A Mother's Day In The Garden

Sounds like the title of a magazine article, doesn't it? Haha. My wish for Mother's Day was to spend a relaxing day, mostly at home, and then visit Schedel Gardens for a walk through their beautiful grounds and take some nice pictures. I am SO bad about ever doing professional pictures. I don't know why, but I just never do. In fact, my original plan for Sophia's birthday was to take her to Schedel's and just do my own little photo shoot. But in the end I decided against that until she's a little older (maybe this summer when she's walking) and thought Mother's Day would be a nice day to visit instead. The weather was just gorgeous! And my dear husband took 179 pictures (about 20 of each of the same thing 'cause he likes to "give me options" - LOL)... if you can believe that. The kids weren't super cooperative, but I didn't have a lot of expectations, so it was overall a very nice visit.

So I have LOTS of photos to share. But first, here are my Mother's Day cards from the kids that came home from our babysitter's house on Friday. Isn't that sweet?

Craig let me sleep in on Saturday and then brought me breakfast in bed. I did actually plan to make our dinner that evening, so Will and I worked on that together while Sophie was napping in the morning. Then following nap, we headed out to Schedel's. Oh my gosh... even without all the extravagant flowers that will be abundant as the season progresses, this place is just gorgeous. You can visit their website at: http://www.schedel-gardens.org/. They have a really nice new visitor's center and admissions office at the front of the property since the last time we were there. Inside they have rooms for meetings and tour groups and an educational video playing. And there's also a gorgeous balcony that overlooks some of the grounds.

Never will they both look AND smile at the same time. ;)

It really was not that cold out and Craig is dressed for a visit to the Arctic! LOL

A flashback from last year on Mother's Day because the picture that follows is sort of a similar pose.

Love Sophie's face here.

Inspecting the pine cones that will brought over to her.

Will, spinning.

So then we had dinner at home and enjoyed a beautiful evening. It was a very nice day, though I'm still feeling guilty for not celebrating at all with MY mother. Mom, I hope you know how very much I love you and how amazing I think you are. We'll celebrate our joint mommyhood together soon, okay?

An Insanely Busy Saturday

Whew! We had the longest day ever on Saturday. But it was all worth it and we got to spend lots of time with our families for some special occasions. We knew these events were going to collide on the same day and be quite hectic, so we decided against bringing the kids and got a babysitter who graciously broke up the day and came over in two separate four-ish hour chunks.

It was a little difficult saying goodbye to them twice while we ran off to do things they weren't going to be a part of, but I just knew we'd all be better off if the kids stayed home and got normal naps and bedtime. So that morning, I made extra special effort to play and have fun with them before the craziness began. I made pancakes for breakfast (a new Weelicious recipe - Sophie loves ALL pancakes) and Will and I did end up making it out to the library during Sophie's morning nap. (Good thing, 'cause they were holding two books for me until Monday only!)

Okay, so on Saturday morning (around 9-ish?), my brother Taylor and his girlfriend Amanda both graduated from college! Taylor from UT and Amanda from BG. We didn't go to the commencement ceremony, but both of their families met up for lunch to celebrate.

One nice thing about not bringing our kids was that I got to focus some extra attention on my adorable nieces!

This one cracks me up of Mya. She's got the cutest, ornery face.

And here's a terrible picture of me with my beautiful God-daughter, Stella.

Another plus of being out sans kids: we ate our own lunches without having to help a child between each bite!

Aren't they a cute couple?

This was just 'cause I was making fun of Craig for tucking his tie into his shirt to keep it clean. What a dork, huh? LOL :)

Immediately following lunch (in fact, we had to jump up and run before everyone else finished lunch), we headed out to Craig's cousin's wedding ceremony at 2 p.m. Stephanie was a lovely bride and the ceremony was very nice.

The new Mr. & Mrs. Jeremy Diekman!

We got home from the wedding around 4-ish (it was a Catholic ceremony), and ran the babysitter home (down the street) for an hour and a half so that we could chill out for a brief time with the kids before heading back out to the reception. We all piled onto our bed and read books and played. Thank goodness the kids were good - it was a busy day for us all!

The reception was at a very nice hall that we'd never been to and it was nice visiting with family and friends. We left around 9:00 and made it home to get the babysitter home for the second time before our friends came over for our monthly UFC night (that's a mixed martial arts fight on pay per view). The kids were already asleep at that point unfortunately, I totally crashed on the couch soon after... while our friends were still there! Good thing we're all a casual group and our monthly get-togethers are routine enough now that nobody cares. :)

Thankfully, I'd also planned in advance to keep Mother's Day a day for just our small family. We didn't have get-togethers to go to at all on Sunday. I do feel a little guilty about that, but I selfishly wanted to chill out on Mother's Day this year and do whatever I wanted.