Mother's Day 2015

My hopes and dreams for Mother's Day this year included doing absolutely no cooking or food preparation of any kind.  With that in mind we invited our parents to come up on Saturday for an early Mother's Day lunch.  

What you see here is the cumulative effort of 4 grandparents, 2 parents, a brother, 3 time-outs and 17 bribes.  That's what it took to get Elliott to cooperate for a picture.  If you want to call the one-quarter of a fake smile, cooperating.

I forgot to take pictures until after everyone had already taken their food.  We had,

salad,

corn on the cob,

lots and lots of fruit (a melon platter and a berry platter),

and bacon wrapped pork roast.

It wasn't until MONDAY morning when I remembered I had made an entire platter of deviled eggs and never put them out.  I was hoping for just slightly dried out and rubbery, but they were encapsulated in ice and frozen solid so I had to throw all of them away.

I also made bruschetta with goat cheese and hot pepper jelly for an appetizer and sugar cookies with strawberry frosting for dessert but never took a picture of them.  I did remember to serve them though.

After we ate it was time for presents. The presents for both of our moms were completely unwrappable so my mom got her present in beach towels.

Three bags of gravel!  Hooray!

What?  You've never given your mother gravel for a gift?  Well, neither had I.  But she is going to actually use this for a project so it was functional and needed.

The presents for Michael's mom were even more unwrappable so we just gave them to her.

A trellis and a bougainvillea plant.  Hooray!

I also got presents, which is always a lovely touch.

My parents gave me perfume (I've been using this perfume since I was 15 and I still love it),

And my mom brought a gift from her friend Sheila.  We invited Sheila to lunch but she wasn't able to make it.

She gave me this exact crystal ice bucket, but this picture is from google because I was just too lazy to take an actual picture.

After presents my parents had to go back to Tucson.  Then I fell asleep in the chair in our room for a few minutes while Michael and his dad changed the ceiling fan in Elliott's room.

Hey, look, I got a before picture!  Still no after.

On Sunday Elliott gave me my first gift by waking up way earlier than is allowed.  Thankfully he fell back asleep in our bed.  Then Michael went out and brought back donuts and blended coffees for us.

I ate half an apple fritter and felt like I could have thrown up.  But I pressed on in the name of fresh donuts.

After we ate it was time for more presents.  I really, really, really like Mother's Day.  There are all sorts of gifts and I don't have to get older to claim them.

First, I got a necklace from Etsy.  Just for the sake of being completely honest, I sent Michael the link for this necklace in an email with the subject line "Buy this for me for Mother's Day".

Spencer drew me another pig picture.

And he made this hand print flower frame at school.  The thought of his poor teacher directing all those kids to trace and cut all those hand prints is just overwhelming.  And by the way, Spencer took all of these pictures lest you wonder why I am blurry and partially headless.

I got a work out shirt and work out pants.

And finally, a 3 Musketeers.  I was a good mom and shared it with all family members except Ginger.

After presents I asked if we could take just one good picture of me in my role as a mother.  I won't bother sharing all of the 967 failures, but I will show one in each failed location.

I finally gave up and we decided to head to the mall.  I wanted to buy a present for myself using money that my dad had not so subtly slipped me as they left the house the day before.

After the mall we went out for lunch at a Mexican restaurant where we had never been but where we had a gift card to use.  It was good.  Not great.  

Then I had the bright idea to go to the park and bribe the children with playing on the playground as incentive to take (one friggin') decent picture.  

Eh

OK.  Whatever.  If this is the best, this is the best. I'll take it.  

There is no lake in this park but these ducks are always there.  They probably live in the pool of an unoccupied home.

After the park we came home and watched James and the Giant Peach.  I bought it at Walmart for $3 a few weeks ago and wanted Spencer to see it since we read the book last year.

The bugs freaked Elliott out and he left after 20 minutes

After the movie I apparently got really lazy with the picture taking.  There was a trip to Fresh and Easy, pizza for dinner and TV and ice cream after the kids went to bed.

If you have't had it, this is the best ice cream flavor in the history of ice cream flavors.

And that was it.  I didn't cook or prepare food all day.  I got great presents.  My kids were mostly nice to me and there was only crying, complaining and whining like 15 times.  That's a good day.