Momma day

Mother's Day is such a wonderful day. I feel like I don't need a special day to tell my mom and my mother-in-law would amazing women they are though. Going right along with that I feel like my husband and kids tell me each and every day what a great mom I am. Sure I have my doubts just as any woman I presume, but I know deep down inside I am the best mom for my kids.

Let me just start by saying that I am the luckiest girl and daughter in the whole world. I was blessed with the most amazing mother one could ask for. He truly is one of my very best friends and she is so dear to my heart. I see myself in her so much especially as I get older. Some of the traits and characteristics aren't the greatest, like memory loss and anxiety while others are some of my best traits. She is loving, kind, forgiving, funny, beautiful, Christlike, and the list could go on and on for pages. She was almost taken from this earth last summer and I really could not imagine my life without her in it. I'm so blessed that she was able to stay longer and we can enjoy her so much! I am so grateful that I was able to experience what I did with my mom last summer because it brought me so much closer to her than I could've ever imagined. 

I also feel so blessed to have four beautiful healthy children. They make me so incredibly happy. I never thought I wanted for kids, until I got four kids. They are the best blessing. Poppy especially has been the biggest thing in our home over the last six months. They make me so frustrated but they also make me so happy. They bring tears of joy and tears of sorrow. Children really bring on every emotion and feeling you could possibly feel. They also let you experience and unselfish love like no other. There is nothing like getting up in the middle of the night over and over and over again with a sick child, or a scared child, or a child who has wet the bed, or anything else that can wake a kid up. Their little personalities are so contagious! I can't believe my father in heaven has trusted me to raise these four beautiful souls.

Then there is the other beautiful mother in my life. My mother-in-law. If you simply look at her four sons, you know what an amazing woman she is. The fact that she raised four boys is an amazing accomplishment. But she raised for wonderful boys, not average but well above. I only have to put up with one of them but she put up with all four for so many years! It only took her having them all get Maren to get her four daughters as well. She is so loving and thoughtful, and beautiful inside and out. I really lucked out with the best mother-in-law!

Just to make sure Mother's Day was extra exciting, we were sitting in the middle of church. I was teaching my 16 and 17-year-old Sunday school class. All of a sudden everybody's phone started vibrating and beeping. It was a tornado warning that was going off. A tornado had touchdown right close to the church, probably about 5 miles north. The warning on our phones was telling us to take cover. It was right before class ended so as soon as it did we went outside and saw this forming in the clouds. A giant circular cloud formation. It was very scary!

Things I always want to remember

I don't like to keep a lot of the kids school work around and either does Brian. He likes to throw it away the second he gets a chance. I try to hold on and keep a little bit in a memory book for them. I had to take a picture of these though. It has been learning all about Texas and specifically about animals. He has taken quite a liking to the armadillo. I don't remember if I already blogged this story about boots but him and Brian were driving the other day and Brian asked him what his favorite animal was. He responded that it was a turtle and then promptly he said wait, unless you're talking about and Texas native animal then it's an armadillo! This was some of his homework that I brought home from school the other day and I couldn't stop laughing at this. He had typed it up on the computer all by himself and his teacher printed it for him.

I have also try to get Natalie writing and reading more and getting her creative juices flowing. This was a story that she had started to write about horses. I thought it was quite cute.

There's something about sleeping kids that is just best. We have been experiencing lots and lots of storms in our area so the kids have frequently been scared and wanted to sleep in our room. Lots of tornado warnings and tornado sirens as well as thunderstorms and heavy rain. One of these nights I actually pulled the kids out of bed because I was scared. We snuggled close with them that night and I couldn't help but take sweet pictures of them sleeping.

Lately we have been taking a lot of pictures either on the way to church, on the way home from church, or sneaking pictures in church. They are silly selfies that we send it to our friends the Langston's. But I think they are pretty cute and I always want to remember how my darling little children looked at church. They know that it is one of those days that we always dress up and they don't fight it anymore. I should not say that, they always fight it but they know that that's what happens on Sundays.

I wish I could just bottle up my kids right now with how young and sweet and innocent they are. They are growing up too fast. Even poppy who is six months old is just starting to sit up and rolls around the room when you let her down. Courtney is the same size as boots and Natalie who is only eight years old is wearing a size women's six in shoes and a size 10 girls. She is so tall and huge feet!!

Hot date

Poppy went on her first date. We are arranging a marriage between her and little Crew Fujikawa. They're pretty much in love. It's fun to see them so close in age and I love when baby boys are naturally more masculine than the baby girls! We went out to whiskey cake which is a restaurant here in town. It was just okay. We have heard so many rave reviews about this place and I have been now three times and have never been super impressed. It's good food and really cool Decour but not my favorite. The company was definitely the highlight of the night!

 A new furniture store also just opened called Nebraska furniture Mart. It is enormous! We decided to take a date night to go and explore. There is everything you can even imagine there. We spent some time in the massage chairs, and just goofing around. We went with our friends Lindy and Ryan Langston and had such a fun night.

Lastly I had the most fun on the special date this week. Stephen has been doing so good in school and has been such a good happy helper at home that I decided to treat him to a date out with mom. I took him out of school early and we went to Chuys for lunch, which was obviously delicious. Then we had it all the way downtown to go watch the musical "newsies". Insisted on getting a newsies hat and wouldn't take it off the whole rest of the evening! We had a lot of fun other than the fact that I had to sit beside a six-year-old boy who kept passing gas the entire time. Finally I called him out on it and told him to stop farting because he was so smelly. He might smell but he sure is sweet!