My Only Request

This Mother's Day I had one thing on my mind.  Breakfast in bed?  Not a big deal.  Chores?  Would be nice if someone else did them, but no.  Relaxation?  Hmm, maybe. 

Snowcones.  Yep, that's right.  All I wanted to was to hunt down an ice cold, sugary snowcone.

Here I'm enjoying a coconut snowcone.  I can thank my smart mother for my love of the coconut flavored cone.  As a child who grew up in the hot hot South, snowcones (or snowballs, as they are also called) were a familiar summer treat.  The coconut flavor (as well as pina colada) is clear and thus is not capable of staining clothes.  

Clearly I didn't inherit my mother's sensible side.  Luckily no one spilled on themselves (with the exception of my child-like hubby).   But even if we did, nothing could have ruined our day.  We were headed to the beach!  

I know that by now you must think that we are beach bums.  And I'd have to say that you might be right.  We just can't help but head down there when we have free time.  Somehow, the waves and the wind seem to make you forget all about everything.  Just what a mom with an overworked brain needs every once and a while.  And here's the special treat that magically appeared on the beach.  

Well, to some passerby it might seem like magic.  To me it was more like a simple combination of gratitude and kindness.  Love built that sandcastle.  And I loved it!  

It was a great Mother's Day.   I'll leave you with more pictures of our snowcone/beach adventure.

I hope all you mothers had a happy Mother's Day.  May you all be celebrated every day of the year.  

A Labor of Love

I hope you all thanked your mothers today for laboring on your behalf.  Your lives would be considerably less exciting if they hadn't done that...

Seriously.

I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend.  We had a delightful time this weekend despite it having flown by so fast.  I guess that's what happens when you are really busy having fun.

Saturday we spent the morning at the beach.  It was a really windy day thanks to T.S. Lee.  The waves were pretty rough and sand was blown all over, but we still managed to build a small sandcastle and do other fun beachy things...

Another masterpiece

On Sunday we went to church.  After church we had a shopping errand to run and as we drove to the store we passed the dollar theater.  We saw that Kung Fu Panda 2 was playing and we made plans to go back in a couple of hours and watch it.  We have never taken our kids to the movies.  So this was really testing the waters.  I'm glad I had Troy with me.  He sure came in handy, putting Annie to sleep while the boys and I wiggled all around the row of seats, laughing at that fat panda.  Later that day we played outside since the weather has gotten down below the 100's recently.  

Oh, the joy of bubbles

And what did we do with our Labor Day?  We spent the morning at the zoo!  Again, since the weather was so "cool" we hit the road early to avoid the inevitable crowds and spent the morning watching elephants getting a bath and bats getting some brunch.  We went home for lunch and to get ready for our busy week coming up.  

Tomorrow, Isaac will start going to pre-preschool.  I'll have to pack his lunch and a few sets of clean clothes to change into.  He will also start following a routine.  This means a scheduled "rest" time and that means that he needed a nap mat.  So I made him one.

So I guess you can say that I labored on Labor Day.  But it was a small labor of love.  I'm sending my baby boy out into the world (kind of) and he needs something to remember me by.  Hopefully he'll look at the nap mat and remember me saying that the dots are "dinosaur green".  And if he doesn't remember me then, maybe he'll think of me when he eats his snacks and his lunch.  And if not then, then maybe when he puts on that dry pair of underwear and pants that I so lovingly packed him...

Like I said earlier, I hope you all thanked your mothers today...