Mother's Day

I was putting off writing about Mother's Day because I hoped to have some photos ready, but that may take forever, so I'll just jump in.

I had the best mother's day, have the best kids, and got the best gift.

It all began Sunday morning with Caleb throwing open my bedroom door at 6am to announce that my mother's day breakfast was ready.  So maybe 6am was a little early, but the breakfast (waffles, eggs, bacon, home fries, orange juice) was scrumptious.

My gifts were all laid out on the table.  Cards from everyone, an adorable craft of flowers from Caleb, flowers, candy, and yes, my power tools.

Breakfast followed by clean up followed by church brought us to lunch time.  At which point mother's day sort of got away from us.  We helped out two of the young 19 year old missionaries in our ward call/skype home to their moms.  (They only get to call home twice a year - Christmas and Mother's Day, so it's sort of a big deal for them.  And one day I'll be grateful that a family somewhere helped me talk to my sons on Mother's Day.)  We all scattered to give them privacy, but technical difficulties meant that the one hour time slot ended up going right to 6pm, when we had to whisk away to James' parent's house for Mother's Day dinner.  And before we knew it we had to get the boys back home and to bed for school the next day.

But ever since after lunch time, we had noticed Colin was very quiet.  He didn't eat lunch, nor much of dinner.  He kept to himself, off on the sidelines.  It took all day to coax it out of him, but finally, just before bedtime, he climbed into my bed with me and opened up.  He had briefly mentioned earlier that morning that it would be fun to spend time playing games together for Mother's Day.  What we didn't know is that, after I had agreed how much fun that would be, he had spent hours putting together the activity.  But because of how the afternoon and evening turned out, we never got to it.  I assured him that we would definitely do it Monday night, and how that would make Mother's Day even better because I would get a whole extra day to celebrate.

Then, when it came to Monday night, we were blown away.  He had created 4 "stations" of activities.  Each station had a hand drawn sign and picture denoting the activity: Lego Station, Craft Station, Pin the Nose on Mommy Station, and Music Station.  At the Lego station we were all building Mother's Day flowers out of Lego.  At the Craft station we made Mother's Day cards.  At the Pin the nose on Mommy station, we pinned a nose on a hand drawn picture Colin made of me.  And at the music station, we all made up songs about how much they love their mommy.

Seriously - how amazing is my child?!  We had an absolutely blast.  I got lots of pictures and lots of video, including Colin explaining each station to us.  His creativity and attentiveness blow me away.  It's moments like these that feel like a reassuring pat on the back that all my efforts as a mother are truly making a difference.