Our Little Flowers' Tea Party ~ Attendees

♥ The Little Flowers ♥

♥ The Mothers ♥

♥ Me and My Girls ♥

Our Little Flowers' Tea Party ~ Decorations

I've been wanting to share some pictures from our Little Flowers' Tea Party with you all, but I just didn't know where to start!! There is just so much to share! =) I've decided that it will probably be easiest to break it up into a few posts, so I thought I would start with the decorations!

One of the other moms agreed to host the party at her home, and she did an amazing job! She has such a lovely collection of china and her beautiful backyard made a perfect location. We were also blessed with additional decorations and supplies which were loaned to us by my friend Trina who has been hosting a tea for her Little Flowers' group (of older girls) for the past five years. Not to mention, the weather was perfect!

My girls were up bright and early getting ready to leave for the tea. They could hardly wait!!

"Momma, look! There is a picture of St. Therese!"

I just love the little antique tea pot which belonged to Marci's grandmother.

The backyard looked perfect!

Hats and Gloves were required for the girls and their mothers!
Extras were provided. ;)

I just loved the Menu display boards on this table!
(We hadn't added the menu at this point.)

The Tables, all set for Tea!

Each place setting even had a porcelain name plate and a gift for each girl!

More beautiful decorations!

One of my favorite pictures of Chiquita, from the Tea Party!

To be continued...

My 2nd Blogoversary!

As of today I have been blogging for TWO YEARS!!  I can hardly believe that it has already been another year...Where does the time go??

Last year, I posted a few thoughts and reasons why I have grown to love blogging so much.  Not much has changed, but I didn't want today to go by without telling all my dear visitors thank you once again!  Thank you for your prayers, advice, encouragement, and friendships.  You all have been such a blessing and have made blogging such a joy!  May God reward you! 

Since it is Mother's Day...

... and since I just can't keep it a secret any longer, and since I would really appreciate any prayers you can spare...

Yes, we are expecting another little one!

I found out on April 14th, just before looking at my calendar and finding that last rose. (I was so surprised to see that calendar page, but yet it was SO very fitting!!) ☺ I am praying that it was a sign that everything will be okay, since I did miscarry our last little one in the fall. So far I have had a couple preliminary blood tests to check my hormone levels, and everything has come back as it should. I have also been very tired and nauseous, which explains my rather sporadic blogging lately. My poor family has been on their own for meals this past week, since I can't even seem to be able to open the refrigerator with out getting sick! (Thank you hubby, for taking care of it all!) I keep reminding myself that being this sick IS A GOOD THING, and trying my hardest to offer it up and be thankful as I am throwing up! ;)

I have another appointment next Wednesday with my midwife, followed by an ultrasound on Friday at which we will check for the baby's heartbeat and determine my actual due date! (The online calculators gave me a date of December 24th, and the doctor's office has said December 21st. Either way, I had better start my Christmas planning early this year!)

We are all very excited, though I must admit I will feel much better after hearing this little one's heartbeat next Friday. Thank you all for your prayers!

Prayer for the Graces of Motherhood

Powerful is your intercession with God, Mary, for you are his mother. Tender, too, is your love for us, for you are our mother. Confidently, then, I come to you as a child, poor and needy, to seek your aid and protection. In every trial of motherhood, I beg your aid. For the grace of a happy delivery, I come to you. For your holy assistance in guarding and directing each tiny soul with which God entrusts me, I call to you. In every sorrow that comes to me in my motherhood, I confide in you.

That I may have strength to bear cheerfully all the pains and hardships of motherhood, I lean on you. That the sweetness of motherhood may not through my neglect be embittered in later years by pains of regret, I trust in you. That the will of God may always be fulfilled in me through each act of my motherhood, little and great, I beg your aid. Never forsake me dear Mother, my hope, my consolation, my confidence, and my trust, but ever be at my side to aid and protect me, your needy child. Amen.

Mother of Love, of Sorrow, and of Mercy, Pray for us!

Happy Mother's Day to all you Momma's out there!

I hope you are all having a wonderful day!

Little Flowers Girls' Club ~ Truthfulness

Last Thursday we had our final Little Flowers Girls' Club meeting for the year!! I just can't believe how fast the year went!! (Now if I could just find those last two patches for my girl's sashes!!)

Once again, since the weather was gorgeous, I hosted the meeting at my home in the afternoon, giving the girls an opportunity to have some play time in addition to our meeting. This month we learned about St. Bridget of Sweden and the virtue of Truthfulness.

As usual we began our meeting with the prayer to St. Therese and the Acts of Faith, Hope, and Love. We then continued with a review of the virtue and saint we learned about at our last meeting. The girls now have their jar of beads all filled up, so we need to determine a surprise treat for all of them... Hummmm....

I was not able to find a coloring page for St. Bridget of Sweden, so I opted for a coloring page for the flower of the month, the Narcissus.

Next I introduced the virtue we will be working on, Truthfulness, and read a short biography of the saint for this month, St. Bridget of Sweden.

I was so excited to be able to use another excerpt from Chat With God's Little Ones (Lesson 30. The Eighth Commandment) to further explain the virtue of truthfulness to our sweet little girls. I just love that book!

Following the lesson the girls began making their notebook pages. I included the memory verse and for Truthfulness, a quote from The Catholic Girl's Guide, and the prayer to St. Bridget of Sweden.

Here are the links to narcissus and the image of St. Bridget that I choose, and my sample page:  (You can download my document here.)

The girls have done an excellent job making all of their notebook pages this year. It's so fun to look back at their beautiful pages from each month!

"Momma, can you please help me? The glue stick is TOO HEAVY!!!" ;)

Despite "heavy" glue sticks, the girls finished their pages in record time. (Perhaps since we only had 5 girls present this month?!) Here are their completed pages:

With our end of the year Tea Party and Mother's Day this weekend, I also planned an additional craft for the girls to make and give to their mother's at the tea party. We made bouquets of lily's with outlines of the girls hands! I first saw it in a Family Fun magazine around Easter and LOVED it! I modified it a bit after seeing these directions online... Didn't they turn out cute?

Snack time was next. Erica had been assigned snacks for this meeting, and even though she was not able to make it, she STILL dropped off snacks for the girls! She is so awesome AND she makes the BEST sugar cookies EVER!

As usual, not everyone was able to make it, but we still had a wonderful time!

I'll be back soon to share a few pictures from the tea party we had today. It was PERFECT!!!!

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Help us to practice truthfulness.

Saint Therese, the Little Flower, pray for us!

Busy, busy...

We had our last Little Flowers meeting yesterday, which was lovely and I'll share more about it soon, but today I am off to a doctor's appointment this morning and then lots of errands for our Little Flowers Tea Party tomorrow. My girls are SO excited!! Tomorrow night we are also attending a Fundraiser for the Hadley's. We have plans for Sunday and Monday too, so it is going to be a very busy few days...

Before I go, I thought I'd post one more picture from my trip to Washington that Christine just sent. (Thanks Christine!)

L to R: Michelle (A super sweet woman I met--I wish I could remember her blog!), Suzanne (Who I was so excited to meet as well!), and me (looking very tired!)

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and hopefully I can find the time to post a few Little Flower pictures soon! God Bless!

Help!

We just went outside to find a brand new baby bird on our deck??? WHAT do we do??? It only has just a few feathers and it is COLD!?! I don't think I like our momma bird very much....

Updated to add a photo of the little baby bird:

Cinco de Mayo

In all honesty, I didn't even think about celebrating "Cinco de Mayo" until this morning (when I saw the link on Crafty Crow) to the Mexican Flag Mosaics. Since we had most of our schoolwork completed early, I thought I'd let my children make them. Before I knew it, we were having quite the celebration! Despite the lack of planning, we had a fun day!

Mexican Flag Coloring Page / Mosaics

Cinco de Mayo Cupcakes

Chips, Guacamole and Salsa
(For with our dinner of Shredded Chicken Burritos,
Sweet Yellow Corn and Touchdown Taco Dip)

Happy Cinco de Mayo!