My Day

Mother's Day started off with a bang this year. I woke up (slightly hungover, I must admit), in our motor home after a rousing evening of birthday festivities at the Smith family campground. We quickly gathered up bikes, lawn chairs, packed up and headed out on the road to home sweet home in order to get Mother's day underway.
-

Mr. Shelton had a nice day planned for me. It started with a big breakfast - egss, bacon, and toast all washed down with a glass of orange juice. Sounds nice, right? Only thing is it ended up not happening. Why you ask? While Daddy was taking a shower and getting cleaned up the kids decided they were too hungry to wait, so I made microwavable pancakes for them all. A far cry from the big breakfast Daddy had planned. Oh well.

-

My Starbucks coffee would just have to do - I was not all that hungry anyway.

-

After breakfast, and once every one was cleaned up, Daddy announced we were going to go bike shopping and then have lunch at the California Pizza Kitchen. I was simply elated. I have been wanting a bike for some time now, and I was finally going to buy one! On top of that, we got to have lunch afterward at one of my favorite places.

-

This day was going well so far....

-

We packed the whole crew into the car and headed out to the first stop on our list for bike shopping. On the way Ava said, "Where are we going?" Lucas said, " How long will it take to get there?" Ava said, " How many stores do we have to go to?" These are the normal questions/complaints we get when out and about running errands, but today I was in no mood. It was "my" day, and I did not want to hear it. Any of it. So we told the kids to be patient and good and that we were shopping for a bike for me. End of Story.

-

Daddy went into the first store to look at the bikes, came out, told me to go in and look at a few he picked out. I went in, looked, looked some more, and could not decide. The bikes looked somwhat grandma-ish in style. Extra large seats, weird handle bars, I wanted something "cool" more mountain bikish looking. Because apparently style is more important to me than comfort. Silly me.

-

This same sort of scenario played out at four or five other stores, until I began to lose my patience. I need a lot of time to shop. I have to look at all my options, weigh out the positives and negatives to each item (this time bikes being the item), decide which one I like best, go back and forth on my choice a few times, and then make my final decision and purchase. It is a whole process for me. And having 4 kids along for the ride was not making this pleasent. At all. I started to get cranky, and decided we should just go to lunch.

-

Lunch turned out to be not so great. The kids were crawling underneath the tables, Olivia was throwing her food all over the place, whining and in desperate need of a nap. We quickly snarfed down our pizza and got out of there before any major meltdown ensued.

-

The kids all fell asleep on the drive toward home, which worked in my favor as it gave me some time to stop at a few more stores to look at bikes without kids crying and asking how much longer. Same thing happened at these stores, I looked, looked some more, didn't really 'love' anything, looked some more, got frustrated, and left.

Turns out little old me needed some cheering up, so I ever so kindly asked Mr. Shelton to stop at Nelson's, our local icecream shop, for a nice large ice cream treat. Turns out this helped my mood and the kids moods a bit. All was well.

-

We finally arrived home at about 3:30pm. Without the one item that sent us on this excursion in the first place. Without a bike.

-

Mr. Shelton, my ever so patient, loving wonderful other half, said he was going to purchase one of the bikes that I liked at one of the many stops we made as he wanted me to have a bike. And he wanted me to have it Today. So he went, and I was happy and excited to see what he would bring home. He arrived home rather quickly with my bike. My pink bike. My very pink bike. This is one of the bike's that I did like, but the one I took a ride on, the one I saw, was blue in color. Not pink. [Poor Mr. Shelton, the things he has to put up with.] That was alright, as my man said he would bring it back for me and get me the blue one. He explained that he found this one in Pink for cheaper at a different location (always the bargain hunter - glad there is at least one in this family) and thought he would get it. Turns out he did not know I was not a fan of pink.

-

All was well.

We put the bike in the garage and decided to end the day on a good note and go to my other favorite place, Outback Steakhouse. Again, we loaded the kids up in the car, and not 5 minutes out of the driveway it started. Ava: "Mom, my eye hurts. It really hurts." I turn to see her rubbing it and sniffling quite a bit. Then she started crying. And crying, and crying. Ugh. Her allergies were acting up again. We got to Outback to find it was packed and there was a 30 minute wait. It seems that every other Mother wanted to go out for dinner as well. Go figure. 30 minute wait + 4 cranky kids = potential disaster, so we left and went across the street to Baja Sol - a fast food mexican joint. A far cry from Outback Steakhouse, but it would have to do. Ava cried throughout dinner, Anthony did not touch his food and simply sat underneath the table the whole time, and Olivia threw her food all over the floor. Again.

We left, got home, bathed the kids, and put the to bed EARLY. Brian and I flopped into bed at ripe old hour of 8pm and layed there just looking at eachother.

Me: "Thank you for a good day honey. I love my bike even though it is pink, I loved that you took me to lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, I love that you spent the day thinking of me and what I would want. I love you."

Mr. Shelton: "Yah, but it really did not turn out the way I wanted it to, did it?"

Me: "No, but that is alright, it was still a good day."

And it was. I got some fabulous gifts from my kids, the kind of gifts I love most, ones made with their little hands. Ava made me a coaster out of yarn. How sweet is that?

Lucas made me a handprint that came along with this cute poem.


So breakfast did not happen, the bike shopping may have been difficult, the lunch not so pleasent, and the dinner did not happen, but through all that I recognized that Mr. Shelton and the kids took time to plan and make this day special for me, and in my eyes, that made it perfect.