Mother's Day 2009 (I know...a little late, but this was good)

I have some catching up to do. Mother's Day in our house is usually quite a production, though usually I ask my kids just to let me putz around in the garden all day long.

This year, my kids banished me to my office, which was fine because my final project for my MA Ed. was due that same week. They armed me with a few ice cold Diet Cokes and a can of sour cream and onion Pringles and forbid me to come out except to pee for the entire afternoon. The girls got hubby drop them off at the grocery store so they could shop for "stuff". He wasn't allowed to look in the bags. "Just drive, Dad" they said.

Charlie's job was to guard the stairs. Every time he heard my office door open, he'd yell, "DON'T COME DOWN HERE!" at me. At one point, I came out and he was in his room in his underwear. He started shrieking like a banshee at me...something about seeing him in his "grunders" and not going downstairs. Turns out that he was getting dressed. See below.

Okay okay...not coming down there. Studying. Writing. Editing.

At about 6:00, he yelled up the stairs, "MOM!!!! COME DOWN FOR DINNER!!!!" I fetched hubby out of his office (yes, we each have an office. I love it.) and we headed downstairs to the dining room. We turned the corner, and were confronted by this:

The well-dressed waiter pulled out my chair for me and asked us what we'd like to drink. He served us our drinks, and then brought out our dinners. He didn't put down that arm with the napkin draped over it until I suggested after a couple of forkfuls that maybe dinner would go better with two hands. I had to convince him that his sisters wouldn't kill him. There was a drink menu (which I didn't show here) and a couple of other things on the table - a fine bouquet of flowers, a dinner menu, and a couple of envelopes.

I know the print is tiny. It says vegetable lasagna, and nectarine blackberry crisp. The envelope below that says Mom on the flap contained two fine photograph portaits of my girls playing their instruments taken by my neighbor, who is a retired photography professor. The cooks were terribly proud:

but they couldn't manage nectarines (not in season yet) so we had some fine strawberry shortcake with heaps of whipped cream. There were banners hung all over, which we left up until Father's Day (Tiny made new ones for her daddy) and I'm thrilled that I have gorgeous, smart, and appreciative kids who no longer serve me cold, dry toast and weird yogurt smoothies that taste like ass (no, I've never tasted ass before, but I bet it tastes like those smoothies) before I'm ready to be alive on a Sunday morning.