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By Elisabeth Graham, age 9

Source: The Avonlea Traditions Chronicle, Issue No. 27, Spring 1999.

Just over a year ago on February 7, 1998, some friends came to my home in Chicago, Illinois, to celebrate Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthday. We all dressed the way we imagined Laura would have dressed. My friend Kaitlin, my mother and I all wore bonnets.

We started the party by singing songs from The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook. Then we made autograph books with red covers and pastel pages like Ma brought Laura from "out east" and bead bracelets like the ones Mary made at college and brought to Laura. We also made calling cards with pink roses on them. During these activities we had "Little House" trivia questions. After that we made molasses candy like Almanzo and his brother and sisters made in Farmer Boy.

For "tea" we had heart-shaped sugar cookies like the little cakes Laura and Mary got for Christmas in Little House on the Prairie. We also had gingerbread with chocolate icing made from Laura's own recipe. We drank lemonade like they had at Nellie Oleson's birthday party. The centrepiece on the table was a bouquet of miniature pink roses because Laura liked the wild ones that grew on the prairie and named her daughter "Rose" after them. My mother and I made place cards with pink rose stickers on them. We made a wonderful memory that day.

On November 28, 1998, we had a four-course tea at my house to celebrate both LMM's birthday and the 90th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables. We all dressed as Anne would have. I wore puffed sleeves.

A few years ago one of my father's colleagues gave me three porcelain dolls-one with red hair, one with black hair and one with blonde hair. Quickly I named them Anne, Diana and Ruby. Then, for my ninth birthday my grandparents gave me a smaller porcelain doll that I named Rilla. We used these dolls as "Anne decor" for the party.

Before tea my mother read portions from LMM's journals, and we did some "Anne" trivia. Then we did an "Anne" word search from The Avonlea Traditions Chronicle while my mother got the tea ready.

We used our best china and had yellow chrysanthemums as the centrepiece. My mother and I had place cards which we'd made for the occasion, with cat stickers on each one in honour of LMM's love for cats.

For the first course we had three kinds of tea sandwiches: egg salad, chicken salad and cucumber and cream cheese. We had home-made buttermilk biscuits with butter and jam for the second course. My mother and I had made jelly tart cookies and Mrs. Lynde's lemon biscuits for the third course. And for the fourth course my mother made an orange-glazed angel food cake and rhubarb pie. Throughout the four courses we drank Anne of Green Gables ginger tea and blackcurrant tea from Avonlea Traditions. In the background was playing the soundtrack from the Anne of Green Gables movie. This is another wonderful memory that I will have the rest of my life.

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