Thank the Moms Day!

Today has been a wonderful day. We are so blessed and I am grateful. While I wish I could share all of my blessings, I am afraid this blog would be too long and you would tire before I was through. For me Thanksgiving is a year round thing, but somehow around this time of year we always seem to take more time to notice our blessings. Today, my sister and I had a meeting after our regular Sunday meetings. We left our children at home and when we got back, they had a surprise for us. We could not go in the house and 'see' what they were up to, so they escorted us to the back room to wait. They finished their preparations and told us we could come up to the kitchen. They had prepared dinner, which included a relish tray, fresh tossed green salad, Quesa dillas (and I know that is not spelled right), scrambled eggs and a fruit shake. They had popped corn and had made no-bake cookies for dessert. They decided it was "Thank the Moms Day". They are such good kids and I am so grateful to be their mom and a mom to my sister's children too. It truly made my day. Then we got a surprise visit from our special friend, Jeremy. It is always such a pleasure to have him visit. We have adopted him as one of our own kids and we have truly been blessed from knowing him as he has touched our life and the lives of many others. And so I begin my blessing counting and the list continues to grow and grow. And to all of you who may at sometime read this, Thanks. Thanks for being a friend, for being there and for sharing your life with me.

Oh, What a Beautiful Morning and Autumn Tea

Today started out as a normal humdrum day, except that it is the day I made plans to get up early and go vote before work (mission accomplished). But then, I approached my car and tucked neatly into the window on the driver's side was a little note. Thankfully the wind was not blowing and I managed to retrieve the note and much to my surprise it was from my "Sammy". Just a little note to tell me that "I Rock!!" and then when I came to work, someone who must know my yen for Blueberry muffins left one of them on my desk. It may be Monday, but it is an awesome Monday, Monday, So Good to Me (Thank you, Mama Cass). What a wonderful way to start my day. Thank you, I am forever blessed.
This past weekend we held our Semi-annual Hammer Moms Tea Party. This one was quite well attended and was a great success. We opted for Root Beer Floats or Apple Juice instead of tea, as most of the children don't care for tea, and our local Walmart no longer carries our favorite flavor.
What's up with that anyway. I have never figured out why they remove my favorite flavor and replace it with an impostor that never measures up. Oh well, c'est la vie.
Back to the tea party. We always make way too many goodies and so we had plenty for everyone. I always do some research before our teas to see if I can find something out of the ordinary to make for treats. This time I found two recipes: High Tea Lemon Cookies and Chocolate Dipped Ritz Treats.
The Lemon Cookies were reminiscent of Scottish Shortbread with lemon Frosting. They were melt in your mouth good and while Faye and I really enjoyed them, our little ones decided they preferred Valentine Cut-up Cookies with a less lemony flavor.
The Ritz treats were made by taking Peanut Butter flavored butter-cream frosting and spreading in on a Ritz cracker and placing another Ritz on top to form a sandwich. This was in turn dipped in melted Chocolate Bark to which we added Peanut butter chips. Once they had been dipped and placed on waxed paper, they were decorated with sprinkles and reminded us of Twix Candy Bars sans caramel. I am sure they will make a repeat performance again at future parties, especially since my youngest liked them so much.
We also experimented with making Grilled Cheese sandwiches by dressing them up and adding some spice to them. We used Pumpernickel bread or Whole wheat and and used a combination of Pepper Jack and Provolone cheese or Provolone and Colby Jack cheese. Under normal conditions, I tend to be the only one who likes Pumpernickel Bread, but as a grilled cheese with the two types of cheese it was a great hit.
With all of the company headed home and the grown kids playing and visiting with each other, I headed to my room and put on an old movie to watch with the grand kids. I even got little Miss Jordan to snuggle with me and we had a great time watching an old movie. She then wanted to watch "Thomas the Tank" and was quite engaged until Mom and Dad were ready to head home.
Now to start planning for our Spring Tea. Let the sleuthing begin.