Tea for three

She likes to get dressed up and have special time together. Just the girls. So for her birthday, we gave her an outing as part of her gift. An outing of just the girls going for tea. She was delighted.

And really, tea is such a perfect Mother/Daughters activity. Tea -- as famed author Emilie Barnes told me years ago -- forces us to slow down and enjoy the fellowship of being together. To make tea, you have to boil water and once boiled the tea has to steep. All offering an opportunity to visit, spend time, slow down in the hustle and bustle of your day to just...well, to just be. Deep sigh.

But here's the rub. Sweet idyllic gift was for her 14th birthday. And uh, this beautiful girl turned 15 four months ago.

That means she has been waiting for her gift for a year and four months.

A year. Plus four months. 

The last year was not exactly tea-friendly. We didn't pause. We forged full-steam ahead with high school, volunteer projects, theater groups. We had more doctor appointments than normal added to our usual physical and occupational therapy sessions. We went and went and went some more. 

But we didn't pause. We didn't stop. We didn't take time to steep tea and share from our hearts and giggle together.

So when we finally did just that yesterday, I wanted to savor each moment. I wanted to take a million photos to relive the sweetness and remember the joy of just being with my girls.

Because you can not rush when selecting the perfect dress-up hat in the tea room. Oh no. You dig deep in the trunk for fear that THE perfect selection is waiting just beneath the next layer. And isn't good conversation just like that -- we shouldn't rush it, we never know what will be shared in the next layer!

And when the food and tea arrive, you savor each sip and the sweetness of conversation in this peace-filled moment. No rushing.

Next week, we will start back to school. Life will once again be full-swing with activities, appointments, assignments and such. But for now, for this minute, we enjoyed our tea.

We enjoyed our dainty time, our dress up time, our time to be Mommy and her girls.

And ok. We enjoyed the scones. Because really, scones with cream and jam may very well be the most perfect food. Oh me.

And when the tea room hostess brought this lovely little cake to celebrate my girl's 14th birthday, we giggled a lot!

And hopefully, the blessings of our day will be a reminder this year, to slow down, to make a pot of tea and enjoy this sweet life we have been given.

Because time is fleeting, I intend to grab hold of the blessings of being -- just being -- with my favorite girls (and boys!) more often.

Will you grab a hat and join me?