"Happy Sly Day, Mommy!"

Mother's Day ended up nice, but the weather was much colder than expected (low 50's), so we had to cancel our plans for a picnic in the park.  I got a cute homemade card from Sly(/Daddy) and a pair of earrings from Tom.  

You can kind of see the new earrings here.  Sly's in a "hide from the camera" phase right now.

Sly had a running joke all day, insisting that it was actually "Sly Day" instead.  Tom tried to explain that pretty much every day is "Sly Day", and Mommy needs a day.  His response was, "It not Mother's Day, it Sly's Day!  I need a day!" One time he even said to me very cheerily, "Happy Sly Day, Mommy!"  Oh, that little man.

While taking our yearly Mother's Day photo (last year's photo is in my blog header, and eventually I might get around to updating it with the new one), someone must have bumped the camera while carrying it around on the tripod.  The lens casing was dented and it wasn't closing properly, so I called it in a report to the warranty company.  They ended up just reimbursing the entire cost of the camera so I could buy a new one.  It's a bit of a pain, but it should actually work out in my favor.  The "updated" model of the camera comes with a wi-fi receiver so that you can actually upload your photos right to your e-mail or social media sites.  Sweet!  That was one of the biggest attractions for me of owning a smartphone, so now this will help me resist that trend just a little longer [it's for my own good.  I know having a mini computer on me all day would be such a  temptation to idleness!]


I accidentally broke our coffee pot while trying to make coffee after Mass, and that is basically a tragedy in our house.  We drink so much coffee!  Despite it being Sunday and Mother's Day, we both agreed that it was necessary to go out and get a new one right away.  So instead of the nice picnic lunch originally planned, we actually ended up just getting lunch from the McDonald's drive-thru on the way to the store.  I know that sounds pretty lame.  But eating anything out of the house is a pretty rare treat for us, so even ordering off the dollar menu is exciting these days (on my last date with my husband, we went dancing and then to McDonalds for dinner.  Guess which part we were more excited about?)

We also swung by a beautiful old house that's for sale and we're kind of pining over.  No, we're not ready to buy a house yet!  I told Tom to stop checking out the real estate listings (something he's taken to doing the past couple days), because we were just torturing ourselves.  But he left the tab open on the computer...and when I sat down later, I found myself browsing the site too, "just to see."  Anyways, I found this house in one of the few neighborhoods that Tom and I can agree on and well within our price range (assuming we had enough for a down payment, which we don't).  The photos all had me drooling: a big old Victorian house on a corner lot, huge front porch, carving and fancy woodwork all over the staircase with a gorgeous stained glass window, six bedrooms, four fireplaces, moulding galore, spacious kitchen, and in good shape...ahhh.  Almost my dream house.  It just needs a bigger back yard.

While we were out, we also discovered a new Goodwill we didn't know about.  I didn't think that was possible!  We got in ten minutes before closing, so we were very rushed.  But we're both such experienced thrifters by this point, that we managed to fly through, blitzing certain sections, and came home with a few good finds: two of the older-style Usborne books, two short-sleeved shirts for me, a cute dress for Stella, and some replacement Christmas bulbs.  And then my dad invited us all to dinner at a chinese place.  The kids were both bad, but I pulled the "Mother's Day card", and got out of most of the wrangling duties.  Ha.

It's funny....Mother's Day is supposed to be a time for children to remember all that their mother means to them, and to express their love and gratitude to her.  But it ends up doing the same thing in reverse.  As a mom myself now, the day just helps me to count all my blessings and understand how fortunate I am to be a mother.