Remembering Mother's Day

I know that Mother's Day was over a week ago, but I was cleaning up the house tonight - what better thing is there to do when the husband is away on business??  As I was cleaning up the desk area in the kitchen, I found a bunch of loose papers with drawings on them...in crayon of course.  I was flipping through each one to see if there was a treasure to keep (sometimes Evelyn amazes me with her drawings and I have to save them and date them because they are THAT good), and I did find a couple worth saving, but I also found my Mother's Day letter from Gordon in the pile.  On the back was brightly colored hearts and flowers and stars and the words 'mommy' with a big heart colored red and then 'daddy' - I read it like Mommy Loves Daddy. 

This week - like anytime Gordon is gone - was difficult.  The night time comes and the bedtime routine is especially hard without him here.  He keeps me positive and laughing at the little things instead of being annoyed and cranky at why the kids aren't in bed yet!  Claire was out of bed a few times tonight - 'more potty', 'another drink', 'I can't find my animals'...the usual.  I was tempered and tired and going on day 3 without him.  Could she NOT stay in bed PLEASE!!!?!  After a long haul and an exhausted audible SIGH on my part, I finally came downstairs to a mess.  Clothes on the floor, toys spread all over, dishes piled high in the sink, piano papers thrown on the floor, shoes and more shoes, papers and crayons, puzzles undone with pieces now missing...the list can go on and I had to pull my sleeves up and GET IT DONE!  I actually started singing in my head words "I don't want to clean up this mess" to the tune of a church song!

When I came across the pile of papers with my letter inside, I completely stopped what I was doing, went to the comfy chair, sat down and read my entire letter ... outloud...by myself.  I know it's kind of a personal thing and I won't be offended if you stop reading now, but I want to document this letter ... seeing how easily it was misplaced and how quickly little hands got a hold of it and started coloring it and how I almost mistook it for trash...I would really hate it if this one got tossed on accident.  So I want to type it up and make it apart of my personal history in this blog.  I will then be able to refer to it EVERY time I feel like today and get that boost that I desperatly needed tonight at the end of a long day. It reads:

My beautiful Jamie,                                                                                                        May 13, 2012

Thank you for being my wife. Thank you for saying "yes" so many years ago. Thank you for making the decision to stay home to be with Evelyn...and then Claire...and now, Bonnie too. Thank you for sacrificing so much of your own interests so the girls' needs are met. Thank you for taking care of the house and feeding us delicious food. Thank you for changing diapers. Thank you for waking up in the middle of the night to take care of a crying little one. Thank you for cleaning bathrooms and dust. Thank you for tickeling the girls and laughing. Thank you for bedtime kisses. Thank you for pulling weeds, and playing at the park. Thank you for packing lunches when we have picnics or visit the zoo. Thank you for helping the girls learn how to become young women. Thank you for reading stories. Thank you for sharing your testimony. Thank you for teaching the girls letters and numbers. Thank you for making birthdays so much fun. Thank you for running through the sprinklers with me. Thank you for forgiving me when I make mistakes. Thank you for taking care of my toe nails. Thank you for playing the piano and learning to play my favorite song. Thank you for your opinions and ideas. Thank you for your hugs and kisses. Thank you for adding to this list of reasons for me to be thankful everyday. I love you and thank you for loving me. Happy Mother's Day.

Love, Gordon

I have to get back to the cleaning I was doing before I was interrupted by this loving reminder of why I do what I do, but I wanted to write down how I feel in this moment and that is that no matter how hard my days are. No matter how hard I feel I am struggling with the kids or just life, I know that I have a wonderful spouse that cares for me and loves me and is thanking me for all that I do. I just feel really blessed right now and suddenly ... doing all these chores doesn't seem like such a hard thing afterall.



Who's girl are you? GRANDPA'S GIRL!!!!!!!

These girls M.I.S.S. this guy.  Miss is an understatement!  They love LOVE their grandpa!  My parents live in Colorado, we live in North Carolina.  We LOVE North Carolina and we are happy here and are not moving, but sometimes, I do wish we lived closer.  The wonderful part about their relationship with their grandpa is that no matter how far apart we live, they are so close!  And everytime we get together it's like no time has passed between visits.  And as tradition would have it...we go to Outback Steakhouse for dinner.  It's a fav and we go EVERY SINGLE TIME he visits!  So to Outback we went and it was a short but sweet visit! 

Sleeping Beauty

It seems the only time I can capture this beauty sleeping is when she isn't feeling well.  This was Sunday.  She spiked another fever and to avoid another episode that happened a few Sundays ago...I took her straight home.  She fell asleep and slept all afternoon and woke up happy and healthy.  REST!  It's amazing what it does to our bodies!  Isn't she just beautiful sleeping?!!!! 

--SIDE STORY--

In case you are wondering what happened "a few Sundays ago..." I spoke in church on the 22 of April and I was up on the stand away from my kids.  I was watching Claire and half way through the meeting, she became very quiet and just sat there - so NOT like her.  Gordon and I made eye contact and we both had that look of "WOW, she's being super reverent!!" I spoke, did a great job by the way LOL, and then as soon as the closing prayer was said, I walked down to greet my family and start taking kids to class.  I scooped up Claire and said "Hey there, you ready for mommy to take you to class?" she felt warm, no...HOT, but before that thought even regisitered in my mind that she had a temperature, it happened...she threw up all over me.  She was facing me with her legs buckled around my waist and so you can guess where it all went...into my neck, chest, and down my shirt...hot, wet, stinky, chunky, slimy mess!  I was mortified and turned to rush out of the chapel.  It happened a second time rushing down the hall way...we didn't make it to the bathroom yet and I found myself holding back the gags myself and praying "please don't lose it too!!!"  A few wonderful girlfriends followed me quickly into the bathroom, where she threw up one more time...this time all over the floor.  My friend said that I "took one for the team!"  True! True!  I was covered in it. Claire was covered in it.  Claire was shivering and feverish and when she saw me covered in nastiness she refused to go to me again.  We all worked as fast as we could to clean up the mess, get her undressed and thankfully we had a blanket in the car and we wrapped her up in the blanket and took her home immediatly.  I never scrubbed myself so hard in the shower before...it was in my hair and everything!  YUCK!  Only a mama!

So you can now understand my fear of fevers at church...no way, no thanks! 

Stone Mountain State Park Campout

We went camping again!  It's almost getting too hot to continue camping, so we can't wait for fall to come to continue our Lindsay family adventures!

This time we went to Stone Mountain State Park and we camped with Gordon's brother Big A and his two kiddos E and W. The girls were thrilled to have cousins with them!  Our family arrived first and we got camp set up and the girls played frisbee and wrestled each other until it was dinner time. Of course, it's not camping without having hotdogs over the fire!  Daddy was the best chef!!

The girls were excellent helpers getting camp set up.

 Evelyn and Claire having fun wrestling for the frisbee in the grass - cute girls!

 Isn't our tent just loverly?!

 Bonnie Kate - smoke follows beauty!

 Chef daddy - cookin' up some grub!

 YAY! Cousins have arrived! 

 North Carolina mountains...I mean hills.  HA!

 Little BFFs!  They have so much fun together!

 Daddy and his mini-me - don't they look alike? 

 The next morning, we all woke up early and started our hike to the waterfall.

 Just before walking out onto the rocky face top of the waterfall...there was this sign encouraging us to proceed!

At the falls...

 Look at that drop off...WOW! 

 I love W - front right corner - in this picture!  He's so cute!

 Picture below - this is where we stopped for a picnic lunch...look at that view!!!

 We zoomed in on some rock climbers on the rock face...glad no one fell with all of us watching!

Our last adventure of the day - soaking our feet in the stream below...cold water, soaked kids, happy faces!  We had a great time!

Happy Birthday Aunt Deeeeeborah!

We had a very special guest on Thursday the 17th.  Aunt Deborah had a birthday! Andy called me the day before and asked what I was doing Thursday night ... I said, 'just going to work out' and he proceeded to ask me about an idea he had.  He wanted to do something different for Deborah's birthday, something she wouldn't suspect.  He wondered if he could bring her to our house for dinner and have my adorable little girls be their 'servers'.  Such a cute idea!  I was all over it!  He said he would bring over the food, if I would prepare it and do dessert.  So my party hat went on and I started brainstorming how I wanted this to go.  I thought, the weather has been SO nice outside, it would be great if they could eat out on the patio.  But then I looked out at the patio and realized...there is a lot to clean up out there!  So off to work I went.  I moved ALL of the kid stuff out of the way, cleared the fallen leaves and hosed off all of the sidewalk chalk and other debris.  Then I put up our gazeebo tent and got out my icicle Christmas lights and strung them on the tent for ambiance!  I hauled out our computer speakers and set them up 'surround sound' style for some nice instrumental background music.  Then I rummaged around the house and found an old table that I used as their bistro table and decorated it with tablecloths and candle. 

Andy told me that we could all eat together, but I thought NAY - this is for Deborah and the two of them should enjoy a nice quiet meal.  So I set the table for two.  I was so excited with how things were looking! 

Andy brought me the food to prepare - a round rump roast and some fresh asparagus.  I thought the meal needed a little more, so I went an got ingredients for my favorite Strawberry Spinach salad and some artisan bread for appetizer snacking with butter, I did baked potatoes and for dessert...some rich vanilla ice cream and fresh berries - blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. Done. 

The girls went straight to work on making homemade birthday cards and Evelyn and I created a menu.  OH!  By the way, when I told Evelyn what we were doing she was beyond excited and said first thing that we needed to name our restuarant.  She came up with Utopia - yes UTOPIA - a place of perfection!  WHERE she has heard that word is beyond me but I thought it was a perfect name for our fancy restuarant!!  So we made these cute menus that said "UTOPIA" on the front and on the inside was our menu for the evening.

The guest of honor arrived - not knowing what awaited her in the back yard - and the girls were swarming the car before they would put it in 'PARK'! Then Claire was announcing LOUDLY "we made dinner for you! We made dinner for you!!"  We were trying to hush her, but she was too excited!  Thankfully Deborah had no idea what she was talking about!  Andy went around back while Deborah stood on the porch holding Bonnie and saying Hello to everyone...then the girls took her hand and started to lead her back to the back patio. 

The music was playing, the lights were twinkling and the candle was lit!  She was soooo surprised and the girls went right into character..."please take your seat" and "welcome to our restaurant Utopia" and "here is your menu" and of course..."HAPPY BIRHTDAY!"

 

Zoo

We love our passes to the ZOO!  We can go anytime we get the itch...pack a lunch and it's a day trip and oh so fun! This trip to the zoo was the best one yet...all of the animals were out and about and were picture perfect!

We were at the right place at the right time...the black bear exhibit had two black bears that all of sudden started showing aggression towards each other to the point of one of them rearing up on his back two legs...it was awesome! I have video of it too!!

We tried to get to the zoo when they opened at 9, but we were a tad late and got there at 10am. We stayed until about 3pm and had a wonderful time at the zoo!  Can't wait to go back!