It's not every lady who will hold a tea party with her most cherished, "real" tea set....especially when the guests are 3, 7, 8 and 12.
But when you become a grandmother everything changes. One time I was working on a blog and was going to type "Grandma's rules." Alexis was watching me and I asked her to help me list rules, and she said "Rule #1, there are no rules." So that was the end of that and we have pretty much adopted that policy.
So when they wanted a tea party with their pizza lunch, I said okay....(only a grandmother would use her good tea set and pair it with Solo disposable plates.)
I might be easy, but I'm not stupid. I knew I would get stuck with the clean up detail. I let the girls help carry the tea set into the kitchen and set the table. Caleb went around to my various tea cups in the house and gathered the fancy tea spoons. The little silver cups are for M & M's which is a must when we have pizza at my house. But Alexis decided we need to have a card so everybody would know where to set. So we made place cards out of some yellow card stock she liked.
She decided who was setting where and put their name cards out. The boys wanted Dr. Pepper and the girls wanted chocolate milk. But they wanted to use the cream and sugar bowl. So we thought and thought. And then we decided to put white milk in the tea cups and and Hershey's chocolate syrup in the cream pitcher. That gave them a chance to use their spoons. And what was in the sugar bowl? Well, M & M's of course!
Caleb and the girls were my assistants. As a twelve year old boy, Garret had more of a "watching tv - call me when the foods ready" approach to the tea party. Caleb appointed himself Chef and the girls were his sou chef, which made everybody happy. The chef wouldn't wear an apron but the girls love theirs that my mom made them.
So we got the Digiorno's out of the boxes and I rearranged the toppings on one so Alexis had ham on her part and I had sausage on mine. Everybody else wanted cheese. And the Chef slid them into the oven.
I even managed a good picture of all my guests. We missed little Colby, who was supposed to attend as well. He was spending the night Saturday, but by 2:00 in the morning he had a bad case of mommy-itis so we had to meet up with him mom and dad so he could go back home. We missed him. But the Chef's nabbed there guest and had me take a picture of them all.
All in all, it was a huge success and the girls did help with the clean up. They even carried the tea set back and put it where it belonged. Not to mention the pizza was delicious. A great time was had by all.
