Mother's Day 2013

I sincerely hope that every woman I am lucky enough to be acquainted with had a wonderful Mother's Day.  Whether you have children or not, you love and nurture others.  Being a woman is a hard job sometimes.  But it's the best job!  Speaking of which.....sometimes I think we make the job harder on each other and ourselves.  We compare ourselves far too often.  We're either getting down on each other for not doing things "right" or we're getting down on ourselves for not being "enough."  We seek security in sameness.  But who ever said that we all had to be the same?!  We're certainly not born the same.  We are all individuals with different strengths and weaknesses.  We were never meant to have exactly the same life experiences.  So why in the world would there be one right way to do everything?  So whether you're the super clean mom, the super fun mom, the super healthy mom, the super frugal mom, the super crafty mom, or for goodness sake, the mom who's just hanging on by the seat of her pants for the wild ride, (ME!) celebrate YOU!  YOU ARE FANTASTIC!!!  It's a hard enough job without the comparisons.  Let's build each other up a little more often.  I promise, there's someone you know who could use a "great job!" a lot more than some well meant advice.  ;)

Ahem....I'll get off my soapbox now and show you some adorable pictures of my children from yesterday.  We had a lovely day.  We went to church together and spent the afternoon enjoying each other's company.  We had the missionaries from our church over for dinner, and then my husband and I spent the evening alone watching our favorite show before bedtime.

I'm not sure why I didn't get any pictures of Parker during our makeshift family game of baseball....probably because he can actually play and therefore wasn't as funny looking as his sisters.  Drew had thrown a fit and didn't want to play after he was tagged out.  So no pictures for him.

So far, all the girls in the house are still excited to play sports with their big brothers.  But Paige has to do it with her purse on.  ;)

And Claire is just too stinking cute for words.  She's quite the little player.

Emma was hilarious.  She hit the ball, then ran in a straight line toward second base and kept on running in spite of our protests.  They were short-lived anyway because we were all too busy laughing at how cute she was.  I'm not sure how long she ran before she realized she was no longer part of the game and decided to come back!  Don't worry, those chubby little legs would never make it to the end of the field before we could get to her.

This is the view from the back porch.  No, the whole field isn't ours.  About where that pole is behind Claire is the end of the property that we rent.  The field belongs to the school, but it's rarely used, so the kids are usually free to romp and play as they please.  So fun.  I'd meant to get kites to fly on Mother's Day, but completely forgot!

Now I get to brag on my man.  This was my Mother's Day gift.  A new fancy pants bag for my camera!!  Have I told you before what a great gift giver he is before?!  The first Mother's Day we had together, when we were engaged, he got me a framed print of the Salt Lake City Temple where we were married, and said the sweetest things to me about being his wife and the mother of his future children and how he wanted to treat me.  He always knows just what to get, and just what to say.  He pays great attention to detail too.  He knew the EXACT camera bag I had shown him probably a year ago.

Isn't she purty?

Hoping your Mother's Day was as fabulous as mine!!!