Happy Mother's Day!

Mother's Day. Some love it and some do not. I love it. I love that I get to reflect on all the blessings of motherhood -- of both having a wonderful, amazing mother,

Me and my mom

and of being a mother to four beautiful kids (okay, so they're not kids anymore, but...)

Our four kids
1993

I love that (sortof like New Year's) I resolve to try to be a better mom in the coming year. But, I don't get "down" about the things I fall short in. Its just part of life to be imperfect and to strive to be better.

I love what Our Best Bites wrote about motherhood this past week:

"If you spend any amount of time browsing the internet, you know what it takes to be an ideal wife and mother. If you read enough blogs or spend enough time browsing Pinterest, you’ll know that you need to…

*Prepare 3 healthy, homemade, preferably organic meals a day.

*You’ll need an elaborately simple system for folding and organizing your laundry.

*Due to a system of charts, your house will never be more than 10 minutes away from being company ready.

*You’ll properly display your family with their coordinating heights and ages in a vinyl decal on your minivan.

*You’ll send your daughters to school every day with a different hairdo, most of which involve mastering curling their hair with a flat iron and twisting elaborate shapes into her hair, fastened with giant bows and flowers that you have on a color-coded hair-bow organizer that you made yourself.

*You’ll never buy eggs from the store—if you’re a good mom, you’ll build your own chicken coop in the backyard and paint it a popular Benjamin Moore shade where your free-range chickens can happily lay their organic eggs.

*You’ll have professional portraits taken on a very regular basis. They should always be taken outdoors, either on abandoned rail-road tracks, in front of an abandoned burnt-down graffitied building that’s clearly unsafe for children, out in nature, but with items that don’t naturally occur in nature, like the big velvet couch that mysteriously appeared in the middle of a wheat field. Bonus points if you get at least one shot with your family holding hands while walking away from the camera.

*You’ll reupholster all your old furniture in funky, hard-to-find fabrics.

*Your kids clothes will be made from your husband’s old work shirts.

*At some point, you’ll consider redecorating your whole house with owls.

*You’ll definitely make all your own baby food because it’s just as easy as buying it at the store, and everyone knows that your babies will grow up with above-average intelligence and be better-looking in adulthood. Because of your homemade baby food.

*And finally, if you don’t simultaneously bargain shop AND shop at Anthropologie, you might as well not shop at all.

We might be guilty of a few of those things, but it’s easy to see how when we start looking around at what everyone else appears to be doing, we can start feeling a little inadequate."

We moms can't waste time feeling inadequate and wishing for something different. We are strong and determined and can accomplish just about anything we need to. So, we roll our sleeves up and continue working and progressing and striving and loving -- and enjoying every bit of it all along the way.

I'm so very blessed in being surrounded by a sweet, patient, loving family -- my husband, my four kids, my two son-in-laws (who are really like my sons), and my darling grandson -- how can I be anything but happy?

I always wanted to be a mother. When I was in various school classes and had to answer the question of what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always wrote "mother". My teachers were frustrated with that answer and would always try to get me to write something besides "mother", but I never could think of anything else. I love being a mom.

I love that on Tuesday my son comes home from his LDS church mission (two years since I saw him last!). I'll have all my little chicks back in the figurative nest. Or should I say swans...

Wilson, get in there where you belong!

I love that I have always had beautiful women around me that are exquisite examples of motherhood. I have to look no further than my family -- my mom, daughters, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, cousins and nieces -- to see lovely mothering to both their children, and other children around them.

And truly, whenever I've been "stuck" in a situation, and not really known what to do, I have and do and will call my mom!

Happy Mother's Day!

From our recent trip to the United Kingdom