Mother's Day Recap

Unless you live under a rock, or outside of the United States, you probably know that Mother's Day was last Sunday.  I haven't posted about Mother's Day this year for a couple of reasons. One is that I don't really like the holiday. I know, I know. That makes me a horrible person. But I am very close with my mom, and my step-mom and I get along great. I don't feel like I need a special day to tell them  how wonderful they are.

The other reason is a bit more cynical. I always feel this great pressure to be a perfect mom on Mother's Day and to have the most special day just basking in the love of my kids. And let's be honest, that isn't going to happen. My kids are going to fight, I'm going to yell and will spend part of the day feeling like a failure.  I don't want to go out to brunch and I don't want a corsage, and good heavens, I do not want my kids to spill breakfast in bed. To be honest, most years what I want for Mother's Day is to be left alone with a stack of books and a glass of wine.

As you can probably tell, I went into this Mother's Day with a bit of a bad attitude. I can admit that.  I burst into tears (not the good kind) when I saw how Ryan misspelled my name on the card he made me.

The calm, logical, good mom part of me knew that he was sounding out my name "Hea-fer" (he has trouble with "th" sometimes) and knew it was kind of cute - especially when you consider all the misspellings on the inside of the card too (no image of that). The grouchy, insecure, bad mom part of me could only see that my five year old referred to me as a cow and immediately wanted to start a diet.

Mother's Day morning we woke up even earlier than we do on school days because the boys had to be at church at 8:00 for the choir to warm up. Yes, 8:00 AM. On Mother's Day. I was thrilled. The children's choir was scheduled to sing at two church services (yes, on Mother's Day) and, since it was the last Sunday they'd be singing for the school year, the choir director planned a little party for them after the second service (yes, on Mother's Day.)

"Fine. I can work with this," I thought. We packed up a picnic to take to the zoo after the choir party. I figured if the party started at 11:30 and the kids got certificates and ate a cookie or a piece of cake, we would probably be done by noon and then I could spend at least the afternoon of Mother's Day doing something I like to do.  It was a nice theory. Right up to the point when the choir director announced that - surprise! - she had ordered pizza for all the kids for lunch and wanted to show the Christmas Musical for them. A pizza party for the kids. On Mother's Day. Shoot me now.

But I managed to keep it together. The kids worked hard all year with the choir and, even though I was put out, I didn't want the kids to think I wasn't proud of all their hard work. So we ate pizza instead of the picnic we had packed. We watched the Christmas musical and I faked a smile as much as I could.

Wesley getting his choir certificate

Ryan giving the director, who is moving on to a new church, a big hug

Afterwards we did make it out to the zoo and had a pretty good time. We ate ice cream as dessert and had popcorn as a snack. We saw some baby animals and we didn't stay one moment longer than I wanted to.

When we got home I took a nap, which helped my grumpies almost as much as the ice cream did. We had paninis for dinner and I had a big glass of wine. It turned out to be a pretty good day.