Not Your Average Day!

In about seven minutes from now, this Mother's Day will come to an end and a new day will begin the 24-hour countdown then.

As Mother's Day celebrations go, today was really one of the best in my memory of those events!

Although my older daughter -and her son, my older grandson -Alex -couldn't be with us since she works the midnight shift at a hospital in her area and also, she had work tonight too -and we all want those people who care for us in the hospitals to have been able to get enough rest to be there for us, to be able to be awake/alert too while doing their jobs, don't we now? But although we missed her presence, the card she sent me for Mother's Day did compensate a whole lot in her absence as her sister and I really got a great big chuckle out of that card!

Three cards for Mother's Day -one from each of my lovely children -and only one of the three cards was of the sweet, syrupy and very sentimental type. And that one this year was from my baby, Mandy.

Regardless of the tone of the cards, I loved all three of them very much and they helped make the day one that was really very pleasure-filled, for sure.

Neither Mandy nor I had to cook today as Ken (Mandy's boyfriend) had made two great big pans of his lasagne, which has to be the absolute best in flavor, with a great meat sauce and oodles of cheese! I did make a dessert for our meal today -made it last night -and it turned out to be a big hit too. It's called Ginger Cheesecake and it definitely fills the bill for all the requirements I have in a recipe. It was easy on the ingredients, easy to put together, looked like I had slaved for a considerable amount of time preparing it and best of all, it tasted great! I got the recipe off the back of a package of Betty Crocker's Gingerbread Cookie Mix and you can bet your bottom dollar this is one dessert that will make its way to our table again!

Not only was today Mother's Day but it was also a day for a birthday celebration too. My son's girlfriend, Elizabeth, celebrated her birthday today as she and Clayton were here for dinner and he also got her a nice little chocolate cake -which was a huge hit with Kurtis who loves, loves, loves virtually anything chocolate, ya know. Kurt was very psyched up about today being Elizabeth's birthday and spent a good part early in the day practicing, honing up on his singing abilities so he had the "Happy Birthday" song absolutely down pat!

We - Mandy, both children and I -all made it to church too Sunday morning! Quite a feat for me to accomplish this as I am not one to be able to "rise and shine" early in the morning as you may recall. But I managed to do it today, thankfully.

The Women's Group at our church have a special project going on right now and that's to ask members of the congregation to provide any -or all, if they can afford it -items on a list of things that will go into making up layette packages that will then be sent to various places around the country here or around the world, to be given to new mothers to help them begin the never-ending job of trying to provide as best they can for the basic needs of their infants. Today, we were to bring the items we had to donate to the service and then, during the Children's Sermon, Pastor Carrie had the children help her to collect those items which were then placed in the bassinette that our Group's President (Mary Kay) still had from when her son was an infant about 45 years ago! Mary Kay had trimmed the sides of this infant bed with loads of flowers so it looked very pretty and believe me, those little ones sitting around the altar rail with Pastor Carrie were quite proud and happy to be able to help Pastor Carrie collect the items and put them in the bed for babies in need, world-wide.

As we were leaving church, I made a comment to Mandy to invite Pastor Carrie and her mother to come down and join us for dinner at our house. Pastor Carrie's mother is visiting here till mid-June and they accepted our invitation. We had such a fun mean as the more I am around Pastor Carrie and her mother, the more convinced I am that somehow, someway, we must be related because listening to them tell stories about the rest of their family -all back home in Wisconsin -and her Mom and I compare notes about child rearing, it always gives me such a great feeling inside to know I'm not alone in having raised kids who where quite the characters when they were small and still are to this day! It made for a really fun meal, filled to the brim with some great food and lots and lots of laughter! Both things that are great to have when you have a family plus friends meal!

After dinner, when it was just the kids, Mandy, Ken and I here, as I began the job of putting leftover food away, I decided to share some of our bounty with some neighbors of ours. I packaged up a big serving of the lasagne along with a couple pieces of the dessert I had made to take to our neighbor lady three doors up the street from us. She is a very nice -excellent neighbor actually -single lady in her early 80s now and she's been my neighbor all my life. Then I also fixed two containers -one with two slices of lasagne and the other with a couple slices of the cheesecake to take up to give to my good friend, Shirley and her husband. I also took along the tablecloth and napkin set I have been working on for the past month now to show to Shirley. ( I should be working on right now so as to finally get it completed as I only have about an hour's worth of work left to go on this set and it will be done, done, done! But I also know if I don't write this post now, by tomorrow, I probably will have forgotten several little minor details to relate here then too.)

When I dropped off the little "care" packages to Shirley and Bo and then, showed her my tablecloth set, we got started chatting -just like we always do when we get together and before you knew it, I'd spent well over an hour there then talking with her about all kinds of things -not just embroidery.

I told her though that Pastor's Mom had told me about a store near to where she lives in Wisconsin that sells a little bit of everything but it's apparently one of those salvage type places where they buy up all kinds of extra inventory from other firms at dirt cheap prices and then, resell the stuff but also at very, very low prices too. She said this place has a separate section though that is nothing but crafting items and she has often purchased things like pillow case sets for as low as $1.50 for the pair -already stamped and ready to be embroidered. Hearing that had me drooling big time at the dining room table and I remarked that perhaps Shirley, her sister, Kate, and I might just have to organize an excursion of sorts, for the three of us to travel to Wisconsin just to visit this crafts corner in that store.

I mentioned this idea to Shirley who just howled laughing at that idea, saying the very last thing she needs is to purchase more craft things but I know -just as I'm sure she knows too -that were it possible for the three of us to finagle a way to make a trip like that, Shirley and I would both come back home all loaded down with, yes, more embroidery kits. And I am pretty doggone sure we would do just that because when it comes to stuff like that, we both lose our "need vs. want" theories and the "Want" one would take precedence! Even though neither of us really has any more room to spare in which we could store such things, kits like those at really great prices are absolutely next to impossible for either of us to ignore.

While visiting with Shirley she also told me a really fantastic but true story on one of my favorite type of topics: the "Small World" theory about life. It's a great story that I would love to share but won't do that today because it would make this post way too long and right now, it's already about to my mini-version of War and Peace that I tend to write in my blog.

So I'll spare you that story tonight but will try to keep it all in the forefront of my memory to write about it soon as it is a really great story, in my opinion.

And now, as Mother's Day has officially ended here for 2011, and I'm still basking in how great the day was for me anyway, I'm gonna close out now, go finish that tablecloth (so I can then begin work on yes, another tablecloth. What else did you expect?) And then, I'm gonna go crawl into bed with my little sleeping buddy, Miss Maya and be off to dreamland in probably three shakes of a lamb's tail, as my Grandma used to say.

Here's hoping all of you -my readers -who share the status with me of being a Mom, have had a day even half as excellent a day as mine was for me today!

Peace and Happy Mother's Day every day!