An Anomalous Mother's Day...

...but perhaps a typical day for the Moore Family...

Late Friday afternoon Olivia and I present Mom with three different "game plans" for Mother's Day. We wanted to take her to do something special but we wanted her to have a say in where we went.

She decided on "choice #3", which was going to Houston to visit the church where her Aunt Diana attends, afterwards going out to lunch, then coming home, changing clothes, packing up the car and a picnic dinner and going to the beach. Fun.

But when do plans ever run smoothly? What was that? Almost never? Correct.

We went grocery shopping Saturday night to buy supplies for our picnic dinner. We were going to fry chicken and make potato salad. Since we were at the store we'd grab some other needed groceries. In the event of doing so, we forgot to get the chicken. Yes. It’s true. Horrible. We didn't realize it until we got home and began unloading groceries. Skip that picnic dinner.

The sun, bringing Sunday morning along with it, rose up way too early this morning. Or maybe I rose up way too late. That must have been it because the first thing I saw this morning was Olivia standing over my bed staring at me saying that we were running way behind and I had to hurry if I wanted a shower. I had slept solid through all three of my alarms. Going to bed at 3:00 A.M. doesn't do much good for me.

Anyway, the morning was very rushed and a bit hectic. Have you any idea how much time and hot water it takes to get 9 people showered and ready for church?
We were out the door 20 minutes past our ideal time. We were worried we weren't going to be able to make it on time but decided to try anyway. Taking a wrong exit on the way didn't help.

However, due to Mom's super-speed driving skills we made it to the church with 10 minutes to spare. Are we amazing or what? You may applaud.

I do believe that this church is the only church I've ever attended where our big, huge, stick out like a sore thumb, van has ever actually blended in. Not including ours there were at least 6 other monster vehicles in the parking lot. I was hoping we'd blend in inside the building as well as we did on the outside. I'm not a fan of visiting churches were I don't know the people there but they all know each other really well. Turns out this was one of those churches. As I was making my way to our pew I thought that I must have had something on my head or that maybe I wasn't fully dressed or something. I swear everyone in that room was looking at me, or at us at least. It was awkward.

I ate myself awake with cheerios during the sermon. I had forgotten to eat breakfast and Mom offered me her stash of cereal. By the middle of the sermon my late bedtime began mocking me and I had to play with my fingers to keep from dozing. I'm not sure what the sermon was on. All I learned was that as Christians we are supposed to "storm Hell with a squirt gun". Sorry Pastor, I think I'll pass on that.

So church ended and with a hop, skip, and jump we were out of there. Now it was off to lunch. Where? At the time that was a very popular question. We kids wanted Mom to pick the restaurant. It was Mother's Day, after all. But Mom wanted us to pick the restaurant. After all, she's happy when we're happy. As you may be able to guess, no one could come up with an answer. We turned towards Pearland to eat maybe at the Texas Roadhouse. However, we had eaten there not too long ago and nobody was too excited about it. So we decided to turn back around and head back into Houston to La Madeline's. As we began making our way that direction we realized, the picky little things they are, that not everyone would be able to find something to eat there. So back around we turn heading towards the Pearlandish direction again. It was a nightmare trying to think of a place we could all eat. We decided to go to BJ's in Pearland but then one of the girls didn't like that. Then we decided to go into Freeport to eat at the Red Snapper. But of course, that wouldn't work either. By this time our stomach's had started a choir. Mom finally made the decision to go to Sugar Land and either split food at The Cheesecake Factory or to find something for everyone to eat at the La Madeline's over there.

Finally there, we pulled into the Cheesecake Factory parking lot. It was so crowded that people were sitting outside on benches waiting to get in. Mom called to find out how long a wait would be - an hour and a half. Perhaps the La Madeline's would be a better idea. What was that? Oh, perhaps not? Hm. I think your right. I ran into La M's to grab a "to go" menu so we could get an idea of what they had before we went in. Or at least I tried. I opened the door and the place was so packed that the line was backed up so bad I could hardly make my way to the front desk to get a menu. Mom ran in to see if she could spot any empty tables. She couldn't. When she came back out she opened the back doors of the van to talk to Nolan and Payton and ask their opinion on what to do. While she was back there she found a Wal-Mart with some cheese and turkey in it that we had forgotten to take out of the van the night before. Discouraged, tired, and no longer hungry we decided to go home and make some turkey sandwiches. We stopped by the grocery store on the way home to grab some bread and new cheese and new turkey. I wasn't paying too much attention to what kind of bread I was grabbing and it turned out to be rye. Mom hates rye. She can't even stand the way it smells. She ate rolled up turkey and cheese slices for lunch. Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

We'd left the house in a bit of a frenzy so after lunch we spent a while cleaning up. Then everyone slept for a bit. It was now about 4:00ish in the afternoon and guess what…. Mom decided that was too late to go to the beach. Yes, I’m serious. We didn’t get to go to the beach. We kids really wanted to redeem the day so we decided to go to town and get a nice family movie, a present, and some dinner. And I thought the day had already been pretty much a fiasco....

We gathered all the movies we had checked out so we could return them and then headed out the door. Two minutes down the road we realized one of the cases didn't have the dvd in it. We had to turn around. Thank goodness we weren't 15 minutes down the road.

Somewhere along the way we realized that it was Sunday and all the stores closed at 6:00. It was 8:00. We'd have to find some sort of present for mom at a Wal-Mart or such. Our first stop was Walgreens to get a certain kind of face wash that I wanted to get for Mom. It gets really hot when you put it on your skin. We looked for a good long time but it turned out they didn't have it. So we decided to go to Hastings. Want to talk about fiasco? I never realized before how few family friendly movies there are. We searched for an hour at least with almost no luck. We ended up getting The Apple Dumpling Gang and Home on the Range

What was the next fiasco, you ask? It was the food. Again, we had a horrible time trying to decide what to eat for dinner. It’s just too darn hard and expensive to happily feed 9 people. I tried calling Mom to ask her what she thought we should get but every time she answered my call, my phone lost signal and dropped the call. It must have happened three or four times.
We finally decided to order some pizzas and get Mom a steak to go from Chilis. Olivia and I went into Chilis to pick up the order, which, by the way, you pick up at the bar. It was interesting - sitting at the bar with a bunch or men watching sports, that is. It took forever for it to be ready. But it finally was and then we headed out. They forgot to give her the broccoli she ordered. I didn't realize it until we got home.

Now we had to run into Wal-Mart to get Mom's gift. This took longer than expected and by the time we got back to the car the food was cold. The 15 minute drive home didn't help the food much, either. Cold pizzas not all that bad but cold steak and mashed potatoes is just gross so I put Mom's food on a plate and stuck it in the oven on a high broil for a few minutes. I got busy getting the TV all set up and ready and the living room straightened up and her gifts arranged in the basket. Olivia shouted at me across the room and asked if Mom's food was still in the oven. I thought I smelled something burning. I ran into the kitchen to get it out of the oven. I forgot that the plate was hot and picked it up with my hands. It burned and I through the plate, with0ut thinking, into the sink. Thank the Lord the sink was empty and the plate landed right side up, nothing spilling off. But, her garlic toast was toast. Scorched. I spent the next few minutes with a knife trying to scrape off the black parts. I did a decent job. Luckily during this fiasco Mom was in her room and didn't know what was going on.

But finally dinner was served, people were fed and full. We gave mom her present, which was a basket full of bubble bath, face masks, moisturizes, chocolates, coffees, and flowers. We then started Home on the Range. Olivia went into the kitchen and whipped up some brownies and coffee to go along with the movie. It was, finally, a nice two hours. It seemed our fiasco day would end with a little redemption.

After the movie was over we finished cleaning up the house while Mom went to take a relaxing bath with her new bubbles. But, to end such a perfect fiasco day, Mom was joined in the bath by a huge cockroach climbing along the wall next to her head. Yes, for real.

And that was the conclusion to our anomalous Mother’s Day. If nothing else, at least I got a good blog post out of today. =/

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.