Mother's Day 2012

My 16th Mother's Day was nice and quiet and relaxing. I went to Indian Lake with the girls and enjoyed some time relaxing and gabbing. 

I spent a little time lounging in the hammock, looking out at the lake and up at the trees.  We had an evening of drinks and chitchatting by the fire and it was wonderful.

 On Sunday, I was welcomed home with a Welcome Home/Happy Mother's Day sign, with balloons even!

 

Ella gave Silas some rollerblading lessons. Only minor wipe-outs...

 Justin created a frame and mixed concrete so that all 5 of us could
make our handprints and then decorate it. 

Silas hand painted me a wonderful tile with flowers.

 
And made me a book about "My Mom"

 Which he put in this big envelope with his paper flowers and flower pot.

 Ella had this card for me...
So much better than the "mean mom" note that I usually get!

 Ella also created a really wonderful book of poems for me too.
She made "me" on the front - I love that she gave me a Life is Good t-shirt,
which I wear as often as possible.

 This was her opening note:

 Dear Mom,
I'm writing you this letter to tell you how much I love you. I appreciate how
you cheer me and my soccer team on and buy us what we need, I appreciate
that you cook for us and take care of me.
I hope you like my poetry book!
You are the best!
Love, Ella

Mother:
Mother
awesome, loving
cooking
running, very amuesing
excited, funny, happy, joyful
Mommyo

There were a few more wonderful poems that I'll have to post too.  I like flowers, I like some pampering...

but this to me is what makes Mother's Day. Though I did NOT get any cute pictures or art from Mason!  I guess that ship has sailed :(

I feel very blessed to have a wonderful mother, wonderful mom friends and family, and pretty darn good kids that call me mom and seem to appreciate me more than just on Mother's Day...life is good :)

Last Couple Weeks

The last few weeks have been extremely busy and I've had no time or energy to blog.  Just a couple highlights.

Ella and her class put on a great play at school.  It was 3 skits with parodies of Fairy Tales.  The kids also all wrote their own fairy tales as well and made them into books. Ella's was called The Princess and the Spaghetti. They really did a fantastic job!!



While we were at the school for Ella's play, we saw some of Si's artwork on the wall in the hallway.
This was a person he created on the computer.


And this was a snowman that he made. I love kid art!!




Last weekend, Justin and I went on a little road trip to Cleveland to go to a surprise party for Justin's longtime friend, Johnny C.  We had a fantastic time and it was great to see him and his wife (Reggie) and catch up. 

Reggie went all out and the party theme was Vegas style, with games and dealers!!

Justin and Johnny stayed up until 6:30am gabbing away.  I luckily, found a nice comfy couch to lay on for a few hours.  It's great to be able to celebrate special occasions with friends that we don't see often enough.


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Fall Into Winter...Already!

With Christmas quickly approaching, the kids have had some festive school projects to create.  In kindergarten, they make wreaths that they can decorate however they want. We made Si's this week.  I thought I'd have to come up with ideas for him, like things to glue on or family pictures but Silas knew exactly what he wanted to do.  He wanted snow on the ground, snowflakes falling and Santa and a snowman.  With the exception of gluing down some of the cotton balls (it was messy) he did everything else himself.
I thought he did a beautiful job!
I love that Silas is taking more interest in art and painting but in pure Silas style though,  he likes to drink the paint water. He really is a nutty child!!

Justin has gotten to go on two fun outings over the last few weeks.  The first was to see a Notre Dame vs. Boston College football game with Kevin.  It was a good game and ND won.  It was pretty cold, just like a November football game is supposed to be!

This week Justin got to go on a 5 day golf trip with Tim and a bunch of other guys.  They went down to Santee in South Carolina and golfed 3 days of 36 holes per day.  I can just imagine the Icy Hot and tired-men-drinking-booze smell filling the air in the condos! He had a BLAST and I was very happy to see him go have some fun after all the long days he's been putting in.

I have been happy to have some good live music to listen to.  I listen to CD101 (now 102.5) and the CD101 Holiday concert was this past week.  I won tickets to see one of the bands playing in the Big Room on Tuesday, so Justin and I went to see them.  There were probably less than 30 poeple in this (very not big) room and the band.  It was very cool. Sleeper Agent was the band.  A very young looking band.  It was a lot of fun.

I'm pretty sure we are old enough to be the parents of most of these guys!

That night I went to the concert by myself. Everyone else was either busy or had never heard of the bands I was seeing. It's the first time I've gone to a concert alone and it really wasn't that bad.  They biggest problem was I wanted to keep the spot that I had claimed (open venue, no seats) so I didn't leave to go to the bathroom or anything once there.  I stood up on the 2nd lever so that I had a better view of the stage and it was crazy watching all the young "kids" slam dancing and crowd surfing.  All I could think is how sore they would be the next day.  Guess that shows my age! (though I was never one to get into that anyway).

After a very busy week and weekend, we've got some sleepy people in the house (it's 9:30pm and I'm the only one still awake!).  But I think I'm ready for bed now too.  When did life get so exhausting!?! (I think my answer is when I hit my 40s!)

{PS} - sorry to be such a blog slacker lately - it's so hard to find time!  I promise to try to do better with updates!