Mother's Day Memories

With the coming of Mother's Day I have been thinking about my mom a lot lately.  Sometimes it's hard to believe that she has been gone for over 9 years already.  I miss her so much some days, and wish that she was here to see my boys and take part in what they are doing.  I talk about her with them, but it makes me sad that they will not get to know her here on this earth.

But memories of Mom are not all sad.  I also think about the happy times with her.  Going through a bunch of old pictures recently has increased all of this, too.  I hope that I am building happy memories for my children.  I know that they are building happy memories for me.  They have had me laughing a lot lately.  And they filled my heart with happiness this weekend as we celebrated Mother's Day.

These are not from Mother's Day, but are pictures of me and Mom together.

Steve helped me have a great weekend, too.  For starters, we had planned to work on the new fence this weekend, but Steve got all of this weekend's work done without me!  I had joked with him that he could do that, and he tried hard to get it done.  While he was working on the fence, I was helping at a baby shower for a new mom-to-be in our church.  What a great start to Mother's Day weekend!  On Sunday, Steve was working the lights at all 3 services at church.  The boys got up in time to go with him early in the morning, so I got to sleep in and just get myself to church.  I didn't get my usual breakfast in bed, but I think it was a great trade!  What a great husband I have!!!

The boys were sweet that morning, too.  They came into the room and kissed me on the cheek and told me "Happy Mother's Day" just before they left.  They had already given me some presents, but they made some more at church and game them to me after church.  We bribed them with M&M's to get some pictures of them with me and their presents to me.   Then we just hang around the house most of the afternoon.  We played a game of Sorry together and then Steve and the boys played a video game while I took a little nap.  After that we went to Carino's for dinner.  I was stuffed by the end, but it was so good!  We have cut back on our dining out and sometimes I have trouble even picking out a place to go.  But I finally settled on this, and it was great!  After we got home and got the boys ready for bed, Steve and I watched Runaway Bride.  It was a relaxing and happy day, and I was very thankful for it.

A family first ...

The first cast belongs to ...

Joel

He fell at the playground and hurt his wrist on Saturday.  I was at home cooking dinner and not with them.  When they got home he was pretty upset and we were trying to ice it.  To help him calm down and stay still we ate dinner in the living room while watching Kung Fu Panda.  By the end of the movie he was laughing hard and not complaining about his arm any more.  We noticed that he wasn't using his hand very much, though.  That continued on Sunday and Monday.  He wasn't even playing with Legos.  So I took him to the doctor on Monday thinking that it was a bad sprain, but better safe than sorry.  Well, it was more than a sprain.  It's a buckle fracture above the wrist.  He got the cast right away and it was a very quick and easy process.  It's actually a really neat waterproof and fiberglass cast and he got to pick out the color.  He will have to keep it on for 4 weeks.  His arm was still a little swollen so if the cast gets too loose he may get a new one earlier than that. 

The cast hasn't slowed him down.  In fact, he is more active now that he has it.  We went to Target after the doctor and he got a new minifigure Lego.  As soon as we got home he put it together and started playing with his other Legos.  He had his first day at school with it today, and that seemed to go well.  I forgot to pack his lunch this morning, so I got him a Happy Meal after my workout at the gym.  That ended up being a good thing since he got some Batman toys in it that he could play "quietly" with at recess.  Of course, as soon as school was out he was running everywhere.  It's hard to keep this boy still unless he has Legos near him.

First Spring 2011 Flag Football Game

Evan had his first game today as a Wolverine, and it was pretty exciting!  His team didn't win, but they played well and seemed to be learning.  (He is playing Upward, so they don't keep score, but we can usually tell who wins.)  Evan played really well - at least we thought so.  Some of his highlights were:

 On defense:
 - 2 interceptions
 - disrupted another pass
 - made at least one "tackle"

On offense:
 - made 2 good runs
 - was quarterback but I don't think he attempted any throws

He is number 13 this year and is glad to have a "higher" number.  (Last year he was number 6).  Today they were the visiting team, so he is wearing the white side of his jersey.  Now you can find him in the pics below!

Playing defense and the looking for the ball

He got it!  This was the first interception.

He was excited, but he kept his poise after the play.

Handing it off - right in the gut.

Cool giveaway!

I love reading and I have sampled many authors through the years.  One of my favorites is Francine Rivers and I recently learned about a free e-book and a chance to win a completely library of her books!  I don't have enough room to store them all, but I would love to keep some and share some if I win.  There are some good ones that I borrowed to read and would love to read again.  Anyway, if you are interested in the giveaway you  can go here to check it out!

By the way, here is a picture of us together at a book signing in Dallas.  She is very nice in person, too!

Snowpocalypse 2011

That was one of the terms bantied about last week when everything shut down for about 4 days.  Evan went to school on Monday, and Joel and I walked to pick him up at the end of the school day.  That was about the last time we left the house until Friday.  We still weren't driving anywhere until Saturday, though.  (That is for me and the boys.  Steve went to work Wednesday and Thursday, and made it safely though he agreed the roads were a little rough.)

Monday night we got some hail, sleet, freezing rain - something that turned into ice on the ground and the roads.  Then we stayed way below freezing until Saturday.  The snow didn't arrive until Thursday night, so we didn't go out to play until Friday.  Joel didn't want to play at first, but he finally went out Friday afternoon for some sledding fun.  The guys went out again Saturday for one last day of fun, and it was probably a good idea because most of the snow was gone by Sunday.  You can see the pics from our week here.

Today we are above freezing again, and should be tomorrow, too.  But we have a chance for more snow on Tuesday night, and another winter storm warning.  I really enjoyed our 4 days off last week, but I am not sure another day off this week would be a good idea.  But, there's really no use spending any mental energy on that right now.  For today, we are going to focus on returning the library movies that kept us occupied last week and getting some supplies from Costco - just in case. 

The Science of Science Fairs

Evan completed his first science fair project this year.  I guess he had the opportunity last year, but didn't want to participate.  This year he did, so we started brainstorming ideas with him as soon as we found out about it.  Steve suggested an experiment on the evaporation rates of different liquids.  A friend had told me about her daughter's on which type of cup keeps hot chocolate warmer and I suggested that one.  Evan decided to go with the evaporation, so I started making plans to carry it out.  We tried to perform the experiment the weekend before it was due and the results were the following:

1. The method I selected (and discussed with Steve) was not a good one for this experiment.
2. We needed more time to complete the project.

So, we went with Plan B (a.k.a. "Keeping Hot Chocolate Warm").  After church on Sunday I picked up a digital candy thermometer.  When I got home I made a new caramel hot chocolate recipe, and we proceeded to experiment.  It took Evan, Steve, and me to keep the experiment going.  The first time we tried to measure the temps every minute, but that was pretty hard.  I basically was measuring the entire minute.  The second time (since my husband is an engineer we had to do two trials) we measured every 2 minutes.  We only kept the every two minutes measurements from the first trial, too.

 Guess which cup kept the hot chocolate warmer

Evan had worked on the wording of the purpose, hypothesis, etc. with me the day before (because I had a feeling we would be using plan B and wanted to be ready).  After the experiment it was time to analyze the data.  Steve kind of took over that part, with me throwing in things every now and then.  Evan then came to me to write the results section.  This is where the whining started.  I was about to lose it.  I wanted to finish so that we could relax and watch the playoffs.  He apparently wanted to do that, too, but without finishing the project first.  Steve took over for a while, and we were able to finish the project.  Phew!  Then Steve took over the formatting of the document into slides for printing.  I wanted to rearrange part of it and it took me a while to figure out how to get it to do what I wanted.  We have new "stuff" on our computer (Windows 7 and different Office programs) and while I like some of them, I know how to use the old stuff better.  And I haven't used PowerPoint in a long time anyway.  But ... it got done in time to get printed and put on the board way before bedtime!

And we did enjoy some caramel hot chocolate in the "winning" cup.

Surprised?  We were (except that this was my friend's result, too.)

The first thing Evan told me when I picked him from school the next day was that he won at the science fair!  It was hard to figure out what he won, but it was an honorable mention!  I think that they judged all of the kinder-3rd graders together and had a 1st, 2nd, 3rd place winner and then some honorable mentions.  He was excited and so were we!  I think he learned some stuff, too.  I wasn't sure he would want to do one next year after all of the "torture" of working on the results section, but I think that the joy of winning may have replaced the pain in his memories. 

Winter Wonderland

I have been negligent in posting again.  We have enjoyed some snow recently, but it makes me long for more!  We only got a couple of inches and it was only "playable" for one day.  Thinking of snow always takes me back to our early days in Virginia (when we lived there for 9 months about 3 years ago).  The boys were so much smaller then and they had never really seen snow before.  The wonder and excitement really were magical.  They still love the snow, but it's not quite the same.  I have the physical pictures, and I hope I will always have the mental pictures, too.

This post has been submitted to an I Heart Faces photo challenge.