Happy Mothers' Day!

Yes, I know, there are only 16 minutes remaining, but it's been a busy day. This is my first opportunity to put my feet up and surf a little bit.

Saturday was a first for me. The Home & School Association held a Mothers' Day plant sale on Friday. My kids came home with a lovely selection of flowers that needed to be planted, and I decided that I wasn't going to put them in large pots as I had in years past. Thanks to the help of a local garden shop (the same, in fact, that supplied the flowers for the H&S sale), I actually dug out a spot at the base of our lamppost, and Mighty B. helped me plant everything Saturday morning. It looks really nice.

Yes, I could have used the biiiiig flower beds on the side of the house or in the front yard, the ones I've been working on, but it seemed silly to plant eleven little plants in such a huge space. And I've been wanting something by the lamppost for a while.

I just hope that they don't freeze tonight. And I hope Knucklehead doesn't trample them. She's already run through the bed twice, kicking up mulch. Oh. She buried one of my gardening gloves too. I can't find it anywhere. I just hope it's not under the flowers.

The second grade at the kids' school celebrated First Holy Communion yesterday. Today, all the kids were asked to return in their Communion clothes for the 9:00 a.m. mass, and we served goodies to the kids and their parents in the church hall afterward. Tradition has it that the first-grade parents help with the reception, since our kids will be making this sacrament next year.

My job was to pick up sticky buns, two big boxes each containing a 24 x 36 sheet of sticky buns. Lordy, they smelled divine. They were decorated with white, pink, and blue frosting (gurk!). Why, oh why, do you feed a bunch of eight-year-old children dressed in expensive all white clothing pink and blue frosting?

The frosting was a good thing for me, though, because it kept me from eating the sticky buns. (It did not, however, stop me from buying a butter cake while I was in the bakery. It's probably the best butter cake we've ever eaten.)

In the afternoon, we made dinner for my in-laws. Yeah, I know. People say I shouldn't have to cook on Mothers' Day. It wasn't actually planned as a Mothers' Day dinner. The Oracle and my FIL wanted to talk some stuff over, and I offered dinner as a way to make that happen. During the week it's too crazy and he doesn't get a chance to stop by their house. Anyway, I love to cook. I like it much better than housework. Much to my relief, The Oracle handled the bulk of the crisis cleaning while I was at the church. AND he peeled the potatoes. I hate peeling potatoes. If I could get away with mashing 'em with the skins on, I would. My in-laws brought lemon meringue and apple crumb pies for dessert. YUM!!!

In addition to the flowers from the plant sale, my kids treated me to the neatest stuff.

Mighty B. painted a heart-shaped wooden pin and decorated it with foam stickers. He also made a card and a little booklet outlining my (his?) favorite recipe and a booklet of coupons for things like setting the table and picking up without being asked. (Of course, if I present the coupon, doesn't that mean I'm asking him to do it?) He made all this cool stuff in school.

Precious Daughter also made a card ("Mom, U rock!"), and in her class she made a "snow globe." It's a 16 oz. plastic bottle of water heavily dosed with multicolored glitter. Inside is a laminated picture of Precious Daughter. It's really cool, but there's something weird about shaking my daughter upside-down to swirl the glitter around.

All in all, it was a fun day.