Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mothers Day tomorrow!  I thought I'd share my most poignant Mother's Day memory - It was on a spring weekend much like this one in the year 2008 ~

At church my four Primary aged children filled out little cards that asked the following :

My mother's favorite food is __________
My mother is really good at __________
My mother likes to go ______________
I like to help my mother _____________
My mother's favorite thing to do is _____
My mother always says _____________

Joe's answers made me feel good - he said I was good at cooking, so that was nice.  He also noticed I go jogging, and Mel said my favorite food is salad, so hopefully the kids will pick up some healthy habits that I'm striving to pick up myself.

 Hyrum didn't get his answers right - I don't really eat sandwiches and I hadn't been skiing for 2 decades, but hey, he was only 4

So here's the memory - I'm looking through the cards and see Ethan's and read through it - and laugh/cry/hang my head as I read the last answer he put, cause it was sad but it was also probably the truth ~

There is was.  In a cute little kindergartener's best penmanship I had before my eyes the legacy I was leaving to my little Ethan ~ "My mother always says GO To TiMe Out."  Poor kid.  And like I said, that probably truly was the thing I most often said to him, isn't that sad!!!  So that was my happy Mother's Day kick in the pants that year.  I just talked to him about "remember on Mother's Day when you wrote..." and he said things are definitely better.  Phew!  Hopefully I'm not a total witch all the time.  Since we've started watching Biggest Loser and the kids all think it's awesome when Bob yells at the contestants, that's helped me out, cause when I freak out they know it's cause I'm invoking my inner Bob ~ I see who they truly are, or who they can become and I'm on their team, I'm trying to help them defeat their inner lazy selves.  I want them to wake up and get upset with themselves for how they live (sometimes) like yesterday when we did a very thorough cleaning of their room.  It was nasty and I did vent on them as they complained about working.  I think my parents vented too, it's nice that kid's don't remember much of what we say or do, or if they do, it becomes a funny memory, like when I was growing up and we fought over the coveted "star spoon" until my dad snapped and bent it in half and threw it in the garbage can.  It's a poignant memory that we laugh about now.  Although it embarrasses my dad.  I'm sure I'll be embarrassed about lots of my parenting errors when I'm older, but until then, Happy Mother's Day to me!