Tea for Three

Because we are home schooling this year, we have a lot of flexibility in our day. This can equate to some pretty fun outings in NYC. I am not a fan of braving the crowds of tourists on the weekend with my 3 kids in tow, but I love a weekday of city exploring. On this particular day we headed over to Alice's Tea Cup. It is a mildly famous tea room here in NYC that is kid-friendly, and surprisingly pretty reasonably priced. We shared the Mad Hatter special, which means we stuffed ourselves for under $35- scones, two pots of tea, sandwiches, and dessert.

Eva appears to really enjoy herbal tea in this picture. She is my actress. She didn't enjoy it, even with lumps of sugar and cream added. But, she did enjoy the scones.

Madeline was not a tea fan either, but she liked the tea sandwiches, and loved being sprinkled with "fairy dust" as she entered the restaurant.

My girls' favorite thing about lunch was the whipped butter. You can see it in the bottom tier of stand. They wanted to eat it by the spoonful. Yum. Overall, this was a fun memory to have with the girls. They loved pretending to be "proper", and having time out with just mom.

Good Reads

These have both been on my "to read" list for a while. It took a long bout with the flu to finally get through them. Both were fantastic reads by Michael Pollan. These are not diet books, and no- the author will not try to convert you to Vegetarianism.

Much of what is discussed and presented corresponded with the feelings I had while studying nutrition as an undergrad. I graduated a little disenchanted with the food guide pyramid, and the FDA, and the government's hand in our food supply. Read these if you want to know why (or get ready for a really long conversation with me :) Additionally, much of what is discussed coincides with how I look at food from a religious perspective. As said on the cover of the second book, "eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Start with Omnivore's Dilemma, and stay with it. He can be a little meandering at times, but he does fully make his point after 400+ pages :). Finish it off with In Defense of Food. I can't promise you will change the way you eat (although I would be surprised if you didn't) but I can promise that you will understand why some people choose to eat differently.

Why do some people spend so much money on Organic/Local/Grass-Fed/Free-Range food? Aren't they a bunch of environmental loonies?? I mean c'mon it is just food.

Read the books, and you decide.

Ice Skating

The girls took Ice Skating lessons together this past Fall/Winter. Bryant Park has an outdoor rink where skating is free, and lessons are pretty reasonable. The rink is normally super packed (like most "free" things in NYC) but because we home school, we can hit the rink at 9 AM and have it pretty much to ourselves.

This picture is of their first lesson. Eva could hardly stay up on the ice. Madeline was pretty steady, but was pretty much shuffling most of the time.

Before they took lessons, they spent most of their time circling the periphery of rink, holding on to the gate as they shuffled along.

Here is Eva getting a little more confidence with Mom's help.

I feel bad I didn't take more footage of their ice skating. Their last class was two weeks ago, and both of them had improved considerably. This is something we will definitely do again next year.

Reading can be exhausting....

I found Owen like this the other day. While I was working on homework with Madeline and Eva in the Dining Room, he decided to bring his pillow and two favorite blankets over to the couch and snuggle up with a good book.
I could faintly hear him happily "reading" his book out loud, and then he became completely quiet. When I went to check on him, he was peacefully dozing under the pages of his favorite read, Blues Clues.