Happy Mother's Day 2013

This will be a picture-heavy post for any of you with dial-up or slow internet. I couldn't leave anything out. My dear husband indulged me with a photo of me with my beautiful children. He took something like 30 photos, but I ended up liking the first one the best. Most of it was beyond his control since Eric was making different faces and then he pointed that out then the rest of us started looking at Eric's faces, etc. One thing to note--I was wearing high heels but I'm standing on a step lower than the kids.

We started out with only three children in the house. Natalie had spent the night over at her friend Margot's house--more on that tomorrow. I was still in bed when Eric presented me with his presents. I took a picture of the front of his Mother's Day card and the inside sentiment (below). He also made a bookmark. He took the bookmark out of his backpack on Friday when I was standing next to him. Patrick asked him what it was and he replied, "It's for Mother's Day." Patrick told him that maybe he wasn't supposed to tell me about that already. Eric told me later that he had other "gifts" that he had put on the formal dining room table. I avoided going in the formal dining room so I would have some sort of surprise this morning.

His writing is getting better and better. This is also one of the very few non-dinosaur drawings I've seen him do. He gave me a hug and told me "Happy Mother's Day, Mama." He greeted me with "Happy Mother's Day, Mama" several times today. What a sweetie.

This is the inside of the card he made me. He said that he drew himself about to give me a hug. It was only then that I noticed his outstretched stick arms pointed in my direction. It's so cute that he felt the need to identify "You" and "Eric" along with the "Mama" label. Hilarious!

We got dressed for church (9am mass) and picked up Natalie on the way there. We should have picked her up earlier, because she was still asleep when we got there. It took her about 15-20 minutes or so to get ready. Meanwhile the rest of us waited in the car. She wore the dress that she wore last night to the Bat Mitzvah of a classmate that she went to last night. I'll describe a few more details in a post tomorrow. When we got home, we took the picture of me with the kids above.

This is Eric's other present to me. His teacher obviously wrote out his answers. It would have been nicer to have his own handwriting on it, but maybe they didn't want to deal with all the questions about spelling and such. You can click on the picture and get a bigger version if you want to read all of it. Patrick found it interesting that they had a question about how old their mom is. I'm sure that can provide hilarious results when the child doesn't know how old their mom really is. He must have known my age. I found it interesting that Eric thinks that my favorite food is "Wendy's". I guess he's never noticed that when I bring him Wendy's at school, I never have any Wendy's food with me to eat. Generally I'll eat elsewhere first or I'll eat at home afterwards.

This is a picture from the Quarry Golf Club where we had brunch. I wanted a buffet style meal so the kids could pick and choose and overeat if they wanted to. We sat inside but enjoyed the outside after we ate. Eric ate almost an entire Belgian waffle all by himself, along with some fruit, a blueberry muffin, a biscuit, and a small piece of sausage. Natalie ate mostly "desserts" including a large slice of chocolate cake. She ate a minimal amount of a chicken tender. The rest of us ate a more varied selection. I ate a spinach, mushroom, tomato, and cheese omelet and I sampled their pasta bar as well. I actually didn't have any sweets, except for some pineapple and strawberries.

This is one of Natalie's presents. She seemed especially embarrassed about the "poem". I'm not sure why they told the kids to include the "poem" about being a leader on a present for Mother's Day, but I like the picture of her and I like the color of the picture frame. I already know she's a leader. I love that she has a few leadership roles at school. That will only make her better as she gets older. I'll post a photo of her other present tomorrow.

After brunch, we came home and I took the kids to Target. They love going to Target. The rest of the afternoon was pretty relaxed and then Patrick made salmon for dinner. He is getting so good at cooking. He doesn't love to cook, but I love that he loves to cook for me. :) This is a silly picture of the kids I took after dinner when we were about to go out to Brindles for ice cream. Yes, I'm taking my kids out for a treat on Mother's Day. The big boys decided to make me a tunnel for going out to the garage. The smaller kids decided to join in. They were trying to make me feel special. :) Of course, this came after some jokes about how Anthony could pay for the ice cream--with the credit card we gave him using our account. Jokes aside, though, I think they would totally buy me ice cream later when they have their own money.

So, this is the end of our last "free weekend" until about the July time frame. The next few weekends will be even busier.