Mother's Day Celebrations

May 2016

With May, along with the ends of Baseball and dance comp season, along with track and work and school carnivals and everything else that is always going on and making me tired, came Mother's Day.

I didn't honestly have any grand expectations.  Something sweet made by my children is really the only gift I hope for because already it seems Peter is nearing too old for such treasured creations.  

In any case, the first event for the occasion was Mommy Lunch at Lucy's school.  To be honest, I didn't think I could go.  I had a morning and afternoon class sessions at work I was supposed to cover, keeping me busy from 10 am until basically 3 pm.  But that morning when I dropped Lucy off I saw the little decorations they had set out and a pang of worry and sadness hit me.  What if I didn't come and I was the only one?

How sad would she be?

I begged a coworker to cover me from about 11:50 until just after 12:30.  The lunch was supposed last only 30 minutes and I was thankful her school is so close to our house.

I hadn't known if I'd be able to come, so I had't mentioned anything to Lucy about coming back mid-day.  She popped up on the edge of the playground almost as soon as I came in, happy and surprised to see me.

I really wasn't worried at all about the actual lunch part.  I just wanted to make sure Lucy didn't feel left out.  That mommy-guilt you know.  It's never ending and it's relentless when it's your youngest and you put them in day care even when they are thriving there.

The lunch they fed us was a nice salad, ham and cheese sandwiches and some pretzels or something like that.  I filled a plate for myself but Lucy ate most of mine and ignored the food in her own lunch box.  Some of the other moms chatted, but I din't see anybody I knew, because, well, other than a  few parents I spoke briefly with at that birthday party a month or so earlier, I didn't know anybody.  It didn't matter.  I spent the time feeding Lucy and hugging her and enjoying seeing her more than usual.  

The gave out some raffle tickets and then awarded a few prizes but I didn't win any.  It didn't matter.  The whole time I watched a girl i recognized from the party who'd played with Lucy.  Her mommy wasn't there.  She wasn't eating a thing.  The teachers kept trying to encourage her but she just wasn't.  I wondered if she was sad not to have her Mommy there or if she was kind of like Lucy and unlikely to eat in any case.  

This hand print butterfly card also came home with her early in the week.   Perfection.  And also, the first real thing she ever made for me.  Everything else that's come home so far has just been random coloring or painting projects.    

The weekend was kind of insane as Saturday was Peter's first track meet and baseball game while I took A.J. to her last dance comp of the year.

Sunday morning, I slept in until whatever time Matt couldn't contain them anymore and they came bursting in to say good morning.  I was presented with an overflowing basket filled with brightly colored pens and post-it notes along with a lovely bouquet of flowers.

You know you're a teacher mom when....

Peter had come home Friday with a picture he'd made of his hand prints as flowers and a card but A.J.'s Mother's Day stuff wasn't until the following week on Thursday.  Not sure if I find that scheduling odd or a welcome relief because it allowed her event not to conflict with any of the other stuff the week before.

So, for A.J. and the other Pre K students, the Mommies were invited to an afternoon tea.  Don't get me started on the scheduling of an event for Moms at mid-day while the Dad's event was in the evening since apparently Moms don't actually work, or something, because the whole thing really was lovely.  I had to do quite big of deal making to ensure my own availability and I already worry about such events for her next year when I do not have the flexibility of working at home.  Also, when I have to beg, bargain and steal to free up time in the middle of the day I'd rather not still be hungry afterward but maybe that sort of thinking explains why I have gained so much weight this year.  Noon is a very hungry time for me I guess.

Whatever.  It was a cool and cloudy day but we all bundled up and met up in the little rose garden courtyard of the school original hacienda building.  (Long ago the property was a ranch and many of the original buildings are still in use.  The Pre-K and Kinder rooms, for example still show evidence in their design of their original buildings use as some sort of stables.

So anyway, we Mommies gathered and looked over the table decorations and find our seats while we waited for the children to come over.  It wasn't long before the teachers appeared in the door and asked us to take our seats.  We'd been asked to send in a bouquet of silk flowers and some ribbon a few weeks earlier and I, for one, was eager to see what they'd made for us.

The kids came out one by one, each holding a paper hat they'd decorated with the flowers.

A.J was the 4th or 5 child.  She appeared in the door way looking serious while she waited for the student ahead of her to go ahead.  

The teacher made sure each child knew where their mom was sitting before they were set off.  A little smirk appeared on her face as A.J. tried to walk to me as quickly as she cold and show me what she'd made.

The hats were formed out of several large sheets of plain old newsprint paper.  I wondered how they formed them and was later told the one teacher saturated the paper and then laid it out over an old plastic helmet of some sort to set the head.  Then she trimmed the edges to make a circle and helped the kids by gluing the flowers down as the children desired.  

Being the person I am, having grown up the way I did, I fond it too beautiful to touch.  I just wanted to stare at it and enjoy but as the other mommies put their hats on I felt that I must over come my desire to save it and put the hat.

Have I mentioned lately how A.J. has a really really big head?  And how she also tends to have really big hair to boot?   Yeah, well, apparently she gets that from me.  My hat barely fi on my head and I was afraid of destroying it if I pushed at all so I just sort of balanced it there over my increasingly out of control curls.  I was happy I'd not worn my hair up (for once) but wished desperately for me gel to flatten that mess down again.  

Trying not to move my head, lest my beautiful treasure fall off and get mushed, A.J directed my attention to the cards and gifts she'd made for me on the table.   Inside the card was one of those surveys. I've gotten them before, but for some reason these answers came out less funny and more sweet and then I started to cry a bit.

Clearly this is the best one of those surveys ever.  Check out that last answer!!!

A.J. was looking at me so deeply wanting me to be pleased.  Everything was so lovely.  She was so sweet and lovely.  What was she so worried about?  Am I that hard to please at home?  Was she really do worried I wouldn't be proud?  Everything was amazing and I kept right on crying a bit and hugging her.  I was over come a bit, and I think that's a little bit odd for me.

Oh, but then again, since we were running the risk of things getting to sappy here, I'd like to direct your attention to the picture she'd drawn of me for my place mat.

Well, okay.  

Most of the other mommies seem to be dawn in brightly colored dresses and high heels.  Admittedly a few looked more like oddly shaped hedge hogs than their parents.  But A.J.'s was so hilariously accurate.  I mean, she nailed the crazy dark hair.  Thank goodness she gave me a smiling face.  She put me in purple shirt, probably a t-shirt which is pretty accurate.  A hooded sweatshirt might have been more accurate, but I'd been making and effort to dress nicer lately.  She had me in jeans and green tennis shoes.  Scary accurate although my pereferred pair of sneakers have pink and grey colors along with the green.  My favorite part is that I'm holding my red purse.  I do love my red purse.  Ihad a much beloved red purse years ago when we lived in Japan that I adored until one day the zipper broke and I was devastated.  I'd had a slew of other purses since but had carried around a brightly patterned diaper bag for the better part of the previous two years.  It had only been about a couple months earlier that I'd finally retired that diaper bag backpack once and for all when I'd bough that just large enough to not be obnoxious and still hold all my kids snacks and wipes and a spare diaper, bight red purse.  :)

My least favorite part, is of course, the wildly too short shirt. I definitely do not go around baring my mid drift these days.  No not at all.  I already mentioned the issues with weight gain I've discovered in these past few months.  That would just NOT be a good way to go.  But.... oh if she'd known me back then.  It was SO the style of course, but I rocked the heck out of it.  I practically own that look back when.  It's so odd to me that she drew me that way now is all.

Although I'm sure I'm reading way too much into it though, and she just had trouble with the proportions.  

It also could be seen as a nice little dig that we won't letter he show her stomach at dance.  Hahah.

Anyway...  There was a little board with baby pics of the kids next to baby pics of the moms.  I didn't do a good job matching the photos because this is the only baby pic I have of myself, but she really does look just like me with lighter hair (or in the case of her picture.... no hair.)

Here's another selfie we took.  She looks the same but I think I look less scary.

The school posted a bunch of pics afterward online.  I found these few of us.  

Me getting overly emotional.  

The kids went to get our food and serve us.

Yes another selfie.  I suppose now matter how gorgeous it is, I am just not a hat person.  I look silly in every one.

The kids sang a few songs for us and ended their performance with a kiss for us.

Here's a video of one of the songs.

It was nice.  I love our school.  It was such nice way to wrap up Mother's Day stuff.  

Christmas Day

Christmas Day came at last.  

After so much planning on Matt's and my part regarding how to pull off this trip and give the kids another Christmas with their Grandparents.  

After all the questions they'd posed to us about the logistics of Santa Claus finding us in Ohio, and the studying of catalogs and the making and editing and rewriting of wish lists.  

Christmas came back at last.

And there's always that moment.  That perfect moment.  It's a different moment now that I'm grown.  When I was small it was laying in bed the night before wondering and then waking up in the morning to find the piles of presents.

It's different now.  It's either very very late on Christmas Eve or very very early on Christmas morning.  But the hustle and bustle of the season finally comes to a halt.  The to-do lists are complete.  My kids are tucked into bed, sleeping peaceful though no doubt dreaming of the surprises they're expecting when the awake.  But when it's all laid out.  The gifts are there.  The tree is lit.  

And there is finally peace.

I remember thinking Christmas Eve church was weird as a little kid.  But my parent's explained to me that Jesus was born in the dark and stillness of night and not during the bright busting sunlit hours of day.  That's why we go to church to celebrate his birth at night.  Because in a small stable some place far away, He came into the world during the peace of the night time.  

And with him came hope for the Earth.

Every year it brings hope to me as I sit there and and stare at the gifts and the tree late into the night. I forget about the cost and the energy it took to get us to this point.  And I know that the chaos will return in the morning.  It will be wonderful but it will be chaos.

So before I go to bed on Christmas Eve, every year, I take a moment and relish this:  

That pile under the tree looks insane I know.  Keep in mind that the little Charlie Brown style tree is set up on a trunk and that the gifts are stack on that truck as well as in front of it.   So the pile isn't as deep as it looks.  

And also there are gifts for Jono and Kelly's twin girls in there too, in addition to the gifts for the grown ups.

Don't want you to think we lost our minds or something.  Santa still brings the children three gifts.  (Sometimes one gifts comes in a few separate packages to complete a set, or something like that, but it's still 3.  Hahah.)

Oh and then of course their are little treats in their stockings.  I'm proud to say Lucy finally has a home made needlpoint like her siblings this year.  I FINALLY finished hers.  

So then the morning came.

It wasn't snowy and cold or white outside, but it was Christmas anyway, and everybody was excited.  

In keeping with tradition, we only allowed my kids to look in their stockings before breakfast.  This helped them to way for their twin one year old cousins to wake up too.  

It was fun to watch them study the packages as well and wonder what may be inside each one for a little while before tearing into everything.  

Here they are with the stockings.....

Then breakfast.  Gramma's cinnamon rolls.

Finally, once everyone had eaten a bit of something and the younger kids were up, it was time to begin. 

New Ohio State swag for me.  Nicely done children and husband.  :)

I had been singing "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas" since early November
so Peter picked out a hippo ornament for me.

A stuffed cougar, her school's mascot.  

Peter got one too.

When the gifts were all unwrapped, Peter and Lucy made angels in the paper all over the floor.  At least the made the most of the fact that we traveled all the way to the Midwest only to miss out on a white Christmas.  

Another strange part about being grown.  I've noticed that enjoy opening all the boxes and assembling everything just as much if not more than the actual unwrapping of the gifts.  I mean, really, the surprise part is over by then, but it's when you put the toys together and get to play with them that the fun REALLY begins.

All in all, it was a great Christmas.  It was nice for my kids to get to share the holiday with their cousins, and the aunt and two of their uncles and the grandparents.