Teffy ended up coming home with a friend on Friday night, which was a nice surprise, and Curtis and I were able to go out on our regular date. We'd made a plan to spend Saturday going to Jackson and Beck's last two soccer games and then to the nursery to pick out plants for our flower beds (that Curtis would plant later that day as his gift to me), but it was freezing cold and raining, so things changed a bit. One of the two games was cancelled, and it was too cold to risk putting the plants in the ground, so they're in the garage until Tuesday. Fortunately, it turned out to be a good thing that I had some extra time because I realized I'd made a big goof!
I was put in charge of gifts for the 18+-year-old women at our church for Mother's Day, and in addition to ordering cute little notepad sets for each of them, I planned to make giant blondies for them. I made a few pans each day during the week, cut them, wrapped them, and put them in the freezer, and by Thursday I was done. I was pretty proud of myself! But Saturday afternoon I decided to double-check my count, and I discovered I was short by 14! I ended up having to make two more pans of blondies, and I was so grateful that I hadn't realized my blunder as we were packaging everything up on Sunday morning. That would have been awful.
I'm the music leader in our children's program, and in our main worship service, I had the kids sing a super cool song to their mothers, after a short reading by one of the older girls in our group. She read a scriptural account from Alma 56 in the Book of Mormon about young men who were able to go to battle in defense of their countrymen and families as their parents had sworn an oath never to take up arms again. These young men were not afraid because of the lessons their mothers had taught them, and because of their mothers' great faith. In the end, none of these young men was killed in the battle. So cool! Anyway, the song the kids sang referenced this story, and they sang it with such gusto that there was hardly a dry eye in the chapel. I was quite pleased because I had told the kids their goal was to make their moms cry happy tears. They succeeded in making quite a few dads cry, too. ;)
After this, the fathers of the missionaries who are serving from our congregation were called up to read letters that the missionaries had written to their moms. I knew this was coming because I had helped to plan the program, but hearing my son's sweet words to me was the most amazing thing. The other moms were completely surprised and in tears as their tearful husbands choked out their sons' words. We then had two speakers who did a really nice job talking about mothers of all sorts. It was truly one of the best Mother's Day programs I've ever seen. I loved it.
After church, we had a nice lunch (oh, and I forgot to mention that Zoe had arrived that morning. She invited her boyfriend and he came, too). Teffy gave me some beautiful flowers and some candy and some of the kids gave me sweet things they'd made at school. My teens have promised to write me letters, which I will nag them about until they do it. ;) Curtis made me breakfast (not in bed, since that doesn't work when you have to get up when I do on Sunday mornings!) and plans to get the plants in on Tuesday. But the highlight of my Mother's Day was being able to Skype with my sweet missionary son for an hour. He looked and sounded WONDERFUL and is obviously so happy. He's doing just great, and it's crazy to think that the next time we talk (in 4 months and 25 days - ha!) it will be in person. I'm so proud of him.
Mother's Day has become a bittersweet holiday for me, but I feel that my mom is aware of the goings-on in our lives, and I know she loves me. I love my sweet family and feel so blessed to have all of them in my life.
Here are some screenshots from our Skype session with Joshua.
And this is Beck's short play from the collection of first grade Mother's Day plays at his school. :)
Having those Mother's Day letters read to the moms by the dads must have been really special!
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