Mother's Day is one of my favorite days of the year because it's a day to celebrate the blessing and privilege it is to be a mom, and after struggling through infertility before each of my pregnancies, I view motherhood as nothing less than an absolute gift! I love being a mom with every single bit of my heart. It is and will always be the joy of my life.
Karl has always done a really great job of making me feel appreciated...not just on Mother's Day, but every day. However, on Mother's Day, he seems to know just what to do to make me feel very special. We all know that I am passionate about food, so of course our day centered around our meals! He also knows how crazy it drives me right now to not be able to do as much as I can when I'm not pregnant. I always keep flowers planted in our yard because I feel like it makes our house look like a home. However, it's hard for me to plant flowers the way I like to right now. So my sweet husband did it for me. We went to Home Depot Saturday and picked out flowers, and then he planted them all around the yard yesterday for me. They look so beautiful, and it really meant the world to me that he did that for me. He's a good man!
He also planned our menu for the day. We kicked off our day by making beignets as a family. Karl and I love beignets, and I love when Karl and Cooper help me cook. Our beignets turned out puffier and more delicious than they ever have before, and I have to attribute that to the four extra hands that helped prepare them! Karl and I about ate ourselves sick off those things, but each bite was worth it!
For lunch, Karl suggested that we go to Irondale Cafe, better known as the Whistle Stop Cafe to anyone who's seen the movie Fried Green Tomatoes.
I had never been there but always wanted to go. I remember watching that movie several times in the theater and countless times after it was released. It was always a favorite of mine (how could anything Southern and in some way revolving around food not be?!). Although we got there early, there was still quite a wait, so Cooper and I went to see the railroad tracks in front of the restaurant while Karl held our spot in line. Cooper was so excited about seeing the railroad tracks! Karl and I joked about how many times Cooper said choo-choo while we were there. 30,000 maybe?! :)
The kid was super excited! Once inside, I was flat out giddy with excitement about the food! It was so tough to make decisions when everything looked so good! I ended up getting fried green tomatoes, fried okra, black eyed peas, sweet potato souffle, and cornbread. I think the man who put the fried green tomatoes on my plate read my mind as I stood there, and he loaded my plate with a lot of them! Once we were seated, I told Karl I had to take a picture of our table because that in itself was a moment worth capturing should I ever forget!
Cooper went to town on his fried okra and not only ate all of his, but he ate mine and most of Karl's too! After eating his green beans and one bite of chicken, he was ready for the cookies and cream pie I got to share with him. We all ate well and left stuffed. Little Man was still so intent on seeing a train, and although we would hear a whistle now and then, we were beginning to think we were out of luck on that.
We walked back to our car, got Cooper buckled in, and were getting in ourselves when all the sudden a train finally came! We rushed and got Coop out of his car seat as fast as we could and ran back to the tracks to see it. After all the chatter about choo-choos, the kid should have been exhilarated to see one. Oh no. He immediately tried to run back to our car because the car that was parked beside us had a flat tire and he'd seen their tools they were using to fix it. We were able to get one family picture snapped before our wild man went crazy over getting to those tools!
I sat in the backseat next to Cooper on the way home, and as I played with him and held his hand, I kept getting a little teary eyed about how special the day was. I can blame it on the hormones, but we all know that would be fibbing. There is nothing I get more sentimental or reflective about than motherhood. There is nothing I've ever wanted to do better, but I feel like I screw up so often. I constantly think about how I could've/should've done something better. The little boy in these pictures and the one inside my womb are my heart. I know there is no such thing as the "perfect" mom, and I am so thankful for that! Even though I make a lot of mistakes and I'm learning as I go, I love it all. Being a mom is a very special thing, and when my boys are big and grown, I hope they know they were the most special things in the whole world to their mama.
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