Mother’s Day & Preschool Graduation

Mother’s Day and our ‘bonus’ Mom

A few weeks before Mother’s Day, my siblings and I went over to my dad’s house to clean out the rest of my mom’s stuff.  We took things down such as pictures, decor and her dried wedding bouquet.  The reason we were doing this is in preparation for my dad’s wedding!  He is getting married to a wonderful lady named, Suzy, a week from today.  We are excited to not only add a ‘bonus’ mom to our family, but two step brothers and a step sister-in-law.  Our families seem to mesh well together :)  To learn more about Suzy and Dad go here.

     

Well, we didn’t know what to do with my mom’s wedding bouquet.  There really wasn’t much left to it, so none of us wanted it.  But we didn’t want to just throw it away either.  I came up with the idea to put it on her grave stone.  So that’s what we did.  It’s interesting how these temporal things don’t seem as important as knowing we get to keep the people these things represent forever.

For Mother’s Day I mailed one of my choir CD’s to my Grandma (my mom’s mom) and a card.  I wish she could’ve been to my performance last March as she loves singing herself, but I figure the CD was the next best thing.

For my other Grandma (Dad’s mom) we decided to do some yard work for her the Saturday before Mother’s Day.  We had Tom’s parents watch Sophie for us while we did the service.  It was a warm day and the boys took many breaks before deciding they were done and ran off to play.  Lily, however was a very hard worker and stuck with us almost the whole time.

After, we went and picked up Sophie and while at Tom’s parents house, we  he helped do some work in her garden for her while the kids played on the tramp and I visited with his mom and sister.

Then we met up with my brother, Mike and his family at Burger King for lunch.

  

On Mother’s Day I got to sleep in and then Tom and the kids made me breakfast.  They gave me a few gifts and the Lily played with my hair.  I love that!

Sophie usually naps into our 1-4 church time, so lately one of us has come late so she could have a decent nap.  Well, I didn’t want to miss Sacrament meeting, so I asked my dad if he’d come babysit so both Tom and I could attend the meeting.  That was a wonderful Mother’s Day present!  I had to teach in Relief Society that day, but Tom had arranged for the Elder’s Quorum to take over the primary so all the women could attend R.S.  The lesson was on the sacred relationships of families.  Very fitting for Mother’s Day, so I ended it with this video and chocolate.

I didn’t really get sad, missing my mom on Mother’s Day.  I tried to focus on it as a happy day and as my role as a mother.

That night we went to Tom’s brother, Bryce & Sara’s house for a barbecue.  It was very yummy!  Here’s Tom holding Charlotte and Sophie at the family barbecue.

Preschool Graduation

I can’t believe we are at the end of another school year!  It’s weird to think my first preschool students are now going into jr. high!  It’s been a great year and my first year doing a three-day class, which I loved.

Yesterday was graduation.  I always stress about this day, but I felt pretty on top of things this year.  That morning I had arranged for my neighbor to take Sophie and Cedric for me so I could get some cleaning and prep work done.  Then, on Sunday, Suzy offered to come help me too!  So for a couple hours we worked together cleaning and talking.  It was a great opportunity to get to know Suzy better.  It was so cute when she was down on her hands and knees scrubbing the preschool floor and said “thanks so much for letting me come help”.  I couldn’t help but laugh, as I was the one who was most grateful for her. 

Tom had to go into the dentist that morning and ended up taking the whole day off to help too.  It was so nice to have his help with yard work and kids, especially when the older two got home from school and my OCD was in full swing!  He took them to dinner while I got ready too.

The weather was perfect during the day.  70’s and a slight breeze.  However, by late afternoon a cool wind picked up and it was quite breezy that night!  It was hard to talk over the wind and the kids were worried about papers blowing away, but we got through it.  I actually changed into long sleeves for the second class as the temperature was starting to drop too.  Thank goodness each program only lasted about 20-30 minutes.

You can’t see Cedric in the pictures above because he was sitting right behind me in the first group (left), but he had a hard time during the program.  He kept trying to talk to me and Tom had to walk up behind me and fix his hat and he didn’t want to come up to get his certificate.  I guess I was just embarrassed because it was my own kid.

I’m proud of Cedric, though!  He is such a smart boy and got the “Best Memory Award” because he is super smart at memorizing things.  The poor boy has one more year of preschool before kindergarten (he thought he was going to go to kindergarten now that preschool was done).  He’s definitely smart enough to go to kindergarten now!

Sophie wishes she was in preschool too.  We still have OVER TWO YEARS before she starts preschool!  I know it sounds far away now, but before I know it she’ll be graduating from high school.

I now have summer to look forward to.  I love my job and the schedule I have.  It’s so nice to just focus on my own children and do fun things with them for a few months.