Mother's Day

We went camping on the Friday and Saturday before Mother's Day. We had a lot of fun and it was a nice break from regular household duties; that's my favorite way to celebrate Mother's Day!

It was our stake family campout. It's normally the weekend they do a Father and Sons campout, but they invited the whole family this year. Both the boys did very well while camping. They slept well and we all stayed warm in our tent.

 This picture makes me laugh because I don't think there have ever been so many conflicting fabric patterns in one picture.

Dallin had a blast running around with all the other kids there.

 

And petting the dog.

Dallin loved the fire (as any young child would) and couldn't stand that everyone else got to play in it.

So we let him play in the cold ashes. 

We did a lot of sitting around the campfire, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.

There was a great Frisbee golf course there. Mckay practiced his "putting."

Connor discovered the pocket knife.

Dallin pushed Connor around in the stroller.

It reminded me a lot of when we went camping at Eagle Lake in 2009 when Dallin was just a baby and my cousin Stori was pushing Dallin around in the same stroller.

 See? Almost identical pictures.

On Mother's Day we made Steak Fajitas for dinner and Mckay did the dishes for me. I got to snuggle with my sweet boys.

 Dallin and Connor got me some knee length shorts and a cute necklace with matching earrings.

Mckay put a lot of thought into his present for me. He heard me mention months ago that I wanted a nice dress to wear to church, but it's really hard to find one that is long enough, covers enough, etc. but is still attractive. He spent hours online searching and bookmarking websites that had modest dresses. He narrowed down his top picks and then showed them to me so I could make the final pick. Because we had to wait for the dress to be shipped, I didn't get to wear it on Mother's Day, but I did get to wear it yesterday and I think it looks pretty cute.

Mckay did a good job. I am such a lucky mom.

Mother's Day

I had such a wonderful Mother's Day this year. Since Dallin is still too young to really show his appreciation to me, it felt more like "Wife's" day, because I was spoiled by my incredible husband. Most of the day revolved around food (as do a lot of my blog posts apparently). We've been enjoying trying a lot of new recipes recently and learning new cooking techniques.

For breakfast, Mckay made me Biscuits and Gravy with Sausage. And since our church starts at 9am, he really had to wake up earlier than normal to accomplish this, and I was very grateful for his sacrificed sleep.

The big dinner feast consisted of Asian marinated Flank Steak and Lemon Asparagus Risotto.

I can't even begin to tell you how delicious the food was. Mckay knows how much I love to cook, so it would not have been a very good Mother's Day present to me to kick me out of the kitchen while he cooked. Instead, we cooked dinner together. He made the flank steak, I made the risotto. It really was a very fun present to look over recipes together, choose the dinner and work together to make our meal. And seriously, this flank steak was amazing! I want to eat it every day. I don't know how I've come so far in life without ever eating flank steak. (Our recipes were based on this one and this one if you want to try them out. And I do recommend trying them out!!)

Even Dallin liked the risotto.

We couldn't even get him to stop eating long enough to smile for a picture.

Finally, for dessert we had crepes topped with a strawberry lemon reduction sauce. (The sauce was all Mckay's idea and made by him.) It was a lovely day of eating. Since baby #2 has taken up residence inside of me, I pretty much eat all day long, so it was nice to shake things up and eat something different and fancy for a day.

Dallin did his part of making me feel special and appreciated on Mother's Day by being a very well behaved boy. And he took an extra long nap which meant I got to take a nap too! He's such a good boy!

I feel very lucky to have so many wonderful Mother's around me. I'm grateful that my mother has helped me learn how to be a mother myself. I'm so glad that Mckay was raised by such an amazing mother who taught him to love and respect women... and flank steak.

And I'm glad that I get to be the mother to sweet Dallin and to my little yet-to-be-named peanut.