Mother’s Day 2011.

No elaborate gifts, no time off from motherly duties.

Just another ordinary day with my Little Bug.

We went to church and then had all the family over to our house for lunch.

As usual…Dave cooked and I cleaned up. We’ve done this several years in a row now. We love to honor our mothers, grandmothers, aunts and all the special women in our family in this way!

If you are a regular to this blog, I am sure this is no shocker…

After church I told Little Bug we were having a special Mother’s Day Party today at our house. That was all Little Bug needed to hear before she turned on her “wild woman" act and started literally running around the house like a crazy girl in pure excitement. I have come to believe that Little Bug loves nothing more in life than to be surrounded by a big group of people, especially when it is a big group of her family members!

Little Bug delivered all the Mother’s Day presents to everyone but because she was in “wild woman” mode I couldn’t get any good pictures of her in the act. See for yourself:

Giving her Aunt Amanda a hug. This girl loves her Aunt Amanda. Amanda lives just down the street and when Little Bug and I are on walks around the block and walk by Aunt Amanda’s house Little Bug usually requests a visit to “go see Aunt Amanda”. We are usually walking when Aunt Amanda is at work so I have to tell Little Bug Aunt Amanda isn’t there. Sometimes we still have to go and knock anyways and wait for Aunt Amanda to not come to the door.

Aunt Wendi had to wrestle her down just to get this picture:

Grandma’s attempt at a picture:

I think we gave up on pictures after that.

Oh, look here! A pretty decent one of Little Bug with her cousin, Hadyn.

At 3:30 I declared it naptime. 3:30 is usually when Little Bug is waking up from a nap! I corralled her to her bedroom, sang songs to attempt to calm her down and laid her in bed. Didn’t hear a peep from her. Party Animal must have been tired. I let her sleep 1.5 hours, which was apparently a mistake, because now it is almost 10pm and I can still hear her talking in bed!

After the party, I had a nice evening with just my baby girl. Dave needed to work, so Little Bug and I headed to the park.

We saw the “ducks”. They are actually geese, but Little Bug likes to call them “ducks”.

Little Bug on the swing!

I love this girl more than words can say. An evening, just Mommy and Little Bug at the park, was a perfect end to this Mother’s Day.

It’s nice we have a day to celebrate mothers, but I think my heart celebrates the fact I am a mother every single day.

It is something I never take for granted and something I celebrate every day when I first get my girl up and bring her to bed to drink her milk in the morning, when we read Bible stories together at the breakfast table, when we read a million books throughout the day.

It is something I celebrate when she eats and gets food everywhere, when she runs to me and gives me an unprompted kiss and hug, when she tries to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”.

The road to motherhood certainly changed me into who I am today and now, motherhood continues to mold me and change me.

There is nothing quite like being a mother.

I can never forget what it once felt like to not be a mother and to desire to be a mother so bad it hurt… to those of you that are there this Mother’s Day, don’t ever lose hope. If your trust is in the Lord, He’s got a plan.

And if it is anything like what He did for me, His Plan is going to be better than ANYTHING you can dream of today.

- Elaine