Be helpful (helful).
A sign of your creativity? When you give us candy, and ice cream.
Another good tip? Let us make our own calendars.
And especially — show your appreciation for origami.
Teachers: How to Be Appreciated
Outside The Backdoor
It seems all I have time for this last few weeks of school, is to snap this picture. I’ve been admiring this gardening “accident” for a few days now. This was a happy accident…we planted some peony bushes a few years back in pure white. And then last year, as the peony bush grew so slowly, wanting desperately to fill that dead small space by the driveway with some low-maintenance color. 
Catnip. Blooms for such a long time, in bright blue, and even though it grows as prolifically as a weed, behaves itself.
And now, instead of a dreary gray wall…the plants have grown up so nicely, all by themselves, and we have this to look at for just a few seconds before we head out the door.
Funny, how I’m thinking the same thing of my children, as I watch them gather awards, and present themselves so well in this season of so many transitions and changes… they are really becoming something grand.
That Precious List
Every year, I find something like this laying around.
The list. The big grand ideas. This list — better than any Mother’s Day gift…it’s priceless:
Allow me to interpret:
Ideas for mothers day:
Diamonds
Emeralds
Rose — connected to origami dress
Smarties
Chocolate
Radishes (Ratishes!)
Poached egg…. maybe
That Sting in My Eyes
There will be a fifth grade graduation this year — and an 8th grade one. God bless the mother who is willing to put together a video of the enitre fifth grade. She wants three pics of my fifth grader (What day, was it, exactly, that he grew up, she asked with a sting in her eyes.) Tell me, do you remember when I read The Wizard of Oz to him– and he wondered why his eyes were wet?
Or how about the time, I realized I was getting used to him being away at school? Treachery.
I was torn… I had five our six that I wanted to send.. OK — a hundred. Here are my top four:
] 
Thinking Life Through On a Swing
When the seasons change, bringing new scents, new foods, new routines and new faces.
And sometimes there is something different — you can almost feel a change coming through the wind as it shifts. For those times, there is nothing quite like jumping on a swing, and letting go until your feet get grounded again. 
Vintage Button Bobby Pins For Mom/$250 Visa Giftcard Giveaway
Since I started letting my hair grow longer, I’ve been in this constant battle to pull my hair back with something. I’ve been smitten with those vintage button bobby pins on Pinterest, signing with a “someday I’ll make those,” refrain.
Lucky me, the boys asked me what I wanted for Mother’s Day, and it suddenly occurred to me, that the boys could easily make those bobby pins for me!
Turns out, this is the perfect craft for a kid. 
They studied the buttons, looking for matches, wondering how to make a pattern, and deciding that this button was big enough to stand on its own.
“You know,” I told them, “Many of these buttons came from my Grandma — that one is from her winter coat right there — and others came from my Mom — it really couldn’t be a more perfect mother’s day gift.”
They weren’t impressed.
They glued them down, discovering that it was easy to glue the buttons first, and lay the bobby pin on top. 
Finally, they were done.
They’re as pretty as jewels…
And, I have a new hair video for you. Watch these videos and enter for your chance to win. Each week, we’re giving away prizes to 3 lucky winners: one grand prize viewer will receive a $250 Visa gift card and two more folks will each receive a $100 Visa gift card! Looking good is its own reward, of course, but this is even better! To see the official rules, click here.
Hair rollers. The perfect hair styling tool — requiring very little styling after you’re done!
How Far I Went For You
Someday, when you have kids of your own, I will tell you this story:
So, you lost your tooth. But you were sleeping out in the hallway, because you were mad at your brother. So, that’s where your blankets and sheets were all set up — like a little miniature campground.
So, how was I to know that the little clinking sound I heard, when I was running the vacuum over your campsite, was not a Lego, but actually was your tooth?
I didn’t realize this until hours later, when you said, “Mom, where do you put my tooth?! It was right here, under my pillow until you messed up my bed!”
Whoops.
Later that night, after you went to sleep, I opened the sweeper bag and went through it until I found your tooth.
I washed it off and presented it to you the next morning. And then, that day, you lost another tooth. So, you put it on the console in the kitchen — I didn’t know this at the time. You also put it with your homework pages, which I sorted through and put away.
Something might have fell on the floor… because later, you stood right in that same spot, and said, “Where are my two teeth?!”
I must have knocked them on the floor when I was cleaning up. And, of course, I vacuumed there too.
I will be going through the sweeper bag, again, soon, after you’re asleep.
Love,
Mom
