Mom

Today is the ten year anniversary of my mother's death.  In some ways it's surreal that it's been that long; in other ways it feels like it's been so much longer.  Big life events like this often feel that way.

I still miss Mom sometimes.  How could I not?  Each time I've had a baby I've had a good cry, alone in my hospital room, because my mom wasn't there.  A sort of postnatal, hyper-hormone-driven, sleep deprived mini pity party, if you will.  It never lasts long because I have a lovely new baby there to make me happy and remind me of the Plan of Salvation and all the blessings that come with that. (Plus, each child - EACH CHILD - has demanded to be fed at about 5 minutes into my cry.  I take this as a sign that 1) my children, even at the earliest stages, wanted to let me know who was in charge, and 2) Heavenly Father knew that 5 minutes was about all I needed.)

Self-absorbed person that I am, I often wonder what my mom would think about the life I've made for myself.  She'd still love Lance, that's for sure. At some points I'm pretty sure she liked him more than me.

(True story: when Lance and I were newlyweds we went out the CA for Kevin's high school graduation.  No one likes graduations, but this one was especially long and hot and the band was playing horrendously because the band director had just been fired for embezzlement. (Nice.) At one point during the arduous afternoon on the football bleachers we were all complaining about how much we hated this.  Lance jokingly groaned "I wish I had never been born!"  This tickled Mom to pieces.)

(True story: Lance and my mom were also the only people in our family who really like Twizzlers and those nasty gummy orange slices.  Blergh.  This made my mom like him even more.)

I know my mom would be happy with my kids.  How could she not?  They're so great!  I suspect she would use my dad's frequent flier miles to be out here quite often to visit. And there would be lots of random care packages, because my mom was a rock star at that.  And while I'm sure she would love my boys to pieces, she would probably have a special place in her heart for Miss Tess. (And especially Miss Tess's wardrobe!)

(True story: when I was pregnant with Spencer my mom was sure he was going to be girl.  When I called to tell her that the ultrasound confirmed he was a boy she let out a little, barely concealed disappointed "Oh" and then quickly recovered with "I have to do some shopping."  And boy, did she ever do some shopping!)

Would she be happy with us staying in Indiana?  I'm sure she would rather we moved back out west, but I can't imagine her giving me any grief over it.  She might be disappointed in how few house plants I have.  She was the QUEEN of houseplants!  But, for better or worse, I've followed my father and have taken more of an interest in outdoor gardening and landscaping.

Would she be proud of the kind of mom I am?  In my church service?  In just the type of person I am?  I hope so.

Sometimes I wonder what type of person she would be today. What would she like/dislike?  She'd definitely be an iPad/iPhone user, much to our chagrin.  (We Madsens are Android people.)  She would have really liked the ending to the Harry Potter series. (True story: that was one of the abstract things that upset me when she died - she'd never know how Harry's story ended!  Grief makes a person weird.)  She would really like the Hunger Games series, but maybe not the movies.  She was into some reality tv before she died, but I like to think she would have moved on from that by now. I can't count the number of books I've read and movies and shows I've watched where I've thought "Mom would have really liked that."  (None of which, of course, come to mind.  Dang.)

I think she would still prefer Diet Coke to Coke Zero. (Unlike her daughter!)

She would adore Pinterest and would probably be one of those funny/embarrassing moms on Facebook. (Once I got her to start using them, that is.)

We would have talked.  A lot.  Because we talked a lot when she was alive, and that was before both of us had cell phones.  I don't know if she would have been a texter.  Probably.

Would she have voted for Mitt Romney?  Definitely.

Would she have been on more cruises?  For sure.

Would she have moved to Utah?  No way.  She loved California.

She would have LOVED online shopping.

I don't pine away for Mom; life without her has become normal.  And that's okay.  (In fact, that's good.)  But it's nice to have this time of year to think about her and remember all the great things she taught me and all the great memories I have of her.

(True story: when we were newlyweds Lance and I used to laugh every time she left a message on our machine because she would always say the same thing in this funny, sing-song voice: "Hi Maren!  It's your moooom!"  I miss that.)

p.s.  I had grand designs of uploading a bunch of pictures of my mom for this post.  But our dang server is broken and that's where all my pictures are.  I know they can be accessed somehow through Lance's computer, but I just know that getting them from there will involve 17+ complicated steps that I won't understand/remember and Lance won't understand why I don't understand/remember them.  (IT demi-god vs. IT minion.)  Come to think of it, maybe my Mom liked me just a little bit more than Lance... :)

Little Princess

Tess came to me in this outfit (the back pack is my fav), and covered in bangles and hand extended. 

"Kiss!" she demanded.

So I did, thinking, "Hmmm... this is new."

And she happily pranced away, deigning to hold still for half a second so I could take a picture for posterity.

A little princess indeed.

Spring Work

Spring has FINALLY made its arrival.  After such a long, tortuous winter the warmer weather is welcomed relief!  We spent most of Saturday working outside.  It was hard work, but I enjoyed it.  In fact, I almost always enjoy working outside.  Could Spring replace Fall as my most favorite season of the year?  Quite possibly.  (I'll have to ask Cole - he likes to tell me what my favorite things are lately.)

Lance worked hard on repainting the porch and replacing the screens that had been damaged by tornadoes, both of the meteorological and young child variety.

While he worked on that I mowed the lawn, divided day lilies, and put the divided lilies in new spots.

I also sprayed these awful, hated bushes with Round Up, so they'll be dead soon.  (Not that you'll really be able to tell a difference.)  I'm not quite sure what to put in their place yet.  Any suggestions?  It's on the east side of the house and gets morning sun and afternoon shade.

I also took out the stupid boxwood bushes from our front flowerbed and replaced them with divided day lilies.  (Gotta love the free plants, right?)  I'm not sure who put in the original plants and trees in our landscaping, but they didn't do a very good job.  Every single tree and plant I've pulled out has had issues because the hole wasn't big enough and the roots just turn into a massive, unhappy ball.

We also fixed the soil that had eroded away from around the foundation on this part of the house.  It was kinda scary looking, but after consulting with a foundation expert in the ward we just cleaned out the hole, filled it up with dirt from the garden, and then recovered it with the rocks.  Not a very fun job.

I put sunscreen on Tess, but she apparently wiped it all off of her nose and ended the day looking like Rudolph.  She wouldn't let me take a picture and just hid in this corner.

 
Oddly, she let me take a picture later when she was naked and about to get in the tub.  Three year old logic, right?  The picture really doesn't do her justice - it was a lovely, shiny, tomato-y red.

A Family History Day

Today I was surprised to find this in the mail:

My dad made a book about my mother's personal history.  Isn't that sweet?  He sent a note explaining where he got the information and that he plans on doing a couple more books to cover her whole life.  (This one only goes up to 1976, or as I like to call it, the "Pre-Maren Era".)

It has all sorts of awesome photos and scanned hand-written letters.  It's so great!  (I'm totally diggin' those cat eye glasses.)

In the letter my dad mentions that just after my mom died he wasn't thinking too clearly and threw away a bunch of letters my mom had written to her parents years before.  Oops.  This is interesting, because look what also came in the mail today:

Yep, that's totally a book of letters that I wrote to my extended family over the past few years.  (Every-ish Sunday I try to send out an email about what's going on in our family.  I also include other personal things that I have written that I don't feel belong on the interwebs.)  It felt a little weird putting it together, but now I feel completely justified.  Between these "Lafayette Letters" books (I now have 2) and my blog books (I now have 7) (!!!), I am totally rocking the personal history.

Stylin' At The Park

Tess sure was cute at the park today.  Not so cute?  The pool cleaning going on right next to us.  I'm not sure what happened this winter or why they weren't covered, but the pools basically turned into ponds, complete with algae and ducks. Blergh.

Cole Got Some Sunglasses In His Easter Basket...

... and has been wearing them pretty much non-stop since.

Meanwhile, this song runs through my head whenever I see him.

Happy 60th Birthday, Grandma Susie!!

We totally left the birthday decorations up in your honor, not because I've been too lazy/busy to take them down. ;)  We all sure love you and hope you have a wonderful day!

The Easter Bunny

It is a well established fact that the Madsen family has special pull with certain celebrities like the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, etc.  Thus, once again, the Easter Bunny visited us on the day before Easter.  Which was awesome.

Once again, I was no good at taking pictures.  My targets were just too excited and moving around too fast.  That's okay, though, because it was a pretty typical Easter morning: lots of squeals of delight, lots of yelling about whose egg was whose, lots of munch of candy, and lots of complaining from Josh about what he doesn't like about the gifts he received.  (That's kind of his M.O. for holidays lately.  I try not to let it get to me because he always - always - ends up loving what he got.) ((Punk kid.))

 

Cole is an old pro at finding eggs now, but this was Tess's first year to really understand.  She was so excited!  (Although she still preferred to stop and eat the contents of each egg she found rather than find as many eggs as possible.)

See all that wheat grass in the window? I totally had grand plans to put cute little eggs and goodies in them and give them to friends as Easter gifts.  Did not happen.  So instead I used them as centerpieces for the big Easter feast we had with all 6 (six!!) ward missionaries the next day.  I forgot to take any pictures, but trust me, it was cute.

Now the wheat grass is back in the window and I'm not quite sure what to do with it.  (Don't tell me to eat it.  Not gonna happen.)

Once again the kids got coupons for various privileges in some of the eggs.  These went over very well.

After all the hunting was over Tess decided to wear the dress that the grandparents Roper had sent for her birthday.  Accessorized with some birthday sunglasses and we had ourselves a little diva!

But what a cute diva she is!

Tess's Third Birthday!

Tess's birthday festivities began on Thursday with making her cake.  Tess was adamant about having a pink pig cake.  And what Tess wants, Tess gets!  (Sometimes.)

I have to admit that while we were frosting the cake I stopped for a minute and realized that Tess had been chattering happily for a good 15 minutes and I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.  Not because she was babbling incoherently or anything, but because she chatters so much now that I just kind of tune it out.  (I know, Mother of the Year over here.)

Here's the finished product.  Not too bad, right?

Well, to add to the birthday excitement, Friday morning we woke to find this on the front door.

At first I thought "Oh great - MORE distractions during a busy school morning!"  But once I declared that no eggs would be found until everyone was bathed, dressed, and had finished their jobs, it was great.  Those kids got ready faster than I've ever seen them!

Since we knew there were 24 eggs I told each child, very specifically, that they were allowed to pick up only 6 eggs.  Josh found his eggs within 60 seconds, and I spent the rest of the hunt yelling at him to stop picking up eggs and helping Tess and and Cole.

"Hey!  Get away from the Nerds candy that I just spilled all over Mommy's freshly vacuumed floor!  Those are MINE!"

For lunch we of course met Daddy at Sam's Club.  This girl still LOVES Sam's Club!  So much so that I bought her Easter dress there (see previous post), and we don't refer to it as her Easter dress.  We call it her Sam's Club dress.  Awesome.

That afternoon I decided to get a few pictures of the birthday girl with her giant cupcake hair accessories (her choice) and her pig cake

At one point I got distracted on the phone and turned around to find this:

Tess had smooshed in some of the chocolate chip mouth and was quite upset about it.  It was cute and heartbreaking at the same time.  So of course I took a picture and then consoled her.

Soon all was right with the world!

Do you like her "3" shirt?

I made it just for Miss Tess!  (I also made Cole a "5" shirt for next month.)

And I made a Dr. Who Dalek shirt for myself.  Because I lurve Daleks. (And I found a t-shirt for $1 at Wal-Mart and figured it was worth testing my shirt-design skills.

For dinner we trekked out to Texas Roadhouse, not because Tess loves it there so much but because we had coupons for 4 free kids meals.  It was a pretty uneventful trip other than the service was super sloooow.

We came home and sang happy birthday, blew out candles (eventually), and opened presents.

Tess got a copy of "Frozen", which we have watched every day since.

Spencer was overly-helpful in opening the gifts.

The grandparents Madsen sent this really pink, really glittery Hello Kitty backpack.

She also got some pretty stylin' shades.  That's one cool lookin' three year old!

Happy happy birthday, Tessie dear!

Easter Morning Pictures

How many pictures does it take to get four children to stand normally, smile decently, get their hands out of their pants, and look at the camera for Easter Sunday pictures?

Trick question.  It can't be done.

You can, however, get some pretty good pictures of them individually.

Happy Easter!