Mother's Day

I need to get all the things the girls made and take a picture of each of them with the gifts. Elizabeth's class is studying poetry so they wrote a "Cinquain for Mom" and they made a 'portrait' of mom with construction paper. The cinquain and portrait were mounted on a large piece of construction paper and laminated to make a 'place mat.' It's all very sweet, even if the construction paper Gina made me giggle -- it has a unibrow. I also got a bunch of hand-print roses that are in a vase on my dresser. They sang a sweet song and read a rebus poem together. Katherine's class also made each mom a placemat (paint splatter in a butterfly shape) and we each received our child's handprints, cut out and laminated with a magnet on the back of each. The handprints say "Katherine's....Artwork" (one word, each hand). Perfect for the fridge. They're pink and they're hanging with "Elizabeth's" (her "artwork" one disappeared, which makes me sad! but at least I still have one!!). They sang three songs to us and of course, I teared up just like I did last year when it was Elizabeth's class.

Annie and Elizabeth woke us Sunday morning a little before 7:00. Brad wished me a happy mother's day and he fed the kids, dressed the kids and got everything ready for church other than doing hair (he'll tell you that's his downfall as the daddy of girls - he struggles to do hair). He's such a huge help on Sunday mornings - always. Pre-Harrison it was to allow me 30 minutes of extra sleep, now it gives me time to nurse the baby. Because Sunday was also Katherine's birthday, I decided that was how I wanted to focus my day - let's be all about the birthday girl. After all, she's one of the reasons I'm a mother! And so we were all about Katherine on Sunday - to the point that I pretty much forgot that it was Mother's Day and that's okay. (don't think I'm not okay with that...I've decided it's NOT about me no matter how much I want it to be) We did remember to call his mom. My mom called the birthday girl before we got a chance to call her but we did wish her a happy mother's day while we were on the phone with her.

Tim preached a wonderful sermon (but when does he not?) and I was convicted about my priorities as a mom and about my lack of kindness toward my children. That lack of kindness thing has been brewing for a while and I'm sure as we study The Law of Kindness in June that's only going to be more and more a conviction in my life. It needs to be. My prayer of late has been that God would give me a heart of kindness toward my children so that the teaching of kindness would be on my tongue. I want to be tenderhearted and compassionate toward them. Not that I beat my kids, but often I am quick to anger and irritated that they are in my way while I'm trying to do XYZ. I prayed for these children...for years...and it's my selfish heart wanting things MY WAY rearing up. Got to get that under control and the only way to do it is to change my priorities and make my time in God's Word more important than anything else - including the ironing that I'm always doing!

Monday was Nin's birthday celebration at school. We made M&M Cookies for the class, and at Nin's request we took pink lemonade for their drink. Nin got to make a birthday crown with her teacher. She chose a purple crown and we took her picture in it after we got home from school (I didn't stay for the birthday party - too disruptive to the class to have Annie and Harrison there). She had a great day and is really looking forward to her birthday party next weekend.