Early birthday visit

My sweet-wonderful-awesome-happy-helpful-BEST-EVER mom came to visit us on Wednesday this week. It was an early birthday present to me. She came bearing a cooler full of food and we spent the day talking amidst all of Rose's demands. We talked while Grama Meri drew pictures with Rose. We talked while we built with blocks with Rose. We talked while we cleaned up the jam jar I accidentally dropped and shattered all over the kitchen floor, ha. We talked while we ate tasty BBQ sandwiches that she brought for lunch. My mom even brought special creams and a foot bath and gave me a birthday foot and hand treatment! Massages and soaking and moisturizing: my mother knows me well. It was heaven.

We walked to meet Jay on his way home from school. Did I mention that Jay now walks home from school by himself? It's the best thing ever! Amber can sleep longer if she needs to and we love the anticipation of waiting for Jay to burst through the door. But he wanted to see Grama Meri as soon as possible so we met him halfway home and walked back with him. My mom brought us heavenly Thai food for dinner and cheesecake for dessert. It was a perfect birthday visit! Foot rub, Thai food, cheesecake. Mom KNOWS. She hugged us all and left after dinner to drive the 2.75 hours back home.

This is the time of year that I love the most but that makes me the most homesick for my Appalachians. Every autumn I find myself drooling over pictures of the gorgeous leaves of Virginia and feeling a little sad that we ended up in this brown crispy area. But then my mom came over to visit for the day and once again I remembered all of the things I DO love about living here: FAMILY, friends, fruit, and the big wide sky.

FOOT RUBS! [Rose got one too]

Rose was being bossy with her castle so we retreated to the other side of the room and constructed an enchanted forest: I built a train track through the mess of blocks and we added small castles and trees and collections of animals along the track. It doesn't look like much, but we worked on it for a whole hour! It's really hard to build anything when all of the blocks are mixed together, so we embraced the chaos and worked with it.

Amber warmed up to Grama Meri for the first time, and it was so sweet! Amber dropped her apple at lunch and Grama gave it back to her. After that, Amber trusted her. She gave my mom an arm workout with all her demands to be picked up.

WE LOVE GRAMA MERI! 

The best birthday present was her presence.