Mother's Day: Sugar and Shades

Today has been a perfect Mother's Day. Low key, thoughtful, and full of my favorite four people and a bunch of my other favorite things (cookies! champagne! double-decker icing sandwich cookies WITH SPRINKLES! and then the rest of the champagne!).

But first, it started with my usual plan to sneak out of the house for hot yoga. I do Bikram once a week, at 8 a.m. on Sunday, and it is sacred. I love quietly walking out of a sleeping house and returning to pj's and smiles at 9:30. But today, I heard giggles in the living room and found the kids beaming over a table they'd gotten up early to decorate all by themselves with their cards, a tablecloth meant for a small circle table we no longer own, place mats, and a mix mash of leftover birthday decorations.

It was beautiful and they were so proud. Cora sang "Happy Birthday to You" over and over on repeat. I read all the cards, got hugs and kisses from everyone, and then sent them to wake up Daddy an hour earlier than expected. Happy Mother's Day!

Yoga was delicious as always and then I came home to an even more delicious brunch of French Toast Casserole, berries, and very full mimosas. Every year on Mother's Day James researches a new way to make my beloved French Toast and this year's was maybe the best. Probably because about 2 bags of sugar were involved.

The kids played, I drank another 2 3 mimosas and then James and I found ourselves in our room without any of the kids noticing we'd left the kitchen, so obviously we made the most of that. Later we got to facetime with my NEW NIECE. My sister had her baby on the 2nd and I am finally an aunt, to the beautiful Skyla Mary. The kids were SO EXCITED to see her on the iPhone screen, her poor tiny ears have probably still not recovered from the screams of love.

And then we headed to the mall (oh, we know how to party on a Sunday early) so I could pick out my Mother's Day present- new fancy sunglasses! After 15 years of wearing whatever I bought last at Ross or TJ Maxx, I think I'm finally old enough to wear nice sunglasses and actually use the sunglass case to keep them in. It's one of my last grown-up steps now that I've you-tubed "how to fold a fitted sheet" and given up entirely on ever liking coffee.

The kids LOVED the sunglass store. I let them each try on one pair and I feel like their selections fit their personalities.

The posing certainly does.

I went with the first pair I picked up- a beautiful pair of Burberry aviators that made Claire gasp and declare me perfect. Then she told me she's going to save up her birthday money for the purple Guccis.

There was a discount if you bought a second pair, so James got an early Father's Day gift! Which is great because he has a genuine love of sunglasses and he never lets me buy him anything. Sunglasses in hand (or really, in case because I am really REALLY going to try to use mine) we headed home, going out of our way to casually swing by Great American Cookie Company for some Double Doozies. Cora was given the honor of carrying our bag back to the car and I think she approached it with an appropriate level of gravity.

I inhaled mine hunched over in the car on the ride home and James, upon seeing the empty wrapper and crumbs all over my lap drly remarked, "You know no one was going to steal that from you, right?"

Now James and the big kids are swimming at the Y and Cora is napping and I'm relaxing on our new TV room couch sobbing my way through an accidental viewing of Steel Magnolias. We're at the cemetery scene and it's a good thing the kids are gone because I think the tears and strange noises I'm making would disturb them. Sally Field is a treasure, but she is destroying me right now.

[I've switched to the safety of ABC Family and The Parent Trap; it's nice to remember how adorable Lindsay Lohan was in the late 90's.]

And since we're switching gears, let's go back in time to yesterday. James had to spend the entire day at his outdoor pool (the one he manages in the summer in order to use it for his lessons) with his lifeguards getting the pool ready to be filled again. They drain it at the end of the summer and then it sits abandoned for 8 months, turning into a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, until James and his guards come back to clean, scrub, mow, trim, and generally reclaim the Olympic sized pool and its wooded lot for human use. It's not his favorite day.

I got to teach my class (yay! thanks one of James's instructors coming over to play with the kids for a bit) and then the kids and I headed off to Landon's last meeting of the Texas Nature Club at our wonderful Fort Worth Zoo. It has been such an amazing program, though I do wish the one day parents were invited wasn't the one day James was gone, but we had Cora skip her nap and boldly headed out, superfluous stroller and all.

First up, we assembled a bat box!

I've been promised our future bat tenants will eat more than 3,000 mosquitoes a night, so I'm as excited about it as Landon. (You can get a kit here, if you love animals like Landon and/or hate mosquitoes like me)

After the program, during which we met an exceedingly handsome Screech Owl named Rufus, we wandered around the zoo, stopping in our tracks for Cora's favorite animal- DUBRAS!!!!!

(Zebras)

I bought cotton candy, because it's one of my favorite things and it was almost Mother's Day. The big kids declared it delicious and Cora was horrified- spitting it out and insisting I wipe off her tongue. Her continued denial of delicious childhood pleasures is one of my favorite things about her.

It was honestly a great afternoon- the kids were so good and happy to be there and everything was perfect, and yet when I got in the car I found myself texting James "Margaritas for dinner?". I'm not even sure why, except that I pretty much never have solo outings with the kids and it was sneakily exhausting, and also I can tell the future, because this was what happened when we got in the car.

The trigger remains unknown.

I also texted that to James. Luckily, Cora pulled herself together after a lot of re-readings of "Hippos Go Berserk," which you wouldn't think she'd find so soothing. We did then go get margaritas and other foods for dinner and then capped it all off with the inaugural opening of our pool.

The evening was gorgeous with a cool breeze. The water was freezing. The kids didn't care.

I look forward to a lot more evenings just like that.

I love Mother's Day in the same way I love Valentine's Day. If you don't take it too seriously, it's a fun day to celebrate the people you love. I love my mom every day, but I don't always send her a card and note telling her why. And I have no doubt James and the kids love me every day too, but I don't ask them my their favorite things about me and write them down. Or dip a hand in paint for a memorialized print (obviously, the hand print was from James) and I'm glad Mother's Day makes someone else do it for me. But truly, while I'll never turn down an opportunity to shirk household duties and eat champagne and cookies before noon, I'm really just so, so lucky to be Mom, Mommy, and Mama to this sweet, thoughtful, crazy fun crew.

Happy Mother's Day weekend to you all! (And particularly to my MILS- the collection of amazing women I "met" online when we were all pregnant and in law schools all over the country. We've come a long way from balancing exams and term papers and baby naps! Xoxo)