Day 154: Multi-coloured Stripes for Mother's Day

Just as I suspected, I slept in late enough today that I now can't fall asleep tonight. My 5:45am wake-up is going to be brutal tomorrow. No wonder people hate Mondays.

Today is Mother's Day! I must confess, I have a fabulous Mom.

I spent today cleaning my room and trying to get rid of a lot of old junk. I realized that I had binders, complete with all my class notes, from College classes back to 2004. Hoarder much?

After some cleaning I went to have a delicious Mother's Day dinner that my Uncle John, Stepmom Linda, and Aunt Debra made. They made homemade perogies and the sausages were all homemade as well. The cream-based gravy for the perogies was a serious treat. Then we had cheesecake with lots of fruit on it for dessert. Today was definitely far from a diet day.

Once dinner was over and I was able to hold my little baby cousin, Grace, for about 30 minutes, I came home to do some more de-cluttering of my life. I started to tackle old photos. I realized that I had way too many old photos (to the tune of at least 12 albums and a whole box of pictures). I decided to recycle a lot of them. I went through about half of the albums and the entire box by the time I decided to try to go to bed. Consistently the albums contained at least one photo of my Mom, and for some of them, it was many more. It was a good day to look back over our history:

- pictures of my Mom as an adorable red-headed, freckle-faced child
- pictures of my Mom as a beautiful teenager
- pictures of my Mother holding her children
- pictures of my Mother all dressed up, prettier than any movie star, and yet, on her knees to snuggle with her kids
- pictures of my Mom with me as a bratty teenager, surprising me for my grad ceremony, me as her Maid of Honour at her wedding, goofing off on the stairs with the dog, and pictures of us more recently

There is so much love in my family. There is so much love just from my Mom alone. I would not be even a fraction of the woman I am without her guidance, consistent love, support no matter what, and her laughter.

My Mom is courageous. My Mom is generous. My Mom is beautiful. My Mom is incomparable.

Mom, I love YOU completely.

xo