Happy Mother’s Day to me…and my mom…and others!

Fair warning: This is a looooooong post. Make sure you have some time before you start.

Today has been a wonderful Mother’s Day! In many ways, Mother’s Day now has a bit of sadness to it, since Ed’s Mom is gone as is my good friend Lea’s Mom. I know that for a lot of people there is a lot of pain surrounding Mother’s Day – because they’ve lost mothers or children or can’t have children or they are separated from their mom or their child in some way – but I am blessed and thankful for the family that I have – for my DH and my girls and my parents and everyone else.

The girls & Ed had surprises for me this morning.

Hugs at breakfast

Homemade cards from each of my girls

Here Becca is giving me a “Smartie” she saved from her soccer treat yesterday. Now these were not regular old Smarties – the kind that come in a roll and are kind of chalky and tart. These were the Canadian version – the Canadian M&M’s that they call Smarties! I gushed over them when she was eating them after soccer and she saved me one. Sweetie!

Bethany made me a card and gift at school and she gave me a coupon telling me she would fold two loads of laundry for me! Lucky for her there are two loads ready to be folded on the floor in the living room.

This is the gift she made for me at school. Isn’t that a cute idea? Thanks, Miss B!

Sarah sent me on a scavenger hunt to find my gift from her. She got me a Hawaiian wallet in her class auction. She actually used her stickers that she earned from her class participation, etc. to buy something for me! Thanks, Sarah!

Then I got to open my present from Ed. He had the girls color and draw on white paper to wrap up the box from newegg.com. I LIKE boxes from newegg.com. ;)

MMMMmmmm! A 50 mm fixed length lens for my camera! As you can see from the box, it has an f-stop as low as 1.8, which, in non-photographer terms, means that I can take GREAT portraits and close-ups. At least, that’s the theory. I’m counting on it working out so that I can take nice pictures of my girls.

Also yesterday we went to the local country store and did their inexpensive “build-a-basket” project and had free hotdogs. It was fun and I hope this basket grows quickly. The girls helped pick out all pink & white flowers, so we’ve got some fuschias and bacopa in there and who knows what else. It’s small now, but in a few months I’m hoping it’ll be gorgeous!

I also got to work in the yard almost all afternoon yesterday. It was so wonderful to actually spend some time out there and get all my stuff planted! I also managed to score a tomato-red sunburn on my back, but it was worth it.

Gerbera Daisies in my window box.

My new tomato-growing experiment – the topsy-turvy hanging tomato grower…I’ll let you know how it’s going in a few months!

My mini-veggie-garden: I’ve got 3 kinds of peppers (which do not grow well in the PNW, I usually get one pepper per plant!) and a spicy salad mix from the local farmers market, some chives and cilantro. I am also planning to do some potatoes in my big pots once I get some more dirt.

Now for some of my new blooming stuff from around the yard: I think this is some kind of columbine?

Ed loves the yellow-orange irises. These are his favorite!

Some creeping phlox under the forsythia, which is no longer blooming, but it is growing!

Snowball bush

Sarah’s strawberry patch. Looks like we may have a few strawberries this year! In the past, hers have grown and grown, but haven’t produced many flowers or fruits – there are lots of flowers this year! Bethany has a patch of strawberries in the back, which produce a ton of berries, but never get bigger! This year though it looks like it’s finally sent out some shoots and we may get even more berries. Yay!

My lilac tree – I am so glad it is blooming! I had not a single bloom last year. I found out that I either a) gave it too much fertilizer (apparently lilacs don’t like nitrogen) or b) cut off all the buds when I pruned it the year before or c) both a & b. My guess is c. So, after I learned not to do that, I stopped fertilizing it and didn’t touch it with a pruning shears and viola! Lilac blooms!

I had just a few minutes to try out my new lens. Pretty fun and awesome depth of field!

So, the rest of the Mother’s day…

Much of my family was at my mom’s today for dessert! Hooray! We had to have a picture of all the women. This is me & my girls, my mom, my Grandma, my Aunt Nancy and my Aunt Adie. Uncle Stan, my dad, and Ed were also there. Uncle Jim was unfortunately at home as he had fallen and hurt his shoulder and back. :( It was a great Mother’s Day!

Time to catch up on PotD!

Those are from Becca’s soccer game on Thursday, May 7. She did great, though she likes practice better than games. Why? Because in practice everyone gets their own ball and in games everyone is trying to kick the same ball! Makes sense to me.

Okay, this is Friday’s PotD even though Becca is holding something she made in school on Thursday. I took the picture on Friday when I was going through the stack of papers on the counter and found the picture and hung it up on the cupboard. Thanks for the great picture, Becca!

 

Here’s the Saturday morning breakfast picture. I purposely focused on the food, since that’s why I took the picture. That’s why Bethany is slightly out of focus. Eggs and toast – Ed’s Saturday morning specialty. Thanks, Ed!

We also had Becca’s soccer game on Saturday afternoon. She got to play goalie for part of the game and did great! She blocked 3 kicks and didn’t let the other team score any goals!

She was also getting more aggressive in going after that one ball that everyone is trying to kick!

 

Okay, I know I already had lots of photos for Sunday. But I just had to include this one as Sunday’s PotD. I also know that I have lots of pictures of Becca on my blog. She’s just so darn dramatic and photogenic. I can’t help it. Is anyone else as cute as this?