Mother's Day

Sean and Daddy reading the story board at the trail.

Sean and Aly got into the story.

The moss on the tree were very pretty, kind of like in the Twilight movies.  What happened to team Jacob? 

Saya and Noah were entertained, too, and didn't complain being in the stroller.

The quest ended when we found the pretzel tree!

I think this is a perfect Mother's Day portrait.  It describes my current life very well (used as a cushion, but with unusually firm hands to keep everything together!)

I woke up to a cheerful voice saying "Happy Mother's Day!" and found Sean and Daddy with a tray dressed with four giant breakfast burritos and orange juice. The last time when I had breakfast in bed was after I gave birth to Saya at the hospital, so it was a very nice surprise. The burritos had eggs, bacon and lettuce inside with cesar salad like dressing. They were very good! I am guessing that the recipe called for four small tortillas but what we had were bigger tortillas, hence the hungry man size. They gave me three cards, one from Mike, the other from Sean (with a drawing of my face - sort of), and the last one from the other kids. It was very sweet. Mike let me 'sleep in' in part because Saya had a rough night and she also slept in with me in bed. She likes to sleep like a puppy, loves to be on top of me or tightly pressed against me. I guess she still is like a baby!

After breakfast, I had a shower and we just hanged out in the house. We didn't feel pressured to do anything for a while, just relaxing and playing together. We need more time like that. It seems like we are always in a rush to get something done. Saya, still a little tired from being wide awake at 4 am, fell asleep on my chest as I was holding her on the couch. That was very sweet. I held her for a long time pretending that she is still a little baby. She will always be my baby. My sweet little Saya!

After lunch, kids finally got antsy to do something. So, we decided to check out the so called "Issaquah Alps" and headed out for a family hike. We picked Squak Mountain this time and found a little trail with cute interactive story boards about a field mouse looking for pretzel tree in the woods. We put Noah and Saya in the double stroller and Aly and Sean ran around looking for the story boards. They were very much into the story and had a lot of fun looking for pretzel tree, too. At the climax of the story, a forest animal told the field mouse to turn around and find the pretzel tree, so we all turned around looking up at several trees standing in front of us. Sean had a big smile on his face with excitement. We didn't know what to look for but... there it was! We found a tree with two trunks twisted like a pretzel. It was pretty neat. We all enjoyed the hike.

After the hike, we stopped at a fish market in Issaquah and picked up a nice sockeye.  We grilled it on a cedar plank and it turned out tender, smokey and juicy!  I think the best gift of all was that this year's Mother's Day was pretty relaxing and relatively stress free.  I enjoyed spending time with my family and felt blessed to have them in my life.  Thank you Mike for making this year's Mother's Day a day to enjoy and appreciate you and our beautiful children!