Celebrating May Day

Hoping to start a new tradition, we embarked on the age old tradition of May Day baskets. Most Mom's probably have their kids sit down to an elaborate craft time where paper flowers are cut and glued together and then attached to piped cleaners after which the flowers are placed in the baskets that the mom hand weaved using the reeds she collected from the nature walk she took the kids on the day before. Since it's been a rainy week here we weren't able to get our nature walk in and thus had no weaved baskets on hand, I found some cute plants at the grocery store, had Sage glue a small flower cutout to a larger one, wrote Happy May Day on it and called it good.

The whole point of leaving a basket on someones doorstep is to ring the doorbell then hightail it out of there before getting caught, however, there is nothing fast in trying to herd a three year old and one year old around so this experience for them was more about a lesson in the joy in giving.

We had three plants to deliver. One to each of our neighbors and one to Tina, my friend who watches Sage and Clare twice a week and has had the most influence on me keeping my sanity while Brent is gone. The first neighbor is a couple who have a son-in-law themselves that is deployed. They are the kindest people who have looked over the house for us while we've been gone, shoveled the driveway for me this winter every time it snowed and basically have watched out for the girls and I while Brent has been gone. Turned out they weren't home when we rang their doorbell so we left the plant by their front door. It took a little convincing to get Sage to leave a plant by the door without actually giving it to anyone but eventually I was able to pull her away from it.

Our neighbors with three adorable girls all happened to be outside playing so their delivery was much more successful. They totally got a kick out of Sage giving them flowers and it was just what Sage needed to get really excited about delivering the next to plant. Sadly, there are no pictures of this transaction because I was busy coaching Sage through it and also keeping Clare from eating tulips and dirt.

Tina's house was next and this was the one Sage was most excited about...that may have been because she knew we were going to the zoo after we gave Tina her flowers.

They weren't home either.

I think it's safe to say that I got more out of this May day than the girls did. I knew the fun these people would have in finding flowers by their door but to Sage we were just running around leaving plants lying on the ground and Clare, well, she couldn't have cared less about what the mission was and spent most of her time playing with whatever rocks, dirt, grass or bugs that she could find. Does this mean we won't be making this day a tradition in the Barnstuble house? Absolutely NOT! Next year there will be weaved baskets, hand-cut paper grass to fill the baskets, sequined flowers, pipe cleaner bees....