Mother's Day

Despite a toothache and a weird case of vertigo all day, I had a very nice Mother's Day. Mike gave me a beautiful, sparkly gold chain that goes perfectly with a heart pendant he gave me a few years ago. The kids gave me a jewelry box, a hydrangea plant and some Martha Stewart dishes. I have one set of the dishes set up in my dining room hutch. I had asked for 'every day' dishes, but I think I'm saving these to use on Sundays. Not special occasion. I rarely entertain and want to make use of these, but I don't want them batted around the dishwasher 7 days a week. They are too pretty!

Mike and I (mostly Mike) have been planting a garden in the front of the house with various flowering bushes, so I'll probably move the hydrangea there in a few days. It's hard to tell from the photo, but the petals on it are humongous.

We all went out to Catfish Annie's for dinner. It was nice that all the kids, even Erick, were able to come to dinner. It's rare we can get all 7 of us together. I had shrimp cocktail and a shrimp parmigiana. Yummy. I just got the regular (jumbo) shrimp because it's hard to chew too much. Mike got his with "King Kong Shrimp" which are HUGE. I kept calling them "Kung Fu shrimp since I couldn't remember the name. Katherine thought that was a better name for them.

We talked about a lot of things, but mostly about Katherine and Erick getting a new place, and Jamie joining them. Mike has an idea to buy a small house in our neighborhood and letting the kids rent it from us for a few years until we are ready to move out of here. I think that would work out great. Katherine and Jamie and Erick just have to figure out finances. They were kidding Nicky about joining them but he isn't ready to do anything like that yet. And I'm not so ready to be a total empty-nester. I'm just glad we all seem to be staying near each other. I do NOT want to move to Florida.