Happy Mother's Day!!

First off, I'd like to wish all the mamas out there a Happy Mother's Day!!

A special Happy Mother's Day to my friend Stephanie, who is celebrating her very first Mother's Day today!!

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This weekend has been a pretty busy one.  With my birthday right around the corner, I can definitely tell that I am getting older now that I am exhausted.

My weekend started off early on Friday.  I spent the day doing some last-minute Mother's Day & birthday shopping since I had the day off work.  By 6:30 that night, the old lady in me was worn out & couldn't stop yawning.  However, I kept chugging along & went to play BINGO that night! Because that's what old ladies do, right???

I met my friend/co-worker, Jessie, along with her twin sister, Alie, & another one of their friends (whose name I can't even remember anymore..another sign of old age) at a local Legion hall to play Bingo, & I've never had more fun playing it!  Those girls are hilarious, & the game was intense.  I haven't played Bingo in a while, but when I did before, I think I only played 6 cards at a time.  This time, though, I played 12..so I definitely had to play closer attention to the game.  I didn't win anything that night, but Alie won $7 & Jessie won $60!! Woo hoo!  By the end of the night, I think some of the "real" old ladies sitting near us were getting irritated with our little group.

The next morning, I got up bright & early to go yard saling with Stephanie.  Really? I gave up my one day of the weekend to sleep in to go yard saling?! Who have I become??  One of the towns in our area was having their annual city-wide yard sales, so Stephanie & I met first thing in the morning to see what kind of treasures we could find.  I didn't find much, but I did spend a whopping 25 cents on this beauty:

(click to enlarge)

My original plan was to include this sign with my mom's Mother's Day gift to be funny, but then I remembered that I tried something similar last year & it didn't go over that well.  So the sign is now hanging on my bedroom doorknob instead.

Stephanie, on the other hand, made out pretty well.  She found quite a few outfits for her sweet little girl, Aurora, along with some other baby items.

When I got home later that morning, I threw a load of laundry in the wash machine & decided to try reading some more of my book.  After a few minutes, the old lady in me decided it was time to take a nap instead if I was going to make it through the rest of the day. I didn't sleep well the night before, so I was pretty tired and could hardly keep my eyes open.

Later that afternoon, I headed into town to meet my friend Jess (not to be confused with Jessie from Bingo).  Her son, Cody, just turned 8 years old on Thursday, so she was having a little party for him at the park with some of his friends.  I kept her company while Cody & his friends played baseball and then flag football.  I'm not quite sure that the boys grasped the "flag" football concept, though, because several of them got tackled and ended up a little muddy.  We had a fun afternoon, and I enjoyed getting to spend time with Jess, even though it got a little chilly.  She's getting ready to have another baby in August (or possibly July), so I'm excited for that!

Saturday night, I met my friends, Alicia and Lesley, at Olive Garden for dinner.  I have been friends with them since high school.  In fact, Alicia was the very first new friend I made at our Catholic high school after all of my friends from grade school (ahem, Stephanie) went to the public high school in our area..Lish likes to remind me of that from time to time ;-) Anyway, I hadn't seen Alicia since last month & Lesley since last August when Alicia got married, so it was great to finally catch up with both of them!  We were at Olive Garden for about 2.5 hours..we had a lot to talk about!

That leads to today, Mother's Day.  My immediate family never really did much on our own to celebrate holidays or birthdays.  We normally celebrated with my mom's extended family, but since my grandma passed away in 2005, things have kind of gone downhill.  I still make it a point to get my mom a small gift or at least a card.  Today, I even threw in an ice cream cake:

It was delicious!! I think my dad enjoyed the ice cream cake more than anyone.  I would also like to add that my little brother normally doesn't buy gifts, except maybe for Christmas.  In fact, I'm not sure if he's ever bought my mom a Mother's Day gift.  Today, however, he came home with a Knock Out Rose bush:

It was gorgeous, and I'm pretty sure my mom loved it!  Way to go, lil bro..you out-did the silly little WoodWick candle I got Mom.  Looks like that new girlfriend of yours is really whipping you into good shape ;-)

I'm sure glad I didn't give Mom that cow sign now..

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!