Forever Family: My Mother's Day

I have to say I think this was one of my favorite Mother's Days! The activities started on Thursday, May 8th, with attending Alice's second grade musical performance for the mothers, followed by a picnic outside. Of course they sang several songs about mothers. One of them was "You Are My Sunshine", which is what the theme of the concert was, and they had headbands for the occasion. Alice and I packed our own lunches, which I brought with me to the school, and we sat on one of our picnic blankets. It was a nice time, and Alice was so excited about it for the last two months. She kept asking me if I had put it in my calendar.

The weather was perfect for an outdoor picnic! There was just a slight breeze, but the sun was shining. I had to put my jacket on after a while, but it was still nice.

Maybe this next thing wasn't Mother's Day specific, but I had the opportunity to take some more senior pictures of Garrett Friday night (the 9th) right in our own backyard. The weather was perfect! No wind at all. I'm glad I had to wait longer to get his pictures done because we had so much more green plants growing in our backyard than we did at Easter, which is when I was going to try to do it originally. We really wanted to get more pictures done without his braces on and since we got his cap and gown for graduation. The very next morning, we put in an order to Walmart to get some graduation announcements printed. Because we had them print our return address on the envelopes for us, it needed to be shipped and couldn't be done via 1 hour photo. Next time we will just do our own labels so we can get it done quicker. That order was expected today but now is delayed until tomorrow. I want to get those mailed out as soon as we get them. On the other hand, it did give us time to collect any addresses we needed. Garrett is so excited to graduate and be done with school that he's been doing so much better at school and getting his homework done without me bugging him. He just has 2 1/2 weeks left! Here are a couple of my favorite shots. We didn't use the first one on the announcement because he did a similar pose that was more fun (a "ship's ahoy" pose) and he really wanted to use that one.

After months of practicing every Thursday night and Saturday morning (most), it was finally the weekend of Jack's performance with his Choral Fusion singing group! We opened the pool that morning, but then went to the evening show as a family to go support Jack. I didn't give Garrett the chance to choose. I just told him this is what we're doing. We all LOVED the show! It was so fun (even Garrett said so). The theme this year was "Homeward Bound". They sang lots of fun, familiar songs and some I didn't know, but it was great. If he wasn't doing marching band in the fall, he would be doing Fusion again in the Fall for the Christmas concert. He'll just have to wait until next January. The girls and I had seen the show last year when it was just other kids from our ward that we knew doing the performance, but it was even better to have one of our own in it this year. I'm so glad he did it and so is Jack. He LOVED doing it! He said he might not do marching band his senior year because he loves doing Fusion that much. The great thing is that either most or all of the kids doing this show are members of our church and they are a wonderful group of kids. Both of the girls said they want to do it next year also. They tend to change their minds, so we'll see, but it would be fun to have them in it too. They have 3 different age groups. Garrett said he wished he was brave enough to do that. He likes to sing fun songs sometimes. On the way home, he and I sang to a couple of Aladdin songs and another from a TV show called "Phineas and Ferb". It was a great night! Only thing that could have made it better is if some of our extended family could have been there to watch with us. Maybe next year!

We were fortunate enough to get a front row seat even though we didn't get there until right before the show started. I think some people thought it was reserved, but no one was sitting there so we did. The Wingerts and Hornes were right behind us, so Jared Wingert took our picture.

The "Car Wash" song.

They had pictures of the kids in the hallway.

Jack had a short trumpet solo during "Yellow Submarine". He did awesome and everyone loved it!

And another singing solo (duet) in "Lean On Me". All of the boys did in this song.

On Sunday, which was officially Mother's Day, I woke up to the kids and Curtis cooking breakfast and setting up the table with homemade cards (by the girls), beautiful flowers and chocolates (finally the type I love, chocolate with almonds). They made waffles, eggs, bacon, grapes and orange juice for breakfast. I don't like doing the breakfast in bed thing, so they had to wait for me to shower and get dressed. My hair was still drying and not picture worthy yet, though. Ha ha I loved that the boys were actually up and helping (happily) and that they all did it together. Then another fun surprise was Jack singing in a small group (3 girls, 3 boys) during Sacrament meeting at church. He also sang another song with all of the youth. The small group sang "Love is Spoken Here" and the large group sang "More Than Enough". I really enjoyed both songs!

Garrett had an assignment for his food and fitness class to plan a healthy meal and then prepare it. The deadline to do it is June 2nd, but Garrett wanted to get it done sooner rather than later. I suggested to do it on Mother's Day, and that's exactly what he did. His meal was one of his favorites of spaghetti & meatballs, French bread and salad, with lemonade to drink. We went shopping together before going to Jack's show to get anything we needed and picked up a new tablecloth and some fancy wine glasses for our drinks. Part of his grade was on presentation. He learned how to make homemade spaghetti sauce, meatballs, French bread, and even salad. This was one assignment that he actually really enjoyed doing. He likes to cook but he just doesn't do it often. He later told me that after school is done he will do more cooking and chores. Hey, I like that! Garrett spent several hours working on this meal and it turned out so good! And I'm happy to report that he received a 100/100 grade for this assignment! Way to go!