Pretzel Party

March 26

Today was the day we had been waiting for over the last month!  The children were so excited that they even helped me clean house!  Woo hoo!

Today was the day we would see all of our little saint dolls that the other families had created.

To help bring families together to pick up their sets of dolls, I asked to have a get together.  We would make pretzels!

Our family loves making pretzels but it is also fun to share the skill with others.  So, it seemed like a perfect fit for the day.  

I woke up early and made a LARGE batch of dough.  We were expecting about 20 children and their moms to come.  We even had door prizes (We ended up drawing names later in the event to be fair to every one.) to go with the theme.

Jenny arrived with our doll sets and I wanted to stop everything and hold them all.  They are all so special!  The moms and their families did such a great job portraying all the saints.  It is hard to believe we now have over 50 dolls (We did extras and hope to do more!) to help us grasp the joy of the saints and their virtuous lives!

However, we had pretzels to make!  We started with a brief history of how the traditional pretzels came about...then we started our rolling and twisting of dough to form our own pretzels.  Even the littlest helper was able to make a pretzel.

I was also so impressed with the creative little bakers we had in the group.  We had pretzels shaped like hearts and crosses.  We also had double crossed pretzels and twisted sticks.  One reason I love to have little helpers in the kitchen!

I was so thankful for Michael being there with us.  He made sure we stayed on track and continued through the process.  He also kept the pretzels baking.  We were so busy making pretzels that we had to stop taking pictures but he was definitely working hard in the kitchen!

This gave the children time to play and the moms time to chat.  Fun was had by all and it was hard to pack everyone back into vehicles to send them on their way.  It has been a long time since we had such a gathering at our home.  It was so nice...I hope to have more events like these soon.

Of course the best part is dipping the baked pretzels in butter and the toppings.  We had two options (salt or cinnamon sugar).  AND THEN...we got to EAT the pretzels!




And then...after everyone left...later in the evening after the children had all gone to bed...I got a chance to sit done with the dolls and enjoy the details.  I even had the opportunity to look up information about their lives (I hope to make a few books to match the saints and their lives for the children later.).  I was able to take a picture with the dolls lined up in order by time period.  I have so many ways I could have divided them and I will likely have games with the children to help me sort them in different ways...such as:

• Feast Days
• Countries
• Partner Saints
• Virtues
• and so many other ways.

Jenny told us that she hopes to do this again in the summer.  I look forward to participating again.