The Annual Birthday Tea

Here in the Valley we are knee-deep in summer and harvest.  Five children are at home, two of them sacking seed, which involves large amounts of food.  When I bought a pack of monster hot dogs, Ben, packing his lunch for his shift at the warehouse, said, "Thanks for getting those quarter-pound hot dogs, Mom.  That way I only have to take three of them."

And Jenny has found that whenever she has her heart set on that last piece of pizza or anything else, it's already gone.


Ever since we got back from Thailand I have been attacking the outside work--scrubbing the porch, weeding all the edges on the place of which there are many, planting flowers.

But today I took off for a wonderful afternoon of tradition, friendship, femininity, and tea.

We do this every year.  Anita the neighbor lady and Lois the sister-in-law both have birthdays on June 25th.  Mine is June 29th.  So we get together to celebrate.

This year Lois and I turned 50 which is not as unpleasant as it sounds.

We had our party a month late because on the 25th of June I was half dead with jet lag and Anita was about to have another grand-baby.

But today it worked out for all three of us and Lois didn't need to drive the seed truck and no one close to us was having a baby.

 Anita is a woman who has a ministry of beauty and serving and listening.

 Here she is writing some nice words in the book she gave me.

The decorating theme was "berries."  Anita picked all these herself, from behind her own house.

 


 

Of course the conversation never lagged.  We covered menopause and grandbabies as you would expect, and also wandered off into books, authors, Kip Kinkel, moms' reactions to their children leaving the Mennonite church, how to get hydrangeas to change color, Jane Kirkpatrick, Beverly Lewis, and much more.

 

  Me and Lois

 

Lois is not a cutesy-poo gift-givvy sort of person, so she always brings a stack of secondhand books and lets us each pick one.  This year Anita and I were both secretly hoping she would keep this up.  And she did!  So I got one of my favorites--Daddy Long-Legs.  The devotional book is from Anita.  We all know my too-strong opinions on Beverly Lewis, but Anita told me I really should read this one, that I just might like it.  So I told her I would.

Then for about the last hour it was time to go, but it is very hard to pull away from conversations with those two.  Finally Anita gave us each a piece of cake to take home, and we left.

Then it was back to reality and teenage boys and bread to put in the freezer and dishes to put away.

And I am already looking forward to our tea next year.