I'm a Privileged Mom!

Here is photographic proof that I am the World's Luckiest Mom! If there are three more squinchable children out there, I sure haven't seen them.

Here's me with me baby, who's still small enough that I can eat her toes, and her thighs, and her arms, and her ears, and her little tiny nose... she is a veritable feast!

And here's my baby with my baby sister! Tori and Olivia got to be my babies long before I was a biological mother. It was nice of Mom to have them for my baby pleasure!

My weekend has been one long celebration. Mom came down with the two girls, fairly spur-of-the-moment. Now that she's DONE with college, this is much more possible! We were all very excited about them coming. Even Evan, her favorite son-in-law. (Right, Justin?)

Friday night, I dominated Olivia and Mom in a game of Wordthief. (A common occurence, but it still makes me happy.) Saturday, Olivia and Tori took Elliott and Cheyenne to the library story hour. It's at our tiny little local library. We had never been in that library until this spring, since we had library cards in the much bigger library system to the south of us. Evan was scouring libraries for a specific building book a couple of months ago, though, and he took the kids to the library right at storytime. They've gone several times since, often comprising the entire audience!

Evan's gift to me for Mother's Day was to bankroll my mother and I going out to eat at Bonefish Grill on Saturday! It's the restaurant Evan and I often head to for our anniversary, and I've always though Mom would love it there. I had been thinking how fun it would be to go there with her this weekend, and Evan, completely unprompted, said to me on Friday, "You and your mom should go to Bonefish Grill Saturday." I knew there was a reason I married this man-- he's brilliant! Mom and I blithely set off for lunch, sans children, and we had a wonderful time. The food was excellent, and it was fun getting to talk uninterrupted for a while. After lunch, we strolled through the Joanne Fabrics megastore in that area-- I couldn't believe how much more exciting it was than the usual Joanne Fabrics store I shop at! We were models of fiscal restraint and didn't buy a thing, but I sure know where I'll be going next time I need to buy material! In the meantime, it made me excited about sewing on the ten different projects I already have waiting for me in my sewing cabinet! All in all, we were gone from home for about four hours. In typical Mom fashion, Mom spent a lot of the time agonizing over the fact that "Poor Evan!" was watching the kids, but I just enjoyed myself!

Saturday's pampering didn't end when we come home. International traveler and chef extraordinaire, Olivia Tess, prepared supper! We had pasta a la pesto and Italian sausages. Next time Olivia comes, my herbs will hopefully be bushy enough that we'll be able to make the pesto from scratch! (I have been using, and enjoying, the herbs already!)

Kim came for the afternoon and helped babysit the kids. Rilla loved going down the slide with her.



(Notice the artful shot through the deck rails-- Olivia's talents don't end with high-end Italian cookery-- she also takes fabulous pictures!)

Elliott (wearing his "Asterix" shirt from Rome) was on the go all day!

Cheyenne's day involved lots of dandelions, as you can see by the yellow stain on her cheek. She's also wearing a shirt from Italy-- they were all decked out!

In point of fact, Mother's Day celebrations were underway before the weekend even begun! Cheyenne's class hosted a reception for the mothers Friday morning.

Here they are, preparing to sing the heavily-guarded, top-secret Mother's Day songs they've been practicing! (Cheyenne's buddy Alex is the second boy from Cheyenne's end, in the green, brown and white striped shirt!)

Cheyenne with some of my presents. We were each given a marigold flower in a little pot, a handprint, a teabag in a little paper teacup, and a book they made about us. According to Cheyenne, I am 20 feet tall, love to read but hate to get out of bed, drink water and eat spaghetti! (I think she got her parents switched on that last one!)

Ice cream sundaes, with beautiful napkins!

Ice cream!

Connor was there, too, Alex's little brother. I've started watching Connor Thursday mornings so his mom can volunteer at the school. Since she gives Cheyenne a ride to school every day, I'm happy to finally be able to repay the favor somewhat!

Of course, since the weekend wasn't busy enough, Evan did a Large Project.

We used to have a front door here, not just a giant hole in the exterior of the house.

This was the little window beside the door. We've lost most of the classy appeal of our house with its removal! (Hey, I should do a giveway, like all the Cool Kids' blogs-- whoever wants this window can just leave a comment! The only catch is, you have to come see us some weekend to pick it up! :-) The new door looks fantastic, and actually works the way it's supposed to. I didn't get a picture of that yet, I'll wait till Evan gets done with the trimwork. It lets SO much more light into our entryway, we all keep looking down the stairs and thinking, "Oh, someone left the door open!" The problem with this beautiful new door is that the financial cost doesn't end with purchasing a nice door, and the seperate storm door. Oh, no. To change out the door, Evan had to remove some siding. Well, since we've always meant to replace the hideous "rock" on the front of our house with decent siding, he just went ahead and tore it all off. While that's all off, we should go ahead and insulate that section-- and probably replace the family room window. And, hey, the new siding is going to look pretty silly next to all that old stuff, huh? We probably should just re-side (and insulate) the whole house while we're at it. Hmm... the new trim around the door in the entryway certainly looks nice-- we should make the other trim all match. And the wainscoting should be changed out to the new style.

And on it goes! By the end of this, we'll be $20,000 in debt, but we'll have a gorgeous house. If anyone knows of any banks where they're lax about security, please forward me their address and pertinent information.

Even though Dad was too busy with farm work to come down this weekend, I did get to see him this week, when he drove this beauty up from West Virginia. (Dad doesn't like this picture-- he says it gives the "wrong impression" with the hood up like that! So, for the record, he was just checking the oil in this photo!)

It's gotta be good with a name like that.

I was actually drooling over this truck, with all it's storage compartments. Dad does occasional plumbing jobs, so this will be very useful-- he'll be able to store his plumbing supplies in here, rather than having to re-assemble them from all over the farm every job.

"Dad, don't kill the truck-- I like it!" See, Dad, you WERE trying to fix something! (With our paltry collection of mechanic tools, he was trying to use a pry bar that was WAY too long!)

So that is the news from this lovely week. And for an historical component, it is 21 years ago today that Mom and Dad bought the farm with my Uncle Scott and Aunt Geri (who have since moved on to the Great Plains!) It was quite the change for a little Delaware girl to have 400 acres and 60 cows-- wouldn't have traded a farm upbringing for anything!