I Just Topped Hollywood-Meets-Hallmark

My father-in-law fell and broke his hip late last week and has been in the hospital on pain meds and bed rest all weekend. My mother-in-law, bless her heart, is a saint of a woman who loves both deeply and unconditionally. Neither will she say no to Micah when he asks to stay overnight. Even if her husband is in the hospital. So she had Micah and Josh stay Saturday night, which means she had to get up extra early with Micah and I got to sleep in on Mother's Day. Not late, mind you, as I still had to be at church to teach Sunday School, but the fact remains I slept until the 7:00 hour and that's good enough on most days.

My mom had some wonky heart palpitations on Friday and was admitted to the hospital to stay overnight for monitoring until her stress enzymes lowered. She was in the room right next to my father-in-law, because we're a small town like that. She was released the next day but has to go back for a stress test on Monday. She went to spend what was left of her weekend with her own mother and wasn't around for me to hang with on Mother's Day, but she was happy doing what she wanted.

I spent Saturday fighting Micah in the morning over a battle I forfeited, and the afternoon doing 5 hours of yard work. I had new garden gloves I needed to break in, and it was quite relaxing to be in the sun and fresh air. Plus I got to check all those things off my list of to-do.

As a side note, I'm wondering why I have three ponds. I'll have to contemplate that at some point, and figure out what the purpose of each of them is. I've stopped questioning the dozen gardens.

On Mother's Day, Sam and Becky worked, so I took Luke to breakfast at Starbucks, then headed to Lowe's to get some flowers for my Sunday School kids to plant for their mothers. I found it highly amusing that both Starbucks and Lowe's were busy at 9AM with single men buying coffee and flowers. There are a lot of lucky women in our town. I bought a shrub to mutilate sometime this week. It's going to be awesome. At least in my head.

Micah had meltdown at DEFCON 4 levels because the movie he wanted at Red Box was out, and then spent the afternoon watching the movie he didn't want. Luke colored a treasure map while I microwaved lunch, and the 3 of us chilled together until Sam got home and let me nap while he held down the fort.

Really, it was a typical weekend. Kids, work, meltdowns, running here and there, meals to make, messes to clean up. I'm not sure how the notion got started that Mother's Day should bring life to a screeching halt while mom just sits on her laurels while her children rise up and call her blessed. It would be nice, mind you, but its more of a Hollywood-meets-Hallmark myth than reality.

And yet, this could possibly have been one of the best Mother's Days I've had in years. I think it's all perspective. My mom was released from the hospital. She's alive. She's healthy. She's able to do things that make her happy. My father-in-law doesn't need surgery and will be released soon to start the long recovery at home. While not as healthy as he could be, we're all relieved that he wasn't more injured than he was. My family works; we have income. I have a wonderful husband that loves me as much as I love him. Really, what does Hollywood-meets-Hallmark have that life can't one-up?