“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think.  It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”  L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Katie met a kindred spirit, Eliza, at ballet a few months ago.  Fancy Nancy was the common factor (along with a love of pink and all things fancy and dancing, of course).  Katie began dreaming of celebrating their mutual love of Fancy Nancy with a fancy tea party from the moment she found out their mutual interests.

Then a few weeks ago Eliza came to ballet and announced that she was moving.  Katie was crushed.  She rushed out of class to tell me that she absolutely had to invite Eliza over right away for tea.  Eliza’s dad gave me her mom’s number and we began texting trying to work out a date to get the girls together for a tea party.  After a few weeks of scheduling and postponing and rescheduling {repeatedly} (all on my part as we’ve had a lingering cold virus hanging around), Katie finally got to celebrate their fancy friendship with a wind-blown Fancy Nancy picnic.

(Originally it was planned as a tea party, but upon cleaning out the cupboards, Katie discovered my fancy picnic basket from my college days of nature trekking and the tea party morphed into a fancy tea party picnic.)   So a few Mondays ago, we packed the picnic up and all of our fancy clothes and then we headed over to orchestra lessons.  As the picnic would be on that same side of town, we avoided trekking back across town by readying ourselves while waiting for the boys to finish their lessons.  Katie was rather pleased as I let her pick out eyeshadow and lipgloss to wear.   A freak cold-front blew in right before the tea party picnic but all of the picnic attendees were good sports.  William and Joseph insisted on bringing their instruments to play music for us (although as soon as the food came out I noticed the music disappeared!).  Katie planned the menu with brownies and pirouette cookies and lemon wafers along with sandwiches (cucumber for the more refined tea partier and peanut butter for the rest of ’em), a fruit bowl and refreshing liquids, of course, which included raspberry tea and lemonade.  It was a beautiful picnic despite the wind and overcast sky.

The actual picnicking was followed by a rather odd game of duck-duck-goose (clearly, I need to make an effort to teach the actual rules).  It started off normal enough.  Duck-duck-duck-duck-duck-goose.  But then the goose would chase “it” on a serious wild goose chase…not around the circle as it’s meant to be done.  The best part was that as soon as “it” and the goose took off, all the rest of the kids followed with wild laughter filling the air.  It was a rollicking good time and entertaining to watch.

I’d be cheating the lovely afternoon out of my favorite part if I didn’t include here the fact that it wasn’t just Katie that met a kindred spirit…Eliza’s mom, Amy, and I discovered over the course of scheduling and rescheduling that we too share a love for many things (including fancy tea parties and Downton Abbey, blogging and children’s literature).  It’s terribly sad to meet a kindred spirit only to have them whisked away.  Of course I have to remember Anne Shirley’s wisdom when she said, “Remember, true friends are always together in spirit.”  So despite the fact that Eliza and Amy (and sweet little Jed) have up and moved, Katie and I are already delighting in the idea of a reunion to celebrate all things fancy sometime again soon with such dear, kindred spirits.