My First Mother’s Day!

I had the best, first Mother’s Day!  Our celebration actually started Thursday night when our friends Roger and Lisa came to visit.  Roger and Lisa are my parents’ best friends and they’re friends that have become family.  I’ve known Lisa since I was in Kindergarten and her daughter, Sam has always been a good friend of mine.  My mom loved Sammy before she even met her because she was the reason I stopped fighting my mom about what I was going to wear every day.  One day when we were both in Kindergarten, Sammy said to me, “Your mom always dresses you so cute.”  I went home and told my mom and never fought her again lol.  Sammy’s always been one of my mom’s favorites, with good reason haha.  Anyway, Roger and Lisa got to our house Thursday night, and stayed until Sunday.  We had the best weekend spending time together. It was actually really relaxing, which says a lot when you’ve got company.  Friday, Andrew, Roger and Lisa met me for lunch at a local restaurant that we eat at every time they come into town.  Then, when I got off of work we all just hung out at our house.  On Saturday, we bought a bunch of potting soil and vegetables to plant in our garden.  After we went to this really neat brewery across the river.  The lady went to a brewing school in Maine and the brewery is on their farm.  Sunday morning, we woke up, had coffee cake, eggs, and sausage, for breakfast and then headed outside.  It was also Roger’s birthday, so we made some peanut butter cookies and some molasses cookies.  A couple of months ago, we (mostly Andrew) built some vegetable boxes.  You can read about that here.   So, for Mother’s Day I wanted to get our garden planted.  It’s fun to think that my first Mother’s Day was the start of our garden and it will be awesome to see how our garden and our family changes and grows over the years.  We put a sun hat on Oakley and she sat in her stroller. That didn’t last too long though and she wanted me to hold her most of the time.  Luckily, we had Roger and Lisa there to pick up my slack.  By the afternoon, we had planted sweet potatoes, watermelon, green and orange bell pepper, jalapenos, zucchini, squash, cucumbers, onions, spinach, kale, carrots, and lettuce!  We also planted some blackberries, daisies, and sunflowers.

Andrew surprised me with this sign a couple of weeks ago!

We filled up this wheelbarrow with soil and planted the daisies in here.

Here is a blackberry bush! It came from a guy at Andrew’s work.  Last Summer, we picked wild blackberries from our yard.

I tried to plant foods that we eat often. Oakley’s favorite baby foods so far are squash, sweet potatoes, and carrots.

I loooove sweet potatoes and so does Oakley!

Watermelon! The best Summer fruit!

I love to make the Veggie noodles out of Zucchini.

Lisa, Oakley, and I walking out to the garden.

Oakley cuddling her Grandma Lisa

Birthday hugs with Grandpa Roger and Grandma Lisa

Here’s Oakley a couple of days later by our Muscadine grapes.  These were already here when we moved in, but the lady said they never produced any grapes. Last year, grapes grew but they shriveled and died right away.  We cut the plant way back and we’re hoping to get some grapes we can eat this year!  Muscadines are supposedly the healthiest grape and have the highest amount of antioxidants.

A week has passed since we planted everything and our kale and carrots have sprouted!  A sunflower also sprouted too!  It’s been really fun and exciting to go outside and see if anything else has sprouted every day! I cannot wait to eat fruits and vegetables from our garden!

 

 

I had the best, first Mother’s Day.  I am so thankful to be Oakley’s mom.  One of my favorite parts of the day is hearing her friends at daycare say, “Hi Oakley’s mom!”  I also thought about how thankful I am for my mom and the ladies who are my other moms, my mother in law and Lisa.  I thought about my grandma and how I used to love to celebrate her on this day.  I miss her so much but I’m so blessed to have had her for the 16 years that I did.  I thought about the moms that have lost kids or the moms that don’t have a baby yet but will someday. I also thought about those that have lost their mom’s.  Mother’s Day is such a day of celebration, but I know for some it can be a hard day.  I guess my last thought and my recent, ongoing thought I’ve had as Oakley gets older is the saying, “It takes a village.”  Just from reading this post you can see I’ve had at least four extraordinary women that have helped raise me and shape who I am today.  My little family is so blessed to have the family and friends we do because all that means is more people to love Oakley.  I don’t just think it takes a village, I want the village to help me raise Oakley.  The more love, the better!