What else can I title this but "Happy Mother's Day!"?

Saturday was a fairly lazy day--in the morning, anyway. Right after lunch, Dawn picked up me and Ari and we headed to her sister's flower shop to pick up flowers for our church's Mother's Day service. We got 50 single roses (a rose for every mom), and 3 special arrangements (1 for our ladies' ministry leader, 1 for the oldest mom, and 1 for the mom with the most kids/grandkids in church). It was a nice mini-girls' day, and Ari was really well-behaved in the shop. Dawn's sister had a couple cats, one of whom was really friendly, and Ari was in her glory, petting and snuggling with the kitty. We ended up being there for probably about an hour, and Ari only started getting whiny toward the end, and that was because it was well past naptime. She promptly conked out in the car on the way home.

Tony wanted to take me out to dinner for Mother's Day, and I suggested going out on Saturday night, to avoid the crazy crowds that would probably be out and about on Mother's Day. IHOP was my choice since I was craving their chocolate chips pancakes. Ari was fairly well-behaved--I mean, you can't really expect a toddler to be a perfect, polite dinner companion, can you? My dinner was delicious, though.

Today was church, of course, and all the busyness that went with that. In the afternoon we came home, had a quick lunch, and put Ari down for her nap. Tony and I watched some TV, but I fell asleep on his shoulder.

When Ari and I woke up from our naps, we headed to Pastor and Dawn's house for dinner. My mom is out of town (visiting my sister on her first Mother's Day), so Dawn invited us to come share her Mother's Day dinner. Meagan (her daughter) made lasagna, and Pastor ordered salad and breadsticks from Olive Garden. Meagan also made chocolate-chip cookie bars and bought a carrot cake for dessert. We ate until we were stuffed and then went for a nice, long walk in the cool evening air, stopping to let Ari play at a nearby playground.

I did get flowers for Mother's Day, but not from Tony. When we were at Dawn's sister's flower shop, she had a small bunch of flowers she was getting ready to throw out, but Dawn insisted on taking them. We split them, and I ended up with this lovely bouquet. (The purple rose in the center is the one I got at church today, but all the others are from the flower shop.)



And then I got my cards. Tony got me 2 because he's a nut like that--one is serious, and one is funny (I think you can figure out which is which). Notice on the card on the left, how a bunch of the words are underlined? That's Tony's special touch--he always does that with cards, and I love it. Inside the 2nd card, it ends with the words, "Happy Mother's Day, Sexy!" So I read it out loud because I thought it was funny, and as soon as I did, Ari carefully repeated, "Sexy?" I really have to watch what I say around her now.



And then there was the card from Ari. She helped decorate the envelope...



Here's the card itself...



And she added her special touch on the inside.



She absolutely loves coloring all of a sudden, so I'm sure she had a great time playing with this card.

So that was my Mother's Day--simple and sweet.

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there!