Happy Mother's Day

I often think its odd that I'm a mom - I alway think that because I'm the youngest in my family, I'm really not that old and grown up. Odd, I know but true. And now I look at the above picture and think 'wow' those are my children! I'm proud to be their mom and they are pretty good kids. I can't imagine our lives without them! Mother's day is not only a day in which we are celebrated (and now being a mom, I totally understand why Mother's day exists!), but it is a great day to say thanks for the chance to be a mom.

Before church the boys gave me this for Mother's day (because they forgot the other item I had hinted about wanting). I think they did a great job of picking out a meaningful bead to add to my bracelet. [Bill did a great job getting me the bracelet for Christmas as it is easy to get me a gift - just add a bead to my collection!]

We went to church and stayed for the brunch sponsored by the youth. We put bids in on 2 items and won both: a round of golf and carts for 4 here in town (which will be used when my brother's family comes in June) and a cedar vase made by a member of our church:

(I also won the little vase of flowers as a door prize.) He has made vases before for the auction and we never put a bid in before today. I was pretty excited when I woke up from my nap to find that in our kitchen! The picture does not do justice - it is beautiful. I made 2 baby hats and put them in the silent action too; I'm not sure who ended up with them though.

Following brunch I took a nap which was great because after my nap I was back in charge of the kiddos. Adam needed to finish up the landscaping as we are expected to get some rain so having the lawn seeded would be great before a nice rain. I did manage to try out my other Mother's day gift:

Just kidding, we did buy it last night though. Our hand me down 1980's Lawnboy was spitting out more oil and would eventually burn our grass that we've worked so hard for (the whole back yard was a 'rock pond' when we bought the house). So rather than try and squeeze one more year out of it, we went shopping for a new one last night. I was pretty excited because we left the kids at Dahlen's so we could get dinner and make an evening out of it - until we realized it was Prom! So all the nice restaurants you would go to w/o your kids were full of brightly colored (ugly) dresses and their vest matching dates. So after spending way too much time trying to find a nice place to eat we were so hungry and didn't want to rush thru a dinner that we paid good money for, we ended up at Chipolte! (It is actually a place we rarely go to w/ the boys b/c there isn't much for Gerrit to eat there at this point - he hasn't mastered eating a taco well.) So we enjoyed chips and guac. and our burrito bowls, the only thing missing was a margarita and I looked to see if they sold them in a bottle, but they don't. We sat at a high table too which we couldn't do if we had the kids. So even though it was not Victoria's (our 1st choice) it was still dinner w/o the boys.

And now both boys are tucked in and I'm able to sit down for the 1st time since my nap. During dinner Adam thanked me for watching the kids on my 'day off' so he could finish up the yard. It better rain these next 2 days! Now we can finally concentrate on getting the hoop up!