The First Day of Spring Break

 This morning I woke up to this:

I have two girls ages five and eleven. My oldest goes to school but my two middle children, a nine year old boy and a five year old girl, are at home. They play together every day and are so close. However there are moments when my girls just connect and this morning was one of those moments. It is the first day of Spring Break and a lovely day it has been!!!! They had compiled a list for a 'girls day.' 

They told me they had already had breakfast outside in the play house and they had both eaten porridge which my eleven year old had made. That cracked me up because no one in this house has daned to eat porridge in at least a year if not more! Apparently they both liked it also. Since that was accomplished they then got out all the dress up clothes and chose outfits. They got their dolls ready and prepared a tea party. This is where I got out my camera. None of this is staged. It is probably about 7:30 or 8 in the morning and I could not even handle the cuteness. 

I noticed they had napkins on their knees and forks for their cookies and sugar for their tea. They had everything done properly. The dolls were given sips of tea when convenient and were sitting sort of far away from the girls. One of the things I loved was their outfit choices. My five year old is wearing a dress that is probably forty years old. I wore it for dress up when I was little and it was a flower girl dress from my mom's friend wedding. It has seen better days but how special that she chose to wear that dress.

  
My eleven year old wore a dress for a top with a wrap around skirt for a bottom. This dress was made from the train of my mother's wedding dress. We had two of them growing up in about a size two and four toddler size. However because of how the dress is made it can sort of fit an eleven year old girl. Let me show you.

I made her take it off after I took the pictures because it is obviously not her size but it was cute that she chose that dress also. I grew up wearing it often. It is made in the style of my mom's wedding dress. While the girls were delicately sipping tea, and ladling hefty spoonfuls of white sugar into it, my nine year old was not wasting time either. He had also created a list!  He has just started to write and read independently. It is something I am trying to not make a big deal about but I am incredibly excited. His list involved him and his stuffy ' Mighty Mo' and they also accomplished their list.

 They played Checkers together and Go Fish. He read Mighty Mo a book (which was the cutest thing) and he kept asking what this word was and that word. Then they cleaned his room. This is something that my son is also realizing is not the end of the world and is doable. Today he took it to the next level and asked if he could vacuum it!!!! He made sure to stress that he would like to vacuum it 'HIMSELF.' So here is all I caught of him putting the vacuum AWAY after he cleaned AND vacuumed his room. See, miracles happen! It can take a lot of years and tears and everything else but they do.

He is just shoving it in closet. Even just putting the vacuum away previously would have felt way too impossible for him, so this morning was pretty special. It concluded with the three older children playing Lego, of all things, for a couple hours. There was no fighting (the Lego has not been played with for months) and they all made amazing structures. The baby was happy spending time with daddy and I had uninterrupted time to clean and make some dinner. All in all a lovely start to Spring Break. I am going to try to keep this momentum :) Have a lovely weekend ~