Christmas tea.....and more

On Saturday, we had my MOPS care group Christmas tea. Our group mentor mom, Tricia, hosted at her home with all her lovely Christmas dishes and linens. I was very careful to take all these "before" pictures of the lovely table setting, but could of kicked myself for forgetting to get any shots of all of us ladies. Only the most important part... Good grief! My excuse is that we were just having too much fun laughing and telling stories and enjoying a relaxing time without kids that it completely slipped my mind.

Just some of the delicious food, pumpkin scones, cranberry white chocolate bread, chocolate dipped orange cookies, and snowflake sugar cookies. We also had a scrumptious quiche and jellow salad.

I got the idea for these cute ornaments from someone else's blog. They were fun to make and pretty cheap, too. I made one for each of the women who came to our tea. I bought plain, clear glass ornaments, shredded my own construction paper to stuff the balls, added the letter sticker and topped it off with a coordinating bow. The letters were a little thinner than I had expected them to be and so were kind of hard to see. Also, I didn't realize until too late that the red of the paper didn't quite match the red of the bows. Bummer. I imagine it bothered me more than anyone else, but I will be more careful about that next time.

No, Caroline did not get to go to the Christmas tea. Naptime and all.. But she sure did look like a pretty little lady on her way to church the next day. This girl does not stay still for a moment, hence the blur of her head. I didn't want to post a blurry picture, but this may be the best we ever get of her in her dressy red coat.

Here I was experimenting with camera angles to make the shot more interesting. Don't Caroline's pigtails look adorable? Her hair is really getting long. The even more amazing part is that Charlton fixed her hair all by himself. We had to redo them several times during the day, because Caroline newest habit is wanting to play with a strand of hair while she sucks her thumb. So after each nap, she had worked a huge piece of hair loose and it was hanging wildly in her face. I would love to fix her hair like this more often, if I just didn't have to re-do it all day long!

Tomorrow I am excited to be flying home for my sister Bethany's graduation from nursing school. Originally, I didn't think I would be able to go, but I am so thankful everything worked out about a month ago. I am so proud of all of Bethany's hard work and am honored to be able to pin her in the special ceremony. This is my first overnight trip away from Caroline, and although I have been away from Rylan for a few nights, I know I will miss them both and their daddy like crazy. So if you think about it, please pray that everyone will stay happy and healthy for Dad and he will have a really great, low-stress time with the kids. I am looking forward to having some fun and relaxing time with my family near Christmas and a little break from being in "mommy mode." I'll be home Sunday, but have to work Sunday night, so I'll probably post more near the middle of next week. Have a great weekend!