Happy Birthday, Mom

Today is my Moms birthday!

I love my mom so much, and I love all the wonderful memories I have with her. In honor of her, I've decided to write some of my favorites here on the blog....

-my first Christmas with my mom and dad I opened an envelope explaining my Christmas present. It was horseback riding lessons! I remember we were sitting at the dining room table at our house in Stonebridge... I don't think any Christmas gift since then has been able to top that one!

-My mom loves tea. She collects tea pots and tea cups, and we went to the Ritz in London for tea and scones. While we were there, we ordered some biscuits and things, on on the tray was clotted cream. Mom asked me, "What's this?" I said "Oh it's just butter." So none of us tried it. :-( I haven't been able to live that down, along with me calling Gazpacho "a typical southern food"!

-We like teasing my dad. Sometimes he repeats himself- like when the motion sensor lights would come on he would ask "Are we expecting company?" (thinking that the lights came on because of a car in the driveway. Really it was probably just deer or some small animal.) Also, one year we planned a zoo trip, and he couldn't remember what time we had said we'd set out. So that day he kept asking "What time are we going to the zoo?" Also, mom doesn't always salt the water when we're making spaghetti, so he'll say "Did you salt the water?"

I don't know why we find it so funny, but my mom and I always tease him and say "Are we expecting company?" "What time are we going to the zoo?" and "Did you salt the water?" Thinking about it now has got me cracking up- mostly because of how it gets my mom laughing!

-I love all the times my mom and I went to The Olde English Tea Room. I almost always ordered their potato soup and mom would get a chicken salad croissant or something like that. Those mom daughter times were so special- that's going to be one of the first things we do together when we come home.

-I love it when my birthday comes, because mom will make me a humming bird cake- if you haven't had it, I'll invite you to my next birtdhay party and you'll see why I love it so much.

-I also love it when it's my sisters birthday because mom will make carrot cake. I have never ordered carrot cake in a restaurant because I know it won't be as good as my moms!!

-My mom is so neat and orderly. I have no idea how she keeps the house so tidy, especially when I was still living at home. She and my dad would always say "We can always tell where Christine has been, we can just follow her trail." hahaha Now I'm becoming more and more like her "A place for everything, and everything in it's place" (oh if I had a nickle for every time I heard that)

-When my mom made my lunch for me, she'd write a special note every day with colored pencils on a sticky note and put it in my lunch box. I kept them all in my locker.

-Snow days were so much fun around our house, because mom would make banana pancakes or we'd make popcorn and pour butter all over it and watch disney movies.

-We went 'wafting' one year as a family on the Eno river where this nut-and-granola tour guide tried to convince everyone that we all needed our own personal tree god. When we talk about this, I love how my mom laughs about how weird that man was.

-My mom just reminded me the other day about the first time I went away to camp, and how my eyes lit up when I saw her at the end of the week- I was happy to be going home and that was a big milestone for us.

-I remember this strange puppet thing that looked like a maid that we kept hanging in the 'pool bathroom' at our house on Morning Mountain. My mom named it "Babbette" and would just burst into giggles, saying that she wanted to hang a sign beside her saying "Wipe you?"

-Mom, do you remember that Mom and Daughter weekend at Meridith college where we talked about celebrating our differences, and there were prizes for various things? The woman would always say "I didn't mess up the gift bag, so you can use it again." haha Then we would say that, too, if we gave a present in a gift bag.

-When I was little, I had eye surgery and I had to wear these huge sunglasses to protect my eyes from light, so my mom came in my room every day for a long time while I was recovering and read to me. My mom is so great at reading out- loud! I think that's why I always ask Scott to read to me, now.

-Every year we went strawberry picking together- one year we came home and made tons and tons of strawberry jam. We have a picture in one of our family albums of the rows jars!

These are the first things that come to mind when I think about times I spent with my mom- there are so many more but it would take months and months to write down all the good times we had together.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I love you x o xo xo x o (which is how she used to sign all her colored pencil notes)