Bern and I drove to Fran and Mike's house Saturday morning. The weather was a little overcast with a snowflake warning for the day - brilliant! Fran and I whipped around and picked up Jan, scooted over to Heather's new place (which is lovely, by the way), picked her up and then we went over to Heather's friend, Lizzy's who joined us for the day (she is lovely, too!) Anyway, after stopping at Tim Horton's for coffees and teas all around, we headed into the city.
Fran managed to find a great parking spot virtually central to everything we wanted to see and do during the day and only half a block from the King Edward Hotel, where we had a 2:30 p.m. reservation for high tea, a very posh British ritual, which I've loved ever since my trip to England with Fran. We had high tea at Kensington Palace....but, I digress!!
We met up with Katie, Jan's daughter and Maggie at the Second Cup Coffee Shop, where we treated ourselves to specialty coffees. A few weeks ago when the girls came out for the weekend, Jan had brought a bag of gumdrops as a little snacky treat - which everyone LOVED - so Maggie brought Jan a Christmas tree ornament made out of gumdrops in commemoration! Very cute and a total surprise to Jan, as you can see by her face!
We had some time before our reservation, so we decided to do some Christmas shopping at Winners, our favourite store! We found some great bargains and worked ourselves into healthy appetites by the time we were expected for "tea".
The King Edward Hotel is one of the oldest and grandest hotels in the city. It's really very beautiful and the Christmas tree in the foyer was spectacular!
Now, on to the actual tea itself! The list of actual teas available filled a full page of the menu - everything you could think of. Katie and I chose The Nutcracker tea - it was lovely - a blend of hazelnut and vanilla - yummy! They were all very aromatic and individually brewed from loose leaves which were strained out for each cup poured. Very elegant, I must say! The china was so pretty, too. When they brought out the 3-tier trays of little delights, we thought....hmmmmm, this doesn't look like much food at all. By the time we'd finished it, we were literally quite stuffed! It really was special and we all made a pact to make this an annual Christmas event.
After more shopping, we headed home - happy, but exhausted. I am so very blessed to have these special ladies (young ones, too) in my life.
After church today, I invited a group over for hot chocolate and treats on Wednesday evening after they finish Christmas caroling. I was hoping we would be able to go out caroling, too, but Bern's neck has really been bothering him and I don't think the cold night air would help it much. Now, I have to really get busy and bake up some goodies to serve with the hot chocolate. So far, I've only made a batch of shortbread cookies, which we've pretty much devoured by ourselves. I still need to make Snickerdoodles, and candy! Oh well, I've always worked best under pressure!
Christmas Prayer Request
Please remember Greg and Ces in your prayers for the next little while. Their business, like lots of small businesses around North America, is suffering and they're getting worried. These two people are such hard workers and totally love the Lord and really deserve a break. We know God answers prayers, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment