A Great "Mom Day"

Today I got to focus on doing "Mom" stuff almost all day long.

I volunteered at the school this morning.  I love how my kids light up when I enter their classrooms to volunteer.  And I love knowing their friends and seeing how they behave and interact at school.  I always sort of stress out about Thursday morning volunteering because it's a hassle to get in there to volunteer when I've got about 100 other things I really need to be doing with my precious time while the twins are at preschool. And most of my kids' teachers don't quite seem to know what to do with me (there aren't a lot of parent volunteers) so I have to just jump in there and help out with whatever's going on and find useful jobs for myself. But I always feel so great about the whole thing in the end.

When I was done volunteering, I took Liza and Ashton from school to go pick up Isaac from the district Science Fair for a special lunch date - just me and my big kids (Jared was nice enough to pick up the twins from preschool and take them for a while).  Isaac won 1st place for 3rd grade at their school for his science fair project so he got to go to district (he's having quite a year!  He won a poetry contest and we went up to SLC for him to receive his award there last weekend and now it's the science fair...).  The kids were all so cute to each other.  Ashton had earned 2 certificates for free kids' meals at Applebees (from doing something or other at school) and Eliza had earned one as well.  Ashton held up one of his certificates and said "Hey Isaac, how about I buy you lunch for doing so awesome at the science fair?"  We all had a grand time chatting and eating and just enjoying being together at lunch.  I just plain LIKE these people.  Then we went back to the science fair for the award presentations.  Isaac didn't win but he didn't mind one bit.  He seemed to feel great about the whole experience.  What a great kid.

Here's everyone's science fair photos:

Then I spent a lot of the afternoon building a diarama (how do you spell that?) of the Boreal Forest biome for Isaac's project on lynxes.  Ashton helped Isaac research the Boreal Forest more and helped with great ideas.  Eliza eagerly helped gather rocks and sticks and other necessities for the forest scene.  We all had such a great time with the creative process involved and Isaac was totally thrilled with the result.

While we worked on the diarama, the twins worked on these new 150 piece puzzles they were so totally excited about finally earning enough points to have (they've been begging for jobs to do for a week now so that they could earn these precious dollar-store puzzles - they can't get enough of puzzles these days!  My super squirmy boys can somehow sit still for over an hour and work on a puzzle - never would have guessed).  They asked for very minimal help and the looks on their faces when they finished their puzzles was priceless!

We had the kids' favorite frozen pizza for dinner (so nice to leave cooking aside sometimes) as well as my latest very favorite Napa cabbage salad.  Then I pulled out the ancestor stories my parents wrote up a while back for all of us and snuggled up on the couch to read some favorites before bedtime.

Of course there were stressful moments in the day (Ashton forgot his backpack, I had to go pick up new carpet samples and the kind that looks best is likely out of stock, there was some significant over-use of glue going on with the diarama and I had to take some deep breaths, I couldn't get a PayPal transfer to work so I could make a payment I need to make tomorrow, the twins were bugging everyone during the ancestor stories and had to be sent tearfully to bed...)

But today was a good day.  I needed today.  I love being a mom.