And so it begins...: Mother's Day and Daddy's Birthday

Brent often finds himself having to share his birthday with me, as it often falls on/around Mother's Day. He doesn't seem to mind, but it makes me feel bad some years. Like this year, when he had to work on his birthday (in Corvallis) so we didn't even get to see him on his birthday :(

Skype just isn't the same as birthday hugs and kisses...

I mean here I am blessed with these wonderful boys and an amazing husband and on top of that I get completely spoiled by them, when we should be focusing on Daddy's birthday...at least in my mind. He really deserves some special recognition on his birthday...

So we decided to plan a yours and mine kind of day.

For Me (Mom) we went on a mini hike at Tryon Creek State Park with Max, Becca, and the boys...

For Dad we went to Oaks Park and rode rides and roller skated.

For me, Brent made breakfast!

It was super awesome.

We went to my FAVORITE salsa place of all time for lunch, El Tapatio

and then for Dad, we went to Five Guys for dinner...

It was a great day all around.

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Being a mother is a reward in and of itself. After the joys of being pregnant you watch this amazing person start to form a personality. These little individuals with pieces of your heart surrounding you.

Each stage, each step so precious and exciting...

there really is nothing better.
It is funny to think that when they were babies I would just sit and stare at them.
I have hours of video of my limp little guys just looking at things.
The fact I had no idea what was going on in their little heads intrigued me so.
I made it a point to try and interpret every little wince and sound they made.
Now although they are 13, 9, and 4 I do the same thing.
I wonder what is going on in their little minds.
I am amazed that I had a part in creating these amazing guys.

August's preschool made these hanging tapestry type things...
So stinking cute!

I am one lucky Mama...

My Mom had the boys make me a wonderful wall display.
3 picture frames and some flowers.

They painted them all, and those arranged flowers are made out of toilet paper rolls and brads.
Cool huh?!

Thanks Mom...I love them.
(this pic doesn't do them justice. They are orange, green, blue, and gold/yellow)

Bray's 4th grade class made bracelets for the Mom's.

Bray picked my favorite color...ORANGE.

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Back to the Mother's/Daddy day shenanigans....

This is a little video of my Mother's/Daddy's Day Meal experience.

After breakfast we headed to Portland.

We met at Max and Becca's at 9am to do some hiking.

We headed to Tryon. It is super close to their house and we I used to hike there a lot when Mitch and Bray were younger. August has only been there a handful of times...still.
A nice place with trails the kids can run on and get their wiggles out.
It's always so GREEN.

There are some fun bridges and we had fun finding lots of slugs and snails.

After our little walk Max and Becca had to go take care of their boys, Charlie needed to nap before soccer and Miles needed to eat.
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We had an indoor and outdoor activity planned. Our indoor idea was to go to a nickel arcade that also had a mini discount theater in it (SE Portland) and our outdoor idea was Oaks Park. We were excited that contrary to the weather man's statement it had not rained all morning...we decided to head to Oaks Park. As we started over the Sellwood bridge it started raining.

We went to lunch hoping that the clouds would pass and they did.

We posed the question to the boys explaining that if we choose to go to Oaks Park it may rain, but we would stick it out and be committed.

Of course they still wanted to go ride some rides!

We headed back over to Oaks and it ended up being nice the rest of the day.
A little drizzle here and there, but hey it is Portland, Oregon!
I left the camera in the car so I only had my phone to document our experience...