought it started at 3:00 and it started at 11:00.  And I noticed this error at 11:30.  So I called the lovely hostess and informed her that we wouldn't be making it, but she graciously encouraged me to still come, even though we would be quite late.

   So we flew around and I got myself and two girls dressed up for a tea and was out the door in 15 minutes.  World record around here, folks.

   It was everything you might have hoped for, with multiple tea choices and little sandwiches and fresh flowers and four different desserts.  And everyone had a fancy hat.  Which if you ask me, is the way we should always dress.  At the very LEAST we should always wear hats to weddings.  Can't we just please make the current fashions a little bit more like Kate Middleton?  Please?

   This was as good of a picture as I could get of the three of us. Oh well.  An imperfect one is still better than none at all!

   And one of all the young moms.  (L to R Alisa, Jen, Emily, Nikki, me)  And Emily will be a mother of two girls as well, any day now!  It was a lovely time. I was grateful to the lovely hostesses (Alisa and her mom) and that Alisa encouraged me to still rush over when it would have made far more sense for me to just stay at home.  I'm glad I went.

So raise your tea cups with me, and let's make a toast to friends, motherhood, and being a woman.