Mother's Day & Time

Happy Mother's Day to my moms!  I hope you ladies had a great Mother's Day. We had some fun and busy happenings around that day.  I tend to focus on my deficiencies as a mom on Mother's Day, but tried to just enjoy the day this year.  Lee cooked all day for me (which he does every Sunday actually) and made some yummy fare. 

I helped the 4th grade high reading group this year.  I had to check on some copies and left my phone with the kids to use as a timer for their fluency passages they were reading.  I found this later of Haley and her friend Belle.


Lee decided to do a vision therapy course in Ohio.  He has three sessions total (I believe) of 4 days each.  He would like to start doing vision therapy at his office.  While he knows some about it, he needed more training and best practices.  It's been very interesting talking to him about the things he is learning.  This was one location Lee was at for his classes.


Pretty Ohio sunset.  We got a sweet deal on his hotel room on Hotwire.  It was about $53 a night!


One of the classes.


The activity day girls had a Mother's Day Tea.  It was really cute.  There were a couple different flavors of herbal tea, cream, sugar, cake and a cute picture note from my girls.  They each made a rice bag that you can heat up and place on a sore neck or muscles.  I had to choose just one....That is awkward!


Clark has been into drones lately.  He built his own frame a few weeks ago, the rebuilt his drone parts onto it.  It worked great and flew well!  He is learning lots of things about drones that blow my mind and I don't understand.


He is getting quite handy at a soldering gun! His little work station in his room.




Cal with some art work.


Mother's Day!  Something went wrong with a delivery truck shipping 10,000 roses to Michigan.  For some reason the person wouldn't accept the order so the guy was stuck with thousands of roses.  Each of my kids brought home a half dozen roses for me, plus I received another dozen at school since I am a volunteer there.  I loved having so many roses!  It was fun to give some away too. I told Lee I didn't need any flowers for Mother's Day! Lee bought me some yummy chocolate, made waffles, Snicker's cheesecake and dinner for me that day.  Lee spoke at church that Sunday and gave a great talk.






Anyone heard of this brand?  I am trying them out.  I do like them, though the arch is a bit high and I don't like the breath ability.  I just need to go running earlier in the morning.



I finally painted our eye-soar of a table and patio chairs.  We don't use this space very often, so it's never been high on our list as a place to spruce up.




Clark flying his drone a little.


Friends over with the kids after school one afternoon.


The weather has been spotty this May.  Over all it's still been nice, but with lots of changes.  One particular nice day was just nice all around.  It was one of those days I felt very blessed and grateful for my blessings.  The kids were playing great together, enjoying time with friends.  Clark was playing the piano, then later joined the other kids outside. Such a lovely, happy evening.  Cal was on a date with Lee 4-wheeling at a friend's house.






The girls really wanted to mow the lawn to earn money like their older brothers.  We finally let them this year.  It's tricky because I want the boys to mow the lawn just because it's good work for them.  We are kind of switching off and have some other jobs if a boy isn't mowing the lawn.  We'll have to see how it works out. 


Sooooo.....on to "Mother's Time".....  After lots of back and forth and scheduling, we had our first ever Sister's Weekend!  With my mom too, haha.  Lois and I pitched the idea to Steph to have it at her house this year.  (Not sure whose idea it was originally...I think mine!)  Steph has only two kids right now, both of which are little and not in school so we thought it would be a great place.  Stephanie agreed, a date was set and airline tickets were bought! Amy and I flew out together which was super fun!  I got a sweet deal for non-stop, round-trip flights for us from DC to Indianapolis for about $125 each! Sold! Sadly when we went to Dulles the first time we found out AFTER we had parked and were waiting for the shuttle bus that the flight had been cancelled, then rescheduled for the next day.  We drove back home, hung out (I mainly worked on getting a rental car for the next day) then flew out the next day.  When boarding the plane Amy had pulled out her old boarding pass and it wouldn't work to get on the plane.  The old boarding pass said her flight was leaving later at around 4pm.  Well, it was for the day before!  Thankfully the gate lady came on the plane and was holding ticket information stating that Amy was supposed to be on my flight.  (We hadn't realized she had pulled out her OLD boarding pass yet).  I saw the ticket in the lady's hand.  I chatted with her and finally got ahold of Amy on the phone.  She was able to get on the plane!  We thought our flights were rescheduled at different times.  Had she waited till the 4pm-ish flight, she would have realized that it was her old boarding pass from the prior day and couldn't have gotten on that flight either.  Oh. and they kept offering a deal to a person to get on a later flight.  The flight credits started at $300 and went up to $700.  Someone finally decided to take a later flight. 

Oh, and the car!  I was nervous about renting a car because I don't have a credit score.  I called Hertz and found out that they would run a soft credit check on me if I brought in a debit card to pay.  They said it would just approve me or not approve me.  She said she could rent me a car for about $150 total for three days.  I had a price online for about $80ish.  I told her about the online deal and if she had a better price. She had one for me! I passed the soft credit check and rented a Hyundai Sonata for $53 TOTAL for all three days! 

We arrived Thursday afternoon.  Stephanie had cute gift bags for us!


Loved the itinerary.


We went to a couple places before dinner. First off a stop at the ice creaplace, Graeters, to buy ice cream made using the French Pot method...I have no idea what that is either.


Then to the Cupcake Bakery.  We ate those desserts that night and talked.  So yummy and fun. 




Our second day we headed to a park, ate lunch, hung out in Steph's cute downtown and ate dinner at Bub's.












This is a cool Murphy bed at California Closets.  I would love to get one someday!  The modern/contemporary/industrial style isn't mine, but it was still cool.




So, I definitely want to go back to this store, the Olive Mill.  So many fun olive oils, spices and balsamic vinegars.


Lots of pictures! That afternoon Lois, Stacie and my mom arrived!  We missed our other sister's in-laws, but our group for the weekend was complete.


This is the cutest store I've EVER been in.  The pictures do not do it justice.  I practically squealed when I walked inside.  It's the Cake Bake shop.  Very expensive and very yummy.  This was my favorite store!








Dinner at Bub's was super delish!








That night we watched Remember Sunday, a really cute movie.  Then Deb and I stayed up and watched a Hallmark murder mystery.  Then next morning and afternoon we hung out in Zionsville.  Lots of fun shops.  We ate at the Friendly Tavern for lunch.  Again just plain yummy.


One of the jewelry stores also sold estate jewelry which was really fun.  If you gave a donation to an animal shelter (?) you got to dig out prize from this box.  My mom fished out a birth stone.


My niece Ila is amazing with knitting and crocheting.  She would be in heaven here.




That night Andy snapped some pictures before Amy, Lena and I flew out.  We missed the Saturday evening and Sunday activities. 

All of us sisters!!!!!


Mom and her daughters


The group!  We can't wait till out getaway next year!


Someone took this picture on Sunday on a walk, and I love this quote. 
"The time for a human life....is but a brief interval in an unlimited existence." ?? Campbell.  Fuzzy picture.


Oh, and Steph showed us the custom closet they built from scratch for their daughter.  SO cute!


Funny sign.  And funny enough is really true in my case.  Lee really wouldn't mind if I just set aside some money and spent it all on me.  Being the budget nerd I have issues with that sometimes...


I left Sister's Weekend early to attend my kids' Spring piano recital. They did a nice job! I loved that Daniel, Amy, Ila, Anthon and Rachel came to church with us and to the piano recital.  (Well, Daniel took a nap at home during the recital in preparation for driving home since they arrived at my house about 4am Sunday morning.)  I loved having them here for a little bit!


People, epiphany time.  Just happened tonight, literally when I looked at this picture. What is it about pictures with people in fields that seems so carefree, happy, sweet, summery and beautiful?  When I actually walk through a field I can't WAIT to get out!  All the tall grass and weeds and ticks and whatnot......



While I was away Lee took the boys on the Father's and Son's campout.  And since the girls needed to go someplace too, the girls went too.  I told the kids a few days beforehand they would all have to go together.  I thought the boys would be upset that the girls were treading on their special weekend.  I was totally wrong.  None of the boys care at all about it.  Shanna on the other hand did NOT want to go camping and was sad to miss out on our girls' weekend at home watching a movie and eating ice cream.


Overall it went well.  Sometimes it just went.  But Lee survived with flying colors and snuck in some bike rides with the kids.




Tadpole City.


Clark was sweet carrying Shanna across a river crossing for the bike ride.






Not sure what this is...I'll have to find out.  A train?


Lots of mom stuff, but if you made it to the end, great job! I feel very grateful to have these kids! And I'm very thankful for my mom, Lee's mom and other moms who are an influence in my life.