A Mother's Day to remember

Mother's Day is a strange phenomenon. For 364 days out of the year, we take care of our families. Then, for one auspicious day a year, we expect them to pamper us and to do it without burning down the kitchen. I don't know about the rest of you Moms out there, but the day has rarely lived up to my expectations. So, rather than be disappointed, year after disconsolate year, I just decided to bypass the whole expectation thing and be happy with whatever happened. 

Let's just say that the philosophy has served me well.

This year broke the mold.

I've been wanting to perform a family musical number at church for several years. This seemed like a good time to do it, so on Sunday we sang "Be Thou My Vision". I found several arrangements of this old Irish hymn and did a little fiddling around to come up with our own version. Bethany played an introduction on her flute, then Jeff, Bethany, Jon, Annie, Charlie, and Mum sang the five verses while I accompanied on piano. We had a lot of fun practising, if you ignore Jeff threatening to quit when I got impatient with his repetitive mistakes, and Jon being all grumpy because he was tired from having worked all night on Saturday. I love this hymn. It's not in our hymnbook, so here is a lovely rendition if you want to listen.

Chris, with some wheeling and dealing, got himself a Traeger grill, and he looks for any excuse to use it. After sitting through two meetings with the little guys on Sunday, he left church early so that he could smoke a couple of chickens. Charlie went over to their house to pick up the grill the day before. We got home as the birds were going onto the grill. Let's just say that it's more work than I'm willing to do for chicken, but I'm mighty glad that Chris likes to do it. Here he is, with the curiously anthropomorphic finished product, looking quite pleased with himself. Yoga frog pose, anyone?

It was very tasty.
The men peeled potatoes and mostly prepared dinner, but I took pity on them and made the strawberry shortcake. Yummy.
Josh wore himself out and crashed on the couch.

After thirty years of mothering, I think this was the best one yet.