I had a delightful Mother’s Day Eve. Two of the boys spent the night at Nana & Granddad’s house, and the other three were relatively well behaved as they played video games and got to stay up a little late. I locked myself in the bathroom, ran a hot bath and enjoyed some red wine and a good book (I actually put my nook in a gallon zip bag so that I could read it in the tub). I felt very luxurious with my wine glass in the bathtub, and I only got interrupted three times by people knocking on the door. (At least they don’t know how to pick locks … yet.)

This morning, I was woken up by several blurry faces (I didn’t have my glasses on yet) appearing at my bedside and an iced skinny vanilla latte thrust beneath my nose. The guys had gone to a local Mexican food restaurant for breakfast burritos and made a stop at the coffee shop on the way home. I can’t remember the last time I had breakfast in bed; it was really nice. They even took my burrito out of the tortilla and served on a plate it the way I eat it: low-carb. 😉

The two who were at grandparents’ came home in time to join us for church, so we took up almost a whole pew with all seven of us seated together. It was nice, though, to have all of them with me on Mother’s Day.

After church, we met up with Nana & Granddad at the lake and enjoyed a picnic lunch, followed by a couple of hours of swimming in surprisingly frigid water. The boys had a blast, and I think everyone will sleep well tonight after all of the fun in the sun!

The planned activities were memorable, but what really struck me about this weekend were all of the unexpected things that popped up, as they always seem to do … things like:

• helping one of the 6yos with a dreadful bloody nose … “I think ALL of my blood is going to come out!” he cried as his poor little nose gushed into the bathroom sink. I told him the story of how the school nurse knew me by name because of all of my bloody noses. I remembered the trick of putting a piece of a paper sack beneath the upper lip (across your top front teeth); apparently, it helps to dry out that nerve in your nasal cavity. I also had him hold ice on the bridge of his nose. It was a miserable 10 minutes or so, but I managed to convince him that he wasn’t going to lose all of the blood in his body, and it eventually stopped.
• helping the other 6yo with what can only be described as diaper rash, accompanied by a speech about proper wiping. Oh, the things I thought I was finished doing after they outgrew diapers! Who knew I’d still have to wipe behinds at age 6?!
• cheering on the 7-1/2yo for pulling out his own tooth … which reminds me, the tooth fairy needs to go scrounge up a dollar …
• assembling and moving furniture. We’ve been needing to replace a few of the boys’ beds, and we found a great deal at a local consignment furniture store on two bunkbeds and a futon. So, went spent much of the weekend tearing down old beds, cleaning the scariness beneath them and assembling the new furniture. Someone made a comment about manual labor being difficult, and I mumbled under my breath: “It’s easier than the other kind of labor!”

On that note … Happy Mother’s Day!