My Mum is special because.... she is my mum.

This was the quote from Elizabeth that was written on a handmade bookmark she gave me this morning. And really, that one quote simply just says it all doesn't?

It's been a lovely day today... I feel so loved... Mother's Day today was low key for us... I just celebrated with my little family... just taking the moment to enjoy my girls... to play with them... to laugh with them... to love them as I do each and every day... And at the same time I took some moments to remember my own Mum in my heart... I am still amazed that even in her memory, she still continues to inspire me and gives me the strength to believe in myself...

I was greeted this morning with a lovely pile of homemade presents from Elizabeth today... I think this has been my favourite Mother's Day to date because Elizabeth finally "gets" these special occasions and she went to so much effort to make me a little pile of treasure -

She made me a butterfly card at kindy, the bookmark I mentioned earlier and there was a Mother's Day stall at kindy, so I sent her along with $2 and she picked out a present for me... a packet of lollies! (I do think the lollies were more for her than me 'cos she was rather excited about them and saying how we could all share them after dinner! *laugh*) She also made me, Catherine and herself some paper hats with the help of Daddy and she drew that awesome picture of Phan, herself and me carrying Catherine (Phan's the green dude, she's the orange person and I'm the pink character...) and wrote her name in my card... I was really feeling the love! Oh, I should also mention, last week, at the beginning of one of the kindy days, the children sang us mums a few songs as a Mother's Day gift to us... It really made me smile... and then when we came to pick them up that day, there was a sheet that had the header "I love my Mum because..." and there were lots of different quotes from the children. I asked Elizabeth what she had said and she said "I told Mrs B that I love my Mum because she makes delicious dinners!"... LOL... I'm glad she thinks that!

I also made a trial run of Catherine's birthday cake today with a new cake recipe and tried my first attempt at making a swiss meringue buttercream (which I was quite happy with how it turned out). And then I decided to masquerade it as a Mother's Day cake for me and let Elizabeth help decorate it with me.... :) -




And for those not on Facebook who didn't already know... Phan worked this weekend, so we celebrated Mother's Day on Friday by going out to a casual lunch... and Phan surprised me with the most unexpected and awesome gift of a 16-35mm f/2.8 L lens... I've had fun experimenting with the new baby, so I'll dedicate a full post to photos from that lens a little later in the week. I'll finish it here with a photo that Phan took of me and the girls... And to borrow a quote I saw from someone's Facebook today -

Deciding to be a mother brought me many gifts: love I had never known, strength I never knew I had, more smiles than tears, and is the best job I was ever offered.