Tea Party

All Evie wants to do these days is play "baby." She must be mourning the loss of her days as the baby of the family since Simon has replaced her. Because ALL she wants to do is play "baby." At least ten times a day she comes to me and says, "Mom, let's play you're the mom and I'm the baby," and she proceeds to tell me exactly how we're going to play. I've tried and tried to explain to her that I play "baby" all day long and it just isn't a very fun game for me to play. But she doesn't understand.

So, on Tuesday I thought I would distract her from this obsession with the baby game by playing "tea party" instead. That's something every little girl knows how to play, right? Wrong. Evie kept serving me pretend rice. Who eats rice at a tea party? I realized I had a huge task ahead of me - to teach my daughter how to host a tea party.

I promptly scheduled a real tea party for Wednesday afternoon. Nate and Evie looked forward to it all day. We made cookies and planned what snacks to have. I told them stories about when we lived in Turkey and the afternoons I spent with my neighbors drinking tea, eating snacks, and passing the time together. It was a lot of fun. And hopefully by the end of the day Evie knew how to host a tea party. I guess we'll find out tomorrow when she asks me to play "baby" and I offer a game of "tea party" instead.

 We had popcorn cookies from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook (a recipe I've had my eye on for a few months), popcorn, dried apricots, almonds, pistachios, and cashews. We used our Turkish tea glasses, but I admit I served their tea with milk, which isn't very Turkish. That's how I grew up drinking it, and they like it better that way too.
Stephen thinks it's silly.

When Evie was finished with her tea and snacks, she went off to play.

 But Nate and I sat and chatted for a long time. It was the best part of our little party by far. The dirt on our playroom floor (someday I'll have time to clean my house again) reminded him of the story about God turning the dust to flees, but how Pharoah still didn't let God's people go. And then he told me the rest of the story, which led to a conversation about following Jesus and our need for Him. I often forget that my rambunctious little boy has a very tender heart inside of him.

 I left our little party refreshed and reminded to be thankful for these days
with my little ones, as hard as they sometimes are.

I think Simon had a good time too. 

I had to keep him at a distance so he wouldn't spill our tea or sneak a cookie. :)

Soccer

Because we love to torture ourselves, Nate and Evie both played soccer this season. Evie was begging to play, so we finally gave in and signed her up. As much craziness as it added to our lives, the joy of watching them play definitely outweighed the pain of two practices and two games every week.  Evie thought she was big stuff! We were SO proud of her. She listened well to her coach and never cried or wanted to stop playing like we thought she might. She wasn't very aggressive - she mostly trotted along behind the crowd - but that's what Nate did the first time he played too.

Nate also had a great season. His age group was much more competitive this time, but he played really hard and was always right in there getting after the ball. It's been so much fun to watch him improve with each season. Here are some of the highlights:

 I don't think this smile left her face.

 Evie's coach was SO good, and she loved having a girl coach. I think that had a lot to do with how well she did this season. I'm really thankful she volunteered to coach!

 We got a picture of every time Evie had the ball. This was one,

 two,

and three. :)

I think this is the best picture we have of Nate all season. The field he played on was bigger and it was really hard to get a decent picture of him in action.

 So we'll move on to the cute baby pictures instead. Simon mostly hung out with me during their games. We're learning quickly that his life these next few years will be spent on the go.

Such a good little sport!