A Post About Mother's Day, of Course

Hold on to your butts, because this is a long one. SORRY! I think I wrote a book, or something. How do I get paid to write?

Mother's Day was both good and bad this year. Good things - cards, gifts, my Mom came to visit, but bad, too, because I still feel exhausted, despite my ginormous nap today, and because Foofie Loo is still miserable. I'm about 96% sure it's teething - the second set of teeth are coming in on the bottom and have barely popped through the gums, but on the other hand, she has been a pathetic nightmare for four days now, just lying around, constantly wanting to be held by me or she will burst into tears, and she'll often just moan and moan when I'm holding her. She sleeps more than usual, there has been some throwing up, she doesn't hold formula very well even though she wants it, and there's been diarrhea, poor Pooky. When will it end?

Cooking dinner for everyone. I made a new recipe, inspired by a recipe card I picked up at Wal-Mart, but I changed several things, and added others. I call it Veggie Pasta Marinara. I wish I'd taken a pic, now, but the basic idea was to cook 1lb. of dry pasta, I cooked bowtie. In another pan you saute 8oz. tub of sliced mushrooms, about the same volume of sliced zucchini, maybe 1-1/2 cups worth, about three roma tomatoes cut into chunks, about 2 to 3 tsp. of minced garlic (don't be shy), then at the end add 1 14-16oz. can of italian diced tomatoes, juice and all put through the blender, then salt to taste. Put that over the pasta and add freshly grated parmesean (I buy it preshredded in a bag), and wa-lah! you have a yummy dinner! Serve with garlic bread and a salad. There are probably a lot of summer veggies you could cook like this. I look forward to cooking them some more!

Dinner with my Mom, who is here to visit for a few days, and will leave Tuesday.

After dinner, we all watched a show we think is hilarious, Whose Line Is It Anyway, an impromptu sketch comedy. It's like a cross between stand-up comedy and live theater. I think you have to see it to understand what I'm talking about. Anyway, we were all cackling away, and my Mom was just staring at the tv most of the way, with this flat expression on her face. It was either, "that's so cheesy and boring, that's not that funny!" or "that's just so crude, that's not funny!". I guess we were a bunch of heathens. My favorite gag is when they do Props, a bit where they take funky objects and say funny things about them. Tonight they had two large foam black curves, which one minute they pretended was a giant parrot beak out to get them, and another minute it was a ginormous mustache on a guy's face. I might have to acquire that show on dvd, eventually (quite yelling at me about my spending!). Is my birthday too soon? Although, I think Gil may beat me to the punch, because his bday in is July.

After we made the kids turn off the tv, we read scriptures, Zen went to bed for his 3am yard call, I got Emma ready for bed, and then the rest of us played Imaginiff, a silly game where you read off cards, and vote on character traits about people. For instance, if Connor was an animal, which kind would he be? A dog, a chimpanzee, or a toad? There were more choices, but the majority of us voted chimpanzee. He's such a monkey! Classic! He was just bouncing off the walls tonight, a little Mexican jumping bean. Then, everyone went to bed, and here I am blogging.

I was researching motherhood/womanhood quotes a week or two ago. Here's some good stuff I found:

A search about Motherhood on the Church's website This yielded some great stuff.

The Joy of Womanhood by Margaret D. Nadauld, Young Women General President, Ensign Nov. 2000, 14-16
Grateful daughters of God "know that the way they have chosen is not the easy way, but they know it is absolutely worth their finest efforts."
"Women of God can never be like women of the world. The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity."
They understand what Elder Neal A. Maxwell meant when he said: “When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses?”" 4 “The Women of God,” Ensign, May 1978, 10–11.

Some other Church talks, too good to quote in little pieces are:
.Daughters of God by Elder M. Russell Ballard

Mothers Who Know by Julie B. Beck

.Are We Not All Mothers? Sherie L. Dew - Dude, she rocks, and that's it. Read it, and you know you are important, even in the commonness of your life.

And some touching and funny things from www.quotegarden.com

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie. ~Tenneva Jordan    
Although, honestly, we have some serious food-sharing issues in our house. We are BAD, BAD people. "NO ice cream for you!" The Soup Nazi lives on.

A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after. ~Peter De Vries

All mothers are working mothers. ~Author Unknown

It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge. ~Phyllis Diller

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly. ~Ambrose Bierce

Women's Liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It's the men who are discriminated against. They can't bear children. And no one's likely to do anything about that. ~Golda Meir

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his. ~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child. ~Sophia Loren, Women and Beauty     Multi-tasking on speed.

Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. ~Marion C. Garretty, quoted in A Little Spoonful of Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul     at 9pm "You want HOW many cupcakes for your class party tomorrow?!"

God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers. ~Jewish Proverb

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams     When do you grow up and get your own apartment? GET OUT!!

Sing out loud in the car even, or especially, if it embarrasses your children. ~Marilyn Penland     Dude, being an embarrassment to your teenagers is the funnest part of parenting!

Now the thing about having a baby - and I can't be the first person to have noticed this - is that thereafter you have it. ~Jean Kerr     Ummm, you mean I have to take it home?

There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it. ~Chinese Proverb     DEET!!!

Never raise your hand to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected. ~Red Buttons     That's Connor. Swat his butt, and he's likely to say, "That doesn't hurt!"

If nature had arranged that husbands and wives should have children alternatively, there would never be more than three in a family. ~Lawrence Housman     Ain't that the truth?!

Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children. ~Sam Levenson     This one deserves some pics in a mini album.

The one thing children wear out faster than shoes is parents. ~John J. Plomp     Ditto

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away. ~Dinah Craik

Sure God created man before woman. But then you always make a rough draft before the final masterpiece. ~Author Unknown     That's right, sister.

A woman can say more in a sigh than a man can say in a sermon. ~Arnold Haultain Becky's quote - "Everything I know about SARCASM I learned from my children." I swear I'm going to get a t-shirt made with little stick people under this quote. Gil will be in sunglasses looking like James Dean, Dani will have a fashion diva pose, Connor will be pulling a cat by the tail, and Foofie will be grinning wildly in the middle of some mess. And I'll be sitting on top of a pile of laundry, holding a soup ladle.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. ~Oscar Wilde     No makeup for you!

The rarest thing in the world is a woman who is pleased with photographs of herself. ~Elizabeth Metcalf     Another truth.

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche     I'm sure he was a lovely man.

When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking. ~Gail Sheehy     God made women to endure.

If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning. ~Aristotle Onassis     I feel shame.

You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment. ~Dave Barry, "Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn"     Snorting/giggling at the moment.

The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them. ~Robert Graves     Dude, that's why there is plural marriage in the eternities. You do the math.

I hate women because they always know where things are. ~Voltaire     There is too much sad truth in that statement. I am the ultimate finder in our house, mainly because I never give up, never. These people will casually look once, then come and get me to find it for them.

Good-looking girls break hearts, and goodhearted girls mend them. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966     Becky's madeup quote - "One cannot always be goodlooking, but one can always be goodhearted."



Okay, now for some of my own fun stuff, sort of.

Dude, I have lost my cell phone. I feel like I got my arm cut off, or something. I have wanted it so many times over the past four days. I have received permission to get a new one, if I can't find the old one by the end of the week, but I don't know if I have the patience. But I do feel conflicted. On the one hand, it would mean spending more money, which I'm not supposed to be doing right now, but on the other, I do feel like I want to recover my current phone, because I want to save all the pics I had on it! Sweet new camera phone or save the pictures? Believe it or not, this is a tough choice. But, if you love me and are practical, you will probably pray that I get the old one back so I don't spend money and so that I have my pics back, as lame as they were. When I was in Wal-Mart last week, before I lost my cell phone, I took pics of funny Mother's Day cards. I had started texting them to my email, so I have most of them, but I'll just have to tell you about the ones still hiding on my cell phone somewhere:

I swear I needed some of that this week!
I don't know what the punchline was on the inside of the card. It probably didn't need one, but I thought the pill bottle on the back was cute.




"Everything I know about ladylike behavior, I learned from you." I kind of think we fit into that category, unfortunately. Sue, you'll have to bring the Family Stone movie when we run away together next month. Doesn't that sound funny?! "I'm taking my sister, and we are running away from home! Neener, neener, neener!!!"




Yep, very, very cute and syrupy, but good. Imagine Snoopy's theme playing in the background.

And a few I remember, that are probably hiding on my cell phone:

The front of the card says something like "It's important for the family to spend a quality night together at home." Then on the inside, it says something like, "In the meantime, I'll be out with my friends having my second margarita." And "Ladies Night" plays in the background. Sounds like a weekend holed up in a hotel room, watching chick flicks, pounding ice cream, and laughing ourselves silly. Can I do that sometime?!

The front of the card has a picture of a kid sitting on the can in the bathroom. The inside of the card says something like, "Thanks for all the years you put up with our crap!" Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!! I may have to go to Wal-Mart early in the morning to see if there are any left after all the Mother's Day shopping chaos

And almost three hours later, you have an ÜBER post on Mother's Day. Enjoy!