Mother’s Day 2010

I’m so lucky! My family really does shower me with love and do whatever I want to do on Mother’s Day - well, I get showered with their love every day, but the extra gifts on Mother’s Day make it extra fun

My grand plan of sleeping in as long as I wanted went of without a hitch - I didn’t wake up until 6:45 a.m. So much for sleeping in - but it wasn’t a kid, animal, or alarm clock that woke me up, so I was happy as a clam. I snuck downstairs quietly so as not to wake the sleeping giants and watched a movie all by myself. Good start - good start.

Princess finally woke up and came down to snuggle. Dude actually had slept over at a friend’s house and wasn’t due home until 9:00 - so we had a good amount of alone snuggle time. Really good start!

I had grand plans to go out for a yummy breakfast at Rosie’s Diner so I could have my favorite Denver Omelette and crispy hashbrowns, but when Princess and Hubby asked what I wanted, I requested and received this:

A long john with chocolate frosting and a grande mocha, extra hot. So off they went to the grocery store for the donut! I figured they get the mocha there at the little coffe shop inside, but instead, they were gone for almost 40 minutes . . . apparently the Starbucks drive-thru was really busy. When they got back, I asked why they went all the way to Starbucks . . . the response - “I wanted it to be extra special.” Awwwwwww!

Princess also came home with these for me . . .

A bouquet of “Crazy Daisies” - not this exact bouquet, but my picture didn’t turn out as well As soon as Dude got home, I got to open stuff - YAY!

For the past two weeks, Princess had been talking about going up to the high school with her Buddy. She talked about routers and belt sanders and lasers and all kinds of stuff. The Wednesday before Mother’s Day, she came home absolutely CRUSHED! She insisted she couldn’t tell me why, but later on she let it slip - she and her Buddy had accidentally cut my Mother’s Day gift in half with the router and she didn’t think they could make another one in time. BUT, her teacher and the shop teacher found a time for Princess and her Buddy to do it all over. This is what I got:

A special heart to hold my necklaces. Awwwwwwww!!! I’m a lucky lucky person!

Next I got open Dude’s gift. I love it and it made me laugh my ass off:

Anything I want!!! But apprently he would like me to be good about what I choose

Next was a gift from Hubby. I was completely surprised that there was an actual gift in a box because for a gift I’d asked him to arrange for the plumber to fix the water faucet outside because I’ve hated it for the past 7 years. But there was a box, and this is what was in it:

A new camera! My other one had been to hell and back - I was so excited to get this! He even got me the “kit” version that included the 2 gig SD card and this carrying case:

 Yes . . . the camera and case are actually PINK! He said he chose it because it wasn’t “me” and thought it was fun, but I could exchange it for the silver, black, blue, green, or red one. I kept the pink one - it certainly isn’t “me” which is what makes it so fun - he does know me well! So now I can officially say I have something pink in my purse.

After all this fun, I decided what I wanted to do for the day - go hiking at one of our favorite places. I had a few places in mind, but most of them were too high in altitude and would’ve been too snowy and icy, so I chose something closer to home. We loaded a couple geocaches into the GPS, packed some lunches, loaded up the dog and kids, and headed out for our hike. Since we were going to a state park, there weren’t any actual geocaches in the park, so we loaded ones that were near the park, but easy to find. We found the first one easily just outside the gates to a private working cattle ranch:

1 for 1!

On to Castlewood Canyon for a fun family hike!

We love this park! It’s a great family hike with tons of boulders for the kids to play on and water for the dog to play in. We got there early enough that it wasn’t busy at all. Hubby hadn’t been to the dam ruins before, so we hiked back there:

I got to tell the kids a bunch of times “No you can’t climb up on the dam. I don’t care if those people did, you’re not doing it! They’re breaking the rules. We don’t break the rules when we’re hiking. No, you cannot climb up onto the dam.” So they just stared at it longingly:

We found a great boulder with some shade to eat lunch on. Don’t let the fact that Princess is standing in the water fool you - it was COLD! But, she’ll take any opportunity she can get to take off her shoes and socks and wade in water:

We hiked the long way out of the canyon and found this cool boulder on the way. The kiddos were simply using it for shade, but notice the cool hole in it . . . the boulder obviously used to be sitting the other way. It had rolled downhill and landed upside down - you can tell by the gouge that was left from water pooling in it:

We were amazed on our way out of the park . . . it was FULL! There was a lignup of cars at least 11 deep waiting to get into the park. The Ranger would only let one car in for each car that left. We couldn’t  believe it was full to capacity. We headed off to find our 2nd geocache, which was on a county road around the other side of the park. It was near an old grave site:

2 for 2! YAY! It was fun to drive a road we hadn’t been on before and explore a little bit.

It was Mother’s Day and Cold Stone gives away free ice cream to Mothers on Mother’s Day - you can guess what that meant for The Boedies:

I had my usual - a like it Ghiradelli chocolate ice cream with York Peppermint Patty mixed in - OMG it’s sooooo good!

Home for naps and showers, then it was off to dinner with QT. I had this:

Yup - Asian Chicken Lettuce Wraps at Pei Wei . . . YUMMY! Did you know that Pei Wei also gives free dinner to Mothers on Mother’s Day? If not, you must have been the only ones who didn’t know because it was PACKED! QT borrowed Princess so she could get her free Mother’s Day meal We were laid back and comfy and having a great time while they profusely apologized over and over about how long it was taking to get our food. No worries! We’ve got nowhere to be! Good food, good friends, and family - it doesn’t get much better than that.

A wonderful way to end a great Mother’s Day!

How about you? What did you do?