Happy Mother's Day...

A belated Happy Mother's Day to all the mums out there! I hope you had a wonderful day (and that your child was better behaved than mine was!! Lol)  Apologies for the delay in my posts, I had them all ready, but Blogger was experiencing technical difficulties and wouldn't let me post!

Mother's Day started very early for me…. 3:28am to be exact! The weather is turning cool, and I think this is about the time when the temperature drops (as it does before sunrise) so for the last few nights, Alex has been waking at this time. So a bit of comforting, some warm blankets (kicked off earlier in the night!) and back to bed…. Until 6:45am - much more respectable!

Once Alex realised what day it was, he was very keen to get Boofy out of bed! I knew they had gone shopping the week before, and even had a pretty good idea what they'd bought (since Alex walked in at the time and told me in a loud stage whisper "Mummy SSSHHHHHHHH!! We got you an owl…") Hahaha… so cute :) And I love owls (as I've mentioned before) so it was welcome news.

Anyway, Alex informed Boofy it was time for the present, Boofy asked me if I was sure I wanted it now…. Um.. Yes please!  He said open the card and then see what you think… I opened the card and inside was a note to tell me that I was going on a treasure hunt…. Aaahhhhh!  I see!!!  But it was too late to crawl back into bed, Alex was on the case... so no morning cup of tea in bed for me!  I got up and put some warm clothes on, and worked my way through no less than 10 clues, which led me all over the house, before finally the clues led me to my owl in a basket in the spare room! Woo hoo!! (pun intended) he's lovely… take a look:

Only problem was that Alex promptly claimed it for his own - his reasoning? "I bought it, its for me"…. Right…. He was none to pleased to hear that he actually bought it for Mummy (and still days later is arguing with us about it every time he sees it!) He also made me a present at Kindy - a flower with his picture in the middle, on a stick, stuck into a wad of glittery, peppermint scented play doh in a patty pan - too cute!! I love kiddie treasures :)  Except he had the same idea about that as well… so I had to fight for my presents! Never mind. Alex also made me this cute card at Kindy:

He didn't seem so attached to this, apparently I was allowed to keep it! Lol

Well Boofy cooked a yummy breakfast and we all enjoyed it together at the dining table which was lovely. After brekky I was keen to just potter around and do something crafty (which I rarely get time to do). I had seen this tutorial on Infarrantly Creative some time ago and had been dying to make it ever since. Recently I've been scribbling things for the shopping list on pieces of paper around the place, which invariably get lost before shopping day - very frustrating when you get home from shopping only to discover you've left something vital off the list! Anyways, I thought it would be a lovely gift, but decided since it was Mother's Day, I was going to give the gift to myself first (which was lucky as it turned out - because I didn't read Becky's tutorial and decided just to wing it - big mistake!)

I will do a separate post on how I got to this, but here is my finished product for my Mother's Day gift to myself:

Not bad as long as you don't look too closely!  But it will serve my purpose so it's okay - and I love this paper (leftovers from a previous scrapbooking obsession), wish I'd bought more at the time! You might recall I used this for some quick cheap artwork in the laundry as well, but unfortunately my shopping list is the last of it. And since my Mother's Day included doing the weekly shop (unfortunately life doesn't stop!) I got to give it a test run. Every week we menu plan using this pad I bought years ago from Kikki K:

I then usually write a shopping list from the menu plan - but this week I just needed to tick boxes :) And because all the cleaning products and non-food items we usually use were on the list, I remembered the tick the ones we needed too! So this week I'm pretty happy that we got most of what we actually needed and didn't leave anything off!  I know, my life is sad!!!  Lol... 

And I just have to call a time out for a minute for a true story... because reading this blog, you'd never guess it!  But several years ago (when we were first married) my grandmother lived with us (or we lived with her, depending on who you asked!)  She was very big on routine.  We were not.  We did what we wanted, when we wanted,  on a whim.  It drove her absolutely NUTS!!  She told us that, whether we liked it or not, routine would one day be forced upon us, so we might as well embrace it - we said no way!  And continued  on with our DINKS lifestyle.... And about 6 years later here I am.... getting excited by menu planning, shopping lists and making my laundry more enjoyable!!  I just know she is looking down on me now having the last laugh!! :)

And meanwhile, with all the menu planning excitement inside, there was a war going on outside…. This little fella, took refuge on my window sill for a minute...























In between being hell-bent on sitting on our letterbox out the front!  But the local Willie Wagtail had other ideas and dived bombed the heck out of him until he eventually moved on…

Which was some time later, he was very stubborn! I don't know what sort of bird he is, or whether he's the predatory type, but I've notice lots of chirping going on lately so perhaps the little Willies have some babies they're concerned about - especially on Mother's Day :)

Between crafting, menu planning and bird wars, my little boy made some not-so-good choices about his behaviour…. It started out okay, he was sitting at the bench cutting some rocket ships (in his very cute "My Dad Rocks" PJs…

But he quickly evolved into I'm-not-listening mode and went downhill until he skidded into whine-tantrum-backchat mode! Unfortunately he kept this up for most of the day, which did not make for a relaxing Mother's Day!

Towards the end of the day I sat my boy down and we had a big talk. I explained we were going out to dinner (with another family) to Fasta Pasta. Generally the way these dinners go is that we all get there at 5pm and order right away - we all eat our dinner, and by then the shopping centre the Restaurant is attached to is closed. It is a big outdoor shopping centre, so we all go for a walk (the kids mostly run!) and find those little rides you often see in shopping centres - then the kids get to go on some rides.  I told him if he couldn't be good - no rides!  (I'm shortening this... I did say it about a dozen times til is sunk in!)

By the way, the reason we choose Fasta Pasta is not because it’s a fine dining experience (although the food is always good) - but because it is a good family experience :) We can feed the kids before 5.30pm, let them have a run around after dinner to wear them out (and we can walk off some of that dinner too!) and still have the kids at home in bed by 7pm!  Fine dining can wait for another night!

So - even though I'd waited all day for his model behaviour, he did eventually come through (better late than never!!) and was good as gold all through dinner... so he got to run with his pals and go on some rides :)

Hope you had a good Mother's Day - what did you get up to?

Bye for now :)