Mother's Day!

Mother's day was, as always, the best day!!  I love Mother's day!  I love thinking about my sacred role as a mother and I love being spoiled and special treated by my cute kiddos.  This year was no different :).  I had to wake up with Molly so I decided to just hurry and take my shower before feeding her and then laying back down before breakfast in bed was ready :).  The kids all brought up my breakfast and showered me with lots of gifts, treats and sweet cards and letters.  I absolutely love seeing all the thought and work that goes into their sweet words and crafts.  Makes me smile!  Jack gave me some sidewalk chalk and a big colorful lollipop!  Erika gave me a notebook and pen with a special picture drawn inside of she and I :).  Also a sunflower she planted at school.  Hopefully the seed survived her jump from my bed :).  She gave me the sweetest picture and little flowers with things she is going to do for me too.  Noah had made me a button bracelet at Scouts and planted a flower at school as well.  Then wrote me a sweet card too.  So fun, I love the thoughtfulness that goes into these things.  Luke gave me my favorite sweetart candies and a card he made.  he knows me so well :).  Bradley made me a fun candy gram, and a cool shrinky-dink necklace at school that I wore all day, and a coupon book and card.  So sweet.  Kelly gave me a popcorn bucket full of fun pamper-y things- the fingernail clippers were extra special because she knew I needed some :).  And they already came in handy.  I love the slippers too and all the treats.  She got the right color of nail polish too, for my new skirt.  Very thoughtful and fun.  Charity made me a mug with sweet words on it (even arranged to borrow Lisa's fancy pens to pull that off!  Cool girl) and put some yummy cowtails inside.  And Nate Molly gave me a new bike!!!  Nate says it was Luke's idea though :) so he gets some credit too.  I gave my bike to Charity when hers broke, so I haven't had one for a while!  So this was a very fun surprise!!  I can't wait for it to get here, it sounds amazing!  I LOVED all the hugs and all the happy feelings.  Everyone is always so fun and happy on Mother's Day morning.  So heavenly.  We had gotten up early enough that some games were in order :).  Erika and I (and eventually, Jack, Bradley, Luke and Kelly) played the Cupcake game.  Love that game.  It never gets old :).  WE got all ready for church and made it on time, which was wonderful!  The kids sang their cute songs for me :).  I loved that Jack got to go up this time!!  So brave!  The little food for the moms thing was excellent.
We played a few games when we got home, Guess Who and something else, and then we ate Charity's wonderful dinner she made.  Then we all headed off to Grandma Hatch's to give her the scarf and then on to the Maynes Family Meeting!  It was a nice fun day!!  I couldn't be happier with my kids and my family, my life for that matter- just feels good these days!!  Makes me happy.

I got out my new portrait lens from Jami and played around a little.  One thing's for sure- so far, a great lens cannot compensate for horrible lighting.  I love my dad's flash for my indoor pictures- these two pictures show perfectly how much better my pictures look with the bounced off light of the flash.

Look how blurred the background is!!!  perfect.

apparently I need to learn how to hold the camera still... still a little blurry... but we did get some really crisp ones, so I know it's just me.

Even the length of her little leg makes a difference!  So awesome.

What do you think, Nana, related??

Again with the lighting!  These two are without the flash.

LOOK AT THAT CONTRAST!!!!  So crazy.  I have way more fun taking indoor pictures when they can turn out with this kind of lighting.  

I love being a mom to these kids.