Holly’s Happenings

Well, to be honest, she’s not so little any more! My “baby” is 13 today, and it’s so strange to think that 13 years have passed by since she came into this world! She came into this world quicker than anyone expected, and she’s spent the past 13 years forging her way through life exactly how she entered it!

Some days I’m in awe of the young woman that she has become, but I’m so very proud of her! Yes, we do have our rough moments, like last night when she knocked my monitor off it’s stand and it landed on the floor with a sickening thud. She was so scared that I was going to be angry with her, and initially I was, but a monitor can be replaced and she can’t! (The monitor, amazingly, is perfectly fine)

I’ve thought long and hard about what I could give my daughter for her 13th birthday that would show her just how special I think she is. She’s not a little girl anymore, and I needed to find a gift for her that would reflect the importance of this birthday. But no matter what I came up with, it just didn’t seem right, it didn’t give me that “THAT’S IT” feeling!

But my dilemma ended when the UPS man knocked on my door and delivered a package from PearlParadise.com. I received a BEAUTIFUL string of black freshwater pearls from them, and when I opened the package and seen them, I KNEW they would be the perfect gift for my daughters 13th birthday! The beautiful leather box that they come in lets you know, even before you open it, that what is inside is very special, and I wanted to let my daughter know just how special she was.

Gone are the days of dolls, play dough and coloring, they’ve been replaced by days of clothes, makeup and boys. Soon we’ll have proms and in a few years she’ll be graduating from high school and hopefully college, and maybe after that the day will come that her daddy walks her down the aisle. And thanks to PearlParadise.com, she’ll have a beautiful string of black freshwater pearls to wear around her neck!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRINCESS!!

It’s been a very nice and quiet Mothers Day so far, with the kids sleeping in late and my husband and I being able to enjoy some peace and quiet this morning! After getting up early yesterday morning, spending hours at my daughters track meet and then helping my husband stack a shed full of fire wood, we were both VERY tired after dinner last night! So we decided we’d take a quick nap before wrapping things up for the night. Boy did that ever backfire on us. We laid down around 6 PM and didn’t wake up until after 1:00 AM…LOL! We got up long enough to let the dogs out and make sure everything was locked up then went back to bed and slept until around 7 this morning.

For the first time in a VERY long time I feel rested! Today is going to be a kind of laid back day. I have to bake a chocolate cake and we’re heading up to my sisters for dinner with our mom. It would be nice if the weather were going to cooperate today, but it’s not. It’s currently raining and will be raining all day long. But that’s OK, we’ll get to enjoy some good food and some good company!

I’d like to wish each and every one of the mom’s who read here a wonderful and happy Mother’s Day!

We’re almost two weeks away from Mothers Day, which is May 11th, and I thought I’d make a list of gift ideas and then ask you all to give me any ideas that you had, if you don’t mind. I know what I’m getting for Mothers Day, because it’s always the same thing and has been for many years! I get my flowers to plant in my flower beds. But if I don’t get busy getting them cleaned out soon, I may end up having to spend Mothers Day cleaning them out rather than planting flowers to make them look pretty…LOL!

Anyway, here are some of the gift ideas that I had for my own mother, tell me what you think:

1. Pictures of the kids, complete with frames
2. A gift card to her favorite store or restaurant
3. Coupons for her local car wash, my mom is a fanatic about keeping her car clean…LOL
4. A 14 karat gold medical id bracelet, some of the newer styles are GORGEOUS!
5. A coupon to take over one day of work for her, my mom has ran her own cleaning business for almost 30 years now, I think she needs a day off!
6. A gift card or prepayment to the salon she goes to when she has her hair and nails done

That’s about all that I can think of right now, but I’m sure I’ll come up with more as Mothers Day gets closer. What kinds of gift ideas do you have?

I just looked at my calendar and realized that Mothers Day is a little more than three weeks away. It wasn’t until I became a mother myself that I honestly realized how special Mothers Day really was! Over the years I’ve given my mother many wonderful gifts and cards to let her know how much she means to me, but this year, I’d like to do something really special for her!

A few years before my father passed away, he had purchased a ring for mom that had birthstones of all three of us kids on it. You could tell from her reaction that it wasn’t the ring that she would have chosen, but she wore that ring religiously for many years.

Mom is a little older now and the years have caused her knuckles to get larger because of arthritis. She doesn’t wear the ring my father gave her anymore because of this. So I was thinking that a new mother’s ring that could fit her finger would make an excellent Mothers Day gift this year, especially one like this:

I think she would really love the modern style of the ring and I really like the fact that the style allows for the name of each child to be engraved by their birthstone!

Whatever I end up doing for my mom this year for Mothers Day, I know that in her eyes it’s more about the thought put behind it than anything else. I have no doubt my mother knows how much I love her and how much she means to me and that I’m proud that I call her mom! And as a mother myself, I can only hope that my children grow up feeling as loved as I did by my mother! Even though I was not her biological child, there has never been a single moment of my life where she has made me think that I was anything but her own daughter!

Mom, if you read this, I LOVE YOU! Thank you for being a wonderful mother!

It didn’t hit me until this morning that there are less than two months until my wedding anniversary. My husband and I have never really had a chance to celebrate our anniversary in the years that we’ve been together. That probably has quite a bit to do with the fact that by our first anniversary we had custody of his daughter and I had given birth to our son. When you have children, getting away and doing things without the kids can sometimes be a challenge, which has always been the case for us! Now that the kids are finally older, rather than dealing with having to find someone to watch them, we now face the challenge of what to do with our three dogs…LOL!

I love the dogs dearly, I really do, but it would be wonderful if we could make a last minute decision to go away for our anniversary this year and do something like spend the weekend in one of the many exciting hotels Las Vegas has to offer! I’m not one to gamble and neither is my husband, but we love to people watch and I think it would be facinating to watch the reactions of peole as they look at the sights or play the slot machines! My brother and his wife have taken a few trips to Las Vegas and listening to him talk about Las Vegas has really made me want to see it for myself!

The one really cool thing about the family get together for my mom and step dad this past weekend was the fact that everyone brought in a bunch of old photos from when we were younger to go through. There were photos of me from one a summer trip to the lake when I was about 8 or 9, my sister found one of her standing in the trash can “talking” on a phone that didn’t work from when she was 4 or 5 and my brother found a picture that was taken the year that he first started dating his wife. She was in 4H and had just gotten done showing her horse and was still dressed in her horse riding apparel when the picture of the two of them was taken. I also got to see some neat pictures of my step siblings from when they were growing up. Since we were all 18 or over when our parents married, except my little sister, I never knew what they looked like when they were little. The funny thing is, none of us have really changed that much, except for wrinkles, weight gain and gray hair…LOL!

OK, seriously, is it so wrong of me to think ahead about major events? I guess before I ask that I should also say that it’s a major event that’s a little more than eight years from now…LOL! OK, so a girl can dream, can’t she? In May, my husband and I will celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary. WOW, has it really been THAT long? I have very little doubt about the fact that we will make it to our 25th anniversary, so I told him this morning that I know what I want for a 25th anniversary gift! He turned around and looked at me and said “And just what would that be”? To which I told him that I had been checking out cruises to The Bahamas and Hawaii…LOL! But in all seriousness, I was totally blown away by the fact that I seen 7 day Bahamas cruises starting at less than $500 per person! Come on, a couple doesn’t celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary every day, I think when we make it to that point that we have every right to splurge on ourselves and celebrate, don’t you?

I managed to talk to my sister in law over the weekend, I called her to congratulate her on finding out that she’s going to be a grandmother for the 2nd time. We also got to talking about her oldest son, who is engaged and planning a wedding for next fall. They have been having a hard time deciding where they want to have their wedding and have tossed around ideas of an outside wedding during peak fall color season as well as a wedding in Las Vegas. From what I heard over the weekend, they are planning a trip to Excalibur Las Vegas soon so that they can get a better idea of their options if they do decide on a Las Vegas wedding.