Yo Mama's Day--again

This turned out to be a better Mother's Day than I expected--since it's not such a big deal to me, and I try to enforce to my husband and the kids that fact. I'm pretty happy with the little hand-made gifts the kids make at school, and I couldn't care less about going out to dinner or anything.

Well, the celebration really started Thursday with Izzy's kindergarten class presenting their Mother's Day Garden Party. The kids sang to us and served us a snack (pudding cups--oh boy!), and we got a pot holder with the kids' handprint on it, and a little story they wrote. Very cute!

Mary talked to my garden-savvy neighbor the other day and walked away with a little fern which she potted for me (in my own pot, but hey, it's never had a plant in it, so she truly was giving me a gift!). She did this a week ago, and the plant has been thriving (while I've been carefully "ignoring" it there on our back porch!). She also weaved a little basket in school. It's a little lop-sided, but still cute.

Keith's class has been studying poetry this last month, so he wrote me a poem. Then the teacher had each kid record a podcast of their reading the poem and put it on the school website!

John surprised me most of all. He decided to get me my own little laptop! Now, it's a tiny, little thing, and it doesn't have a lot of memory, and it wasn't costly, but I'm thrilled all the same. He's been meaning to get me my own computer for a while now, and Mother's Day seemed a convenient time to get me one.

Really, the best part of my day, I already knew about and was in on. John and I decided to FINALLY get our kids a dog. OK, really, it's going to be OUR dog as we know the kids aren't really old enough yet to handle the responsibility, but since I'm home, it really is the perfect time to get a puppy (watch me finally find a job now!). Anyway, today we drove out to a breeder who lives about an hour away--and picked out this adorable little boy Miniature Schnauzer! I held and petted the puppies for an hour and didn't break out (well, I did have one itchy spot on my neck, but that could have been from my hair tickling me--but still it wasn't a BIG patch), and neither Keith nor I got sneezy or watery-eyed or anything. Picking a puppy out was almost impossible since they were all similar-looking and all really sweet and seemingly even-tempered. We finally picked the one boy that was available. The whole house is just a-buzz with the excitement of this new purchase. We will get to bring our new baby boy home probably Memorial Day weekend or the week after--depending on how he's maturing. I keep thinking, "Oh, WHAT have we done?!" but I'm also thrilled that we will have an adorable pet that won't make me sneeze and will be a good companion for us and the kids....

Here's the four-week picture of our new baby. We're still debating names. Right now "Zuko" seems to be the favorite:



I'm not sure if I've ever seen white Miniature Schnauzers before--pretty unique, I think. (And CUTE, of course!)

Happy Mother's Day to all my favorite Mamas out there!