Mother's Day Weekend

What a lovely weekend! It started with my darling elementary kids coming home on Friday with endearing little gifts they had created for me at school. They simply couldn't wait until Sunday to share their love so I got to open a fantastic bookmark, acrostic poem and cupcake liner flower from Bentley, and a cute card, plaster hand-print and poem from Cares. Why is it that hearing "you're the best mom ever" from my little children makes me feel so dang happy? I could sail on those words for days in a sea of happiness. Maybe because I know I make a lot of mistakes and am really working to be better at my job and the fact that they are happy and content and feel loved makes it all worth the effort.

 

On Friday evening, Joseph changed his original plan of attending the Fathers and Sons Stake camp-out with just Bentley and instead took our 3 oldest to his parents' cabin to camp there for the night (and help with cabin clean-up that evening and morning). Of course all 3 kids ended up in Joseph's sleeping bag by about 3:00 am so it was a cozy night for him! Luke and I shopped at TJ together and once I got him to bed I watched The Vow (and was basically rather bored through most of it. Couldn't it have been a little more romantic? fun? happy?) Besides waking up at 3:30 am to a tweeting fire alarm that needed a new battery, and then feeding Luke at 4:30, it was a great night. Luke and I slept in until just after 9:00 after his feeding and that felt amazing.

 

Saturday afternoon Joseph and I went for a little biking date. One of our goals is to do more active/outdoor dates now that the weather is gorgeous and I am not a sickly or huge pregnant lady! Cheers to that! It was my first time leaving Luke with a babysitter that wasn't his daddy or grandma or auntie. And he did great so I was pleased (plus I have awesome YW babysitters...I am very lucky).

We rode to the temple from our house and inadvertently joined the route for the Goldilocks race. It's an event for women only and Joseph got a lot of bad looks. Funny that people even cared! We were only on the route for about 3 miles each way but at least we had police manning those intersections and keeping traffic at bay. Cycling is a favorite of mine—it always feels like such steady, physical exercise, the views are so pretty out here in the "country" ;) and being out in the summer air is always intoxicating.  I love matching my hubby in twinner jerseys too!

Mother's Day was a good day too. Luke had a rough morning and suddenly wanted to nurse right before church started. I ended up sending my family to church without me, fed Luke at home, finished getting ready, and made it to church just in time to hear my darlings sing Mother I Love You with all the primary kids. Their beaming faces when they saw me walk in totally melted my heart. What if I had missed it? I would have been crushed to let them down—so grateful to be there for that.

Joseph made us delicious Tahitian Pancakes (crepes) for lunch and then gave me the gift of a DVD of all our home movies from the last 3 years that he's captured on his phone. We watched all the clips we could (before needing to head out and see grandmas) and they were priceless. My babies look so small and edible! I am so glad we have those preserved and gathered up like that. Our whole family had a great time watching (as I remember loving to do when I was a kid too).

We were so lucky to get to spend time with Joseph's mom and my mom on Sunday too. I love those women dearly. They continually serve and love and support my family and me—and love my children so, so much. They are incredible examples to me of faith and love and motherhood and righteousness. My little sis mentioned on her blog how my mom is so good at knowing how to support and encourage her through her life of being married to a surgeon. She takes care of her small kids without much help from a hubby due to crazy work hours and my mom did the exact same thing when raising us. I read what my sis wrote and thought how cool it is that my mom seems to know just how to support and encourage me in the unique struggles and mothering life I lead too. It just shows me that she is involved with and connected to us as her daughters and is still being our mother even as we are mothers ourselves. I love her.