Abracadabra Day

   "Abracadabra Day was the best holiday of all. It was listed in no almanac and printed on no calendar. It was a secret holiday that belonged to the show family. They had invented it, and no one else knew about it. The secret was this: no matter how bad you were on Abracadabra Day or no matter what pranks you pulled, you would not be spanked or punished. It was the one day in the year, in the Hackett family at least, on which you were supposed to be bad."                                                                                  - Sid Fleischman (Mr. Mysterious and Co. )


We (the big girls and I) read Mr. Mysterious together recently. Taylor especially, could not stop talking about Abracadabra Day. In the book, each of the three kids get to take a day to be terribly mischievous and get away with it scott free. I think my strict rule-following daughter found this morbidly fascinating and she kept begging for us to adopt the tradition. Now I believe that I have mentioned several times on this blog how I believe that reading about disobedient children (such as Tom Sawyer, Calvin and of course, Ramona Quimby) is a wonderful way for kids to let off steam and live in an imaginary world of rebellion while still remaining obedient to the rules in real life.

So keeping to that, I informed Taylor that while I did not think we could do Abracadabra day in the tradition sense, we could have an Abracadabra Day tea party. The kids took to this idea right away and immediately started planning. We decided that since this was an abracadabra day tea party, we had to do things a little silly. So we planned for lots of dessert and sandwiches and of course, tea! We decided our tea would be on Thursday, since Thursdays are the most boring day of the week and needs some spicing up. We made our grocery list and we all went out together to buy what we needed on Wednesday and the girls went to bed that night excited for our Abracadabra Day!

Thursday morning the first thing I heard was "It is Abracadabra Day!" The girls patiently waited for mom to finish her coffee and we read the Bible and prayed together - and then the preparations began!

The girls started by putting together the fruit and toothpicks so we could dip them into melted chocolate. They took their job very seriously as you can see - and of course did lots of sampling. Have to make sure that the fruit is all good! We cheated and bought scones, but popped them into the oven so they would be toasty warm.

 Here is one of the finished master-pieces. I started rolling out bread while they worked on that and covered it with cream cheese and jam for pin-wheel jam sandwiches.

  
Kaylee helped too. Especially with the tasting.

Next it was time to set the table. This turned out to be a bigger job then anticipated, especially with the help of a baby sister!

flowers?

As we prepared. the mother was heard saying things such as "Now girls, I want you to make sure that you remember this is an abracadabra tea. That means you have to play with your food, ok?" and "I don't want anyone asking if they can have another sugar cube, you have to eat as many as you want." And Taylor would say things like "I am going to eat my dessert first!" And "I am going to squirt the whipped cream right into my mouth!" There was much excitement at all the mischief this tea was going to bring. After all, you never know what could happen at an Abracadabra tea party!

The food was ready, so the girls went off to dress for the occasion. Dresses for all of course. Though it might have been more abracadabra-ish to eat in our PJ's!

Each of the cups, the girls soon discovered, had funny drops in the bottom of them. I told them it was mystery tea. We poured and magically everyone had a different color tea!

Everyone is ready to eat!

Chocolate anyone?

How about whipped cream?

Kaylee too!

Yum!

Fun was had by all. Lots of sugar was consumed, the kitchen is a mess and kids had an abracadabra-licious time. Taylor says that she thinks this should be a new tradition. So we have decided that it can be something to look foreword to after Christmas ever year. We will now have an abracadabra tea party every January, right before going back to school.

So Happy Abracadabra Day everyone! To celebrate with us, I think everyone should eat dessert first today. It is, after all, an Abracadabra Day!