Thank You Friend

Our Women's Church Group having our

Christmas tea at Allisha's Tea Room

(Stephanie & I pictured in black up front)

hosted in December 1996.
My friend Stephanie Palen

Bringing beautiful pink roses to mark the date.

After I posted the previous blog about yesterday's ten year anniversary I called my friend Stephanie that I said had helped me with my first tea party and left her a message. After 3:00pm today she showed up with these beautiful pink roses and made me cry. After all sentimental moments are my favorite.

Stephanie is my friend that shared in the dream of A Spot For Tea. I can still vividly remember the three of us (Stephanie, myself and Shelley Pruitt) sitting at a Stephanie's kitchen table dreaming up names for a tea booth at the Bethany Craft Mall in March 1996. We were three girls that attended Women's Bible Study together. We supported and helped each other through being stay-at-home moms with a dream and a hot glue gun. She really helped me in the throes of being a new mom and all the changes feeling isolated and alone. I still have the blue sheet of paper that we wrote all of our ideas on. Down at the bottom it has a picture of teddy bears having tea and it says, "When you have a friend, you have everything."

I don't know how it happens but you each get going in different directions and your kids get older. Life just keeps flying on by...Stephanie went on to work for Putnam City Schools and is a director over many cafeterias in our school's district. We both ended up working with children and food (hehehe!) It is so sweet to share the dream with someone who remembers. Thanks again Stephanie for the roses but more importantly, thanks for being my friend and for sharing the memories of the beginning.