I woke up early and sent her an email that read something like this:

just in case you wondered, it works out to 1160 POUNDS of apples will be showing up in my garage this morning.  Um, time to get moving stuff around?  Time to bust out the shop-vac (thanks hubby!) and make my garage look a little less scary for apple man?  While I make petite almond tarts and bread puffs for fancy American Girl tea here this afternoon?  And get all my kids to work and do school too?  While Phineas screams at me like he has the past two days?  And I can’t have more coffee or my hands my start shaking?  And squeeze my squishy self into my costume for said girls tea?  Did I mention I de-wormed 5 goats, 2 horses and 2 dogs before 9 AM yesterday?  Yeah, I thought not, but that was yesterday.  And I’m feeling just a tad less capable today.  Uh, more than a tad.  And my dinner smells gross.  And it has to sit in the crock-pot and stink up my house all day, ew.

Deep cleansing breath.  Can it just be tomorrow and I am at your house giving you a huge hug?????  Please?  I would much rather be cleaning your kitchen than mine.  Seriously.

She wrote back with pithy wisdom as usual and told me I could totally do it, that all I needed was to make some signs for the spots I couldn’t clean, stuff all the things I didn’t have time to put away and SHUT the DOORS.  So I did what best friends do and did exactly what she said:

Thus a large problem was solved and I could focus on baking and cleaning main living areas.  Nevermind that I did forget about one downstairs bathroom and when I saw a friend heading towards it out of the corner of my eye I might have said (while directing the girls sharing time) something like “Um, oh dear, yeah I didn’t get to that bathroom and I can’t vouch for its condition and don’t ask me why the tub is full of dried cranberries and…”  I stopped there and realized I was probably embarrassing myself in front of a room full of girls and their moms (if that was possible?).  She survived the bathroom and now she knows me just a little bit better than she did before Friday.  And she still wants to be my friend (happy me).

My mother was the star of the show and she played “Lady Randolph” and had invited her granddaughter (Rylee) to tea with her friends.  She gave them a lovely lesson on manners and why they were important.  Then she gave them a chance to practice them.

After their little practice on introductions and how to politely carry on conversation, they went to tea in the kitchen where they picked out their own tea cups and sat down to be served (by me, servant “Martha”!).

After tea we played some colonial games and each girl shared something interesting they’d learned about that time period.

It was a fantastically fun day!  Here is our group before everyone headed home –

The absolute only thing that could have made the day any better would have been being able to show all these cute pictures to my completely precious, deeply beloved Grandma Larson who resided in Williamsburg for the past many years and whose hand I’ve held walking down the Duke of Gloucester street more than once.  Miss her all the time, life here isn’t the same without her smiling face.