Mother's Day has always been kind of a love/hate day for me.
Sometimes it felt so stressful, with so much expectations for "MY" day by both me and the kids, that it just wasn't fun. And it always seemed to be that the 'baby' of the family (who ever it was that year) would be especially difficult that day! (Although, I have to say that every year that I was nursing a baby on Mother's Day, Brian would give me a full nights rest as a gift. I would pump, and sleep in the basement, while he would get up for the feedings in the night. Even with a 2 month old. I always loved that gift.) I always wished for an easy, breath-through blissful kind of day, but life in general never seems to be that way, so why would Mothers' day?
I'm not saying that Mother's Day's for the past 14 years have been miserable. Just not 'picture-perfect' all the time. So this year I decided to let it all go....NO expectations, no thinking that my kids might actually give me the ONE gift I really want EVERY year....a QUIET, CLEAN house. Because if it was both QUIET AND CLEAN, then that would mean that I WASN'T the mother of 6 children! And what kind of Mother's Day would that be?
And you know what.....
It turned out to be a pretty perfect day in my memory, even with a few upsets and all!
I started "MY" day late Saturday afternoon with a peaceful time laying on the tramp by myself....
I was looking up at the trees, watching the squirrels run from branch to branch, and listening to the sounds of the neighborhood around me. There were kids jumping on the tramp in the yard next door, Brian and the girls laying out the tent from the Father/Son campout the night before, Ronan roaming around the yard looking for frogs, and other creatures, and a neighbor walking his 2 girls over to play. I laid there for a good 20 minutes before anyone even noticed I was there. It was nice. I love to be a fly on the wall (or the tramp) and listen to kids play when they don't know your there.
Brian asked if I'd like to go out to dinner that night as a pre-Mother's Day treat.
SURE!
We called
Roy's Hawaiian Fusion, a restaurant I have been wanting to try, and they had
1 reservation left for the night, in 30 min! So we changed quickly, threw some instructions at the children, and took off to Baltimore.
The food was delicious! I loved it ALL.
AND they were having a special that night where they gave all the women in the restaurant a gift card in celebration of Mother's Day. SO, now we get to go back again!
For dessert we got the Pineapple Upside Down cake, which was fine, BUT the coconut ice cream that came with it was HEAVENLY!! I want to go back JUST for that! Yum.....
Sunday mornings are a bit rushed around here with 9:00 church, so I asked for no big breakfast....save it for after church, lets just get to church early. Which we did. And Hayden spoke in Sacrament meeting on "Honoring Thy Mother". He did a great job, and I loved it! The kids sang. I subbed Ronan's class, but then Brian offered to take them the last hour so I could go to Relief Society. I appreciated it, especially since he was in so much pain the whole day. He and Hayden had 'wrestled' 2 days before, and his rib had been hurting him. In fact, by the time we made it home from church he was in so much pain that I told him to go to the urgent care center. Which he did, and found out that his rib was fractured! Lesson....14 year old boys are stronger than they look! (Apparently Brian broke his father's rib when he was 15....so it must be some kind of karma)
Once Brian made it home with some proper pain meds, we went on a "Mother's Day Walk" at my request.
Here are the 6 reasons I celebrate Mother's Day!
We had a great time on our walk!
And when we got home, these were brought to me....
By the neighbor kids!
Aren't they sweet?!
A pretty perfect Mother's Day....fractured rib and all.
