Saturday, March 17, 2012

Embracing Winter: Celebrate Spring!

This coming week marks the official beginning of spring! Yay! We've made it through the winter. For most of us, it has been a strangely mild winter, and perhaps not as difficult as other years. Nevertheless, I'm sure that we are all rejoicing in the fact that the prelude of spring is in our ears and the whole symphony of nature will soon burst forth in the song of new life and beauty.

Our family celebrates the advent of spring with a tea. This began the first year of our marriage. Living in a little borough of Pittsburgh in a tiny apartment surrounded on all sides by asphalt, I wanted to do something to celebrate that, at least on the calendar, beauty was returning to our world.

Ever since we have continued on the tradition, sometimes elaborately, and sometimes very simply. The items that stay the same year in and year out are strawberries and tea and our spring tablecloth.

(2011) Laura enjoys her first spring tea.

(2010) If the first day of spring falls close to a weekend we have sometimes celebrated on a Sunday.

(2010) Inviting friends to celebrate the first day of spring just adds to the joy.

(2010) Of course we couldn't let the actual day of spring go by without a few strawberries and tea.
(2009) A very rare picture of Andrew sipping tea. He is the only member of the family who doesn't drink hot drinks.

(2009) A glimpse of the spring tablecloth.

(2008) Rachel serving tea: strawberries and toast.

(2005) Our last spring tea in Airdrie, Scotland.

(2003) Andrew's very first spring tea.

(2002) First picture of Rachel enjoying spring tea.

Our winter posts have come to an end. It has been fun to think of ideas to help make winter a more enjoyable time for all of us. I hope you all have a wonderful spring!

3 comments:

Heather Anne said...

Oh how fun - I love this tradition Heather! I've really enjoyed your embracing winter series - lots of good thoughts and inspiration! My kids are already pushing for me to get out the colored pencils to draw my spring doodle, so I guess we'll give that a try! Baseball starts in a couple of weeks, so that will feature prominently in our schedule, but there's more to life than baseball, and I am sure they will have lots of ideas about how we will make this spring memorable.

Ruth MacCarthaigh said...

Thank you! I enjoy spring. Love the cute photos of the kids when they were younger.
|Ruth

Unknown said...

What a lovely idea!! I might be "stealing" it from you in the years to come.