Happy Mother's Day, 2010

Mother's Day was lovely this past weekend. It really began on Saturday with a couple of errands. I had been told to expect a package (from my close friend) on Saturday, so a quick trip to the post office (more on the package later) and then the bank. After that was the usual Saturday, except on our ride north, we took a wrong turn and ended up going around Saratoga Lake:

And yes, we were really driving that close to the water.

Everyone was very excited and it was a very pleasant drive.

Prior to this, we were at the comic store. I stayed in the car, and decided to open my package. I knew what it was, but even the mail clerk warned me that it was very heavy, and I should be careful. He was right. Fourteen pounds. Who knew that ginger weighed so much?

I opened the top and was greeted by the sight of flower petals. This was the cushioning material. Very creative. And messy, I realized very quickly, so I decided that I would wait until I got home to finish the opening.

Unfortunately, the earwig that was crawling out had other ideas.

Freaked would be a good description.

I got it out of the car without too much trouble, and I didn't kill it either. No one would know.

Husband and kids got back in the car and off we went. My husband looked over at the partially opened box and asked, "What is that?"

"The present."

"No," he said. "That," gesturing with a nod of his head.

Another earwig. This one went out the window. I'm sure it was fine other than being so far from home.

We ended up running errands at Target, and while he and the kids went inside to get diapers, I was informed with the handing of a garbage bag that the flower petals had to go.

I moved them into the bag, but since there were no other critters, I decided to keep the petals and possibly make sachets out of them. Either way, the yummy ginger was perfectly fine. There was crystallized ginger, ginger chips, hard ginger candy, ginger syrup and ginger sugar. All homemade. All delicious. The card made me cry.

We got home and I decided to transfer the petals to a ziploc bag and let them dry properly to use them for other things.

They were still soft and smelled really nice (I think that if I didn't have this cold, they would have smelled even better.) As I was transferring the petals, I found another critter. A tiny snail.

I deposited this into my garden and resumed the transfer.

But wait.

There's more.

A second snail.


What was this? Noah's Ark?!

The mail came soon after this, and my mother in law had sent a card with a gift card for Chili's Restaurant, so dinner for Sunday was decided. I actually love Chili's and had just said that was where I wanted to go as one of my choices, so it was perfect.

The next morning, I was greeted in bed by the kids and the things they made in school. My littlest made a handprint flower with her picture in the middle and my middle guy made a star photo frame with a carrot (his favorite vegetable) and the Star Trek comm badge glued onto the frame with his photo in the center. From everyone, I got the one thing I said that I wanted: an MP3 player. The one I had broke a couple of months ago, and this one really was a good one. It also has an FM radio and it holds pictures and videos as well as audiobooks, so A+ to my husband for choosing the perfect player and keeping it affordable.

On the way to dinner, we realized that we were following the Batmobile. It was very exciting. It's not as fast as one would think, but we still got a couple of pictures and the kids were very excited.

I have a great family.

It was a really nice weekend.