Mothers' Day weekend

I feel so blessed that I got to spend Mothers' Day weekend with my parents who came to visit. Now I will preface this by saying that having others around to "help" with the kids can be helpful, it can also be stressful. Lucky for us, my parents were definitely more helpful than stressful and the kids and T and I thoroughly enjoyed their visit.

They drove over on the Friday before and arrived right before nap time while T was still at work. We just hung out at home until the kiddos tired out and my parents went to find their hotel and I crashed for moment. My parents came back over just in time for T and I to go on a little dinner date and Bird could not wait to get my dad all to herself. That was fine with my mom who was ready to snuggle Ham all night anyway. We enjoyed the time away plus the bonus of free babysitting; dating your spouse is really important.

The next morning, my parents came over for a hot breakfast and early play time with Ham and Bird while T was at work. Homemade biscuits and bacon later, we started to talk about a plan for the day. I originally had big plans for their visit but instead opted to keep things low key for them and the kids. My mom wanted to go shopping to spoil her grandkids and my dad decided to head back to the hotel to relax and catch up on a little work.

My mom fail #1 was that we left for the mall (that is 25 minutes away) at 11 am. Mind you, my children generally start to get cranky/sleepy around noon. Bird fell asleep on the way to the mall and Ham woke up just as we got there. That gave us about 30 minutes before Ham got hungry and Bird got antsy. Lucky for me, the carousel stole Bird's attention and she enjoyed that with my mom while I fed Ham and we were on our way. We finished up shopping, grabbed some pretzels and headed home to salvage what was left of nap time. I enjoyed hanging out with my mom as we don't get much of that time anymore. She's really funny and it is interesting to see her see me as a mother, when normally I'm just her "baby."

That evening we had reservations for dinner at Boston's. We decided to do dinner on Saturday to beat the Sunday Mothers' Day crowd and to celebrate my dad's birthday that was later in the week. I don't know if it was the time of day, too many people, my parents being there, or her being 2 years old, but Bird would not sit still, stay quiet, or eat any pizza. We breezed through dinner as quickly as possible and headed over to a local Target to pick up some dessert (ice cream) and other spoils for the kids. Bird ended up with so many toys after we left her in the toy section with T and my dad and Ham, while my mom and I went to find the ice cream. Apparently we had been gone too long. We headed back with our haul to end the night with dessert and late bed times for the kids, though they slept really well for the night.

Mothers' Day morning I was surprised by a sweet and really unexpected gift of a massage gift certificate and Nutty Bars (my current favorite craving) from T and the kids. My parents made their way over and we enjoyed pancakes and sausage (I love cooking big breakfasts) and juice together. The weather was really nice out, so we took a little walk to our neighborhood park and I got to enjoy watching my father play with his granddaughter and my mom swing happily with her grandson, all while happy to be with their baby girl and still amazed she was a mother now.

We headed back to our place and noshed on some coffee cake that I had baked that morning before my parents hit the road back to MI. Some of the pictures from this weekend are going to be my forever favorites because of the sheer joy, honesty, happiness and love you can see in them.