Mother's Day Week

It was a whole mother's day week.

A tea in Elsa's class.

Here we are, me with my buck teeth her and her sweet little grin...

This is Elsa and her posse- Wyatt, Logan and Henry.

This is after the festivities.  Apparently she had to blow off some steam and climb a tree after behaving, wearing a skirt, and singing sweet mother's day songs.

Then there was a tea in Charlie's class.

He's stringing the beads to make me a sweet little necklace with his school picture as a pendent.

Trying to catch him to get a picture together was like trying to catch a fish with my bare hands.  But I triumphed.

And there's my little giant, hands in his pockets ready to sing but NOT do the motions.  He really reminds me of my dad here.

Then Saturday we had a fantastically extravagant dinner for many of us at Anthony's.


I'll bet if you asked Carl what his highlight was of dinner at Anthony's he'd tell you that it was when his little brother went to the men's room and slipped in a puddle of pee.


Yum.

We so rarely take our kids out to eat (I believe I've posted the ridiculous waste of Happy Teriyaki one day when I brought it home for dinner).  It's part fear of poor behavior, part knowing that what is spent on a meal in a restaurant could likely pay for a weeks worth of groceries...

But they ate every last bite.  And I do sooooo love a night when I don't have to cook or clean up.

It's delightful.

In fact, my mother's day wish is usually a simple list.  I just don't want to have to cook or clean.  This year another thing popped up that I hoped to add to that list.  I didn't want to have to tell my kids "no".

Well, I didn't get very far on any of those items.

Mark had to work on mother's day.

He sweetly made my morning coffee before he left.

Then I planted the 5 remaining boxwood plants in our new hedge off the back porch.  I'm trying to streamline our landscaping.  I'm beginning to realize the brilliancy of minimalist landscaping.  Yes, I'm a slow slow learner.  And I always have to learn the hard way.

Then I vacuumed, put away all the little things that have crept out of their rightful places, and rounded up the kids to pick up my mom and go to the farmer's market for lunch.

It was packed down there but we managed to get yakisoba noodles for Sarina, fried corn dogs and root beer for the kids (disgusting!), and crab sandwiches for my mom and me (yum!).

It was really hot, so we let the kids play long enough for them to begin to melt, before we wove our way back to the market for balloon animals, then we picked up nutty buddies and let them run through the sprinkler at my mom's in their undies (rinsing her windows as they played).

While we were at it, we hit the Taco Truck for dinner (along my lines of no cooking or cleaning up).

Did I mention that I let them eat cold pizza for breakfast?

Or that they had 2 nutty buddies today?  (That was part of my avoiding saying "no").

I think my favorite part of the day was watching them eat those nutty buddies.  Melty ice cream running down their little hands, chocolate smeared all over their faces.  They were content.  Which made me content.  On a beautiful day with my babies and my mom.  I couldn't ask for a whole lot more (except maybe Mark home too).

But back to the not having to say "no".

I don't get it, but the boys were crazy over this crazy Time magazine cover.  You'd think they'd never heard of the concept.  I breastfed every one of those little buggers (all for a whole year- except Charlie who was done at 9 months after one night without me, when Sarina had her eye surgery.  I think that's the same time Carl was potty trained it was an eventful 24 hours...)

Carl kept asking me if he could try it one last time.

Really?!

Somehow that led to talking about french kissing.  He realized he knows what that is, thanks to the (actually pretty funny) movie The Rainbow Tribe.  It's full of all kinds of inappropriate stuff.

Then he asked me if he could french kiss me!

So sorry buddy, but that would REALLY mess you up in the long run.

In my sad tale, you see that I did have to say "no" today.

Quite a bit.

"No" to the sunglasses requested at dawn this morning by Mr. Carl.

"No" to the super awesome stuffed lizards, snakes, frogs, and dragons at the wooden boat fair for Charlie.

A big "no" (!) to breast feeding my BIG boys.

And definitely "NO" (!!!!!) to the french kiss.

Maybe next year I can have my wish of no cooking, cleaning, and saying "no" because that didn't really happen today.

But it was a beautiful, 84 degree day in an amazingly beautiful place.

I saw this today on pinterest.com and loved it.

I'll admit, I did have to work on it a few times today (darn having to say "no" to sweet little faces) but I triumphed.

Today was a good day.