Mother's Day 2013

Mother's Day started with a beautiful breakfast spread prepared totally by the children.  We had French toast, scrambled eggs, two kinds of sausage, fresh strawberries and a lightly sweet strawberry smoothie.   Delicious!  A bouquet of red flowers had been picked from the yard and was tied with a ribbon.  The table was set and everything was ready to eat when they called me from bed. 

In the doorway between the rooms (in the picture above, above my empty chair), the children had made a Mother's Day banner and each hanging streamer had a note saying something they loved about me.  It was all so thoughtful and lovingly planned.

a close up of some of the streamers

We usually go on a hike or bike ride for Mother's Day but this year we decided to plan a fig tree sapling given to us by Stefan's family. Our fig tree is a grandchild of the fig tree Joe's family had growing up.  Since sunny spots are so rare in our yard, we had to remove part of our gravel driveway to make a place for the tree.  We all worked together to dig up about 5 inches of gravel, sifting it through a screen we made and returning the dirt to the pit we dug.  The tree is now snugly in its new home and the beginning of our front garden transformation has begun.

making the sifting screen

our fig tree is planted 

As the children were putting together the screen frame I marveled at what a perfect family moment it was.  We were all working together for the benefit of the family, music playing on the boom box, jokes being laughed over.  Times like that are perfect mothering moments for me. 

I was excused from the final hard work of digging-sifting-planting to go clothes shopping, though I found more things for the children than for myself.  And to end the day, Noah made a delicious dinner for us on his new grill - Italian sausage, onions, bell peppers and grilled toast.  That grill, a 16th birthday gift for him a few weeks ago, has been as much a gift to me as it is for him!