Cassie's Journal - May 10, 2015

Happy Mother’s Day to all of my favorite Moms!

Mom’s big day started out with an early-morning wake-up call from her kids; and Ethan, Ehlana, and I had her open her cards and gifts while still in bed.  She had the option to skip Tai Chi, but chose to do that with us anyway; and Michael met us out by the river for that too before needing to get home and help out with the work for his own mother’s special breakfast.  Dad and I did that for Mom too; though we didn’t come up with anything quite as spectacular as Jacob did for Miranda.

I’d suggest that we should do these Mother’s Day breakfasts together from now on; but every Mom in the area would want to get in on that deal if Jacob was cooking! ;^)

While I helped out with the work before and after breakfast, and we had fun with Mom; I also needed to rush around to do all of that, get ready for church, and head over to Michael’s house early enough so that he and I could give his Mother the bonus joint gift we’d picked out for her.  That cameo moment didn’t last long; and then we walked to church with both of our families – including Uncle Adam, Aunt Leanne, and Zack.

Okay, Zack got a ride in his stroller; but you know what I mean.

We were there with time to spare, but Michael and I needed to hurry off so that we could warm up for our musical contributions in the service; and that kept us busy right up until we needed to be in the sanctuary.

Before I get to that, as I write this, I’m wondering why it is that the Mother’s Day service is a bit longer than usual while the fathers get Pastor Martha’s annual ‘gift’ of a short service.  When you think about that, it’s a rather stark contrast between men and women; because the Moms and Dads both seem to really love how their special days are celebrated at our church.

Our Moms definitely loved the service today.  Starting with the flowers that they were each given as they arrived, the fun continued with the music from the teens and kids; the skits were all themed and mostly both fun and funny.  While Michael and I weren’t in a competition with the other kids and teens; I’ll humbly admit and report that our duet was one of the very best highlights of the service.  Miranda assured us that we did it just right; based on the simple fact that we had nearly every mother in the sanctuary crying by the time we’d finished the first chorus.

Here’s the song that Stacey picked for us.  Michael took the first verse, I had the second, and we took turns with the melody and harmonies after that.  I’ll include a version of the song that we found online and used as a rough base for coming up with our version; though our harmonies were different because of our respective vocal ranges – and we had a guitar-keyboard arrangement for the song too.  Singing and playing that with Michael was awesome, but the best part of the morning was the thank-you hugs from our Moms and Grandmothers – and lots of other Moms for me after Michael needed to head over to the Inn with his father and sister.

One Heartbeat At A Time

Steven Curtis Chapman

You're up all night with a screaming baby
You run all day at the speed of life
And every day you feel a little bit less
Like the beautiful woman you are

So you fall into bed when you run out of hours
And you wonder if anything worth doing got done
Oh, maybe you just don't know
Or maybe you've forgotten

You, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time
Making history with every touch and every smile
Oh, you, you may not see it now
But I believe that time will tell
How you, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time

With every "I know you can do it"
Every tear that you kiss away
So many little things that seem to go unnoticed
They're just like the drops of rain over time
They become a river

And you, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time
Making history with every touch and every smile
Oh, you, you may not see it now
But I believe that time will tell
How you, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time

You're beautiful
You're beautiful
How you're changing the world
You're changing the world

You, you are changing the world
One little heartbeat at a time
Making history with every touch and every smile
Oh, you, you may not see it now
But I believe that time will tell
How you, you are changing the world
Oh, I believe that you
You are changing the world
One little heartbeat
At a time

And you're changing the world

One Heartbeat at a Time – Steven Curtis Chapman Cover

The social time after church began wrapping up rather abruptly when it began to look as though we were running out of nice-weather time and the forecast thunderstorms were imminent.  As I mentioned, Michael went to the Inn to help out with the always-packed Mother’s Day lunch rush; but I went home with my family because we were having a family lunch at our house that our grandparents, the Everetts, and Carringtons were joining us for while the Ayres’ component of our family was busy with Uncle Nick’s family instead.

Our original plan was for a picnic at the park, but the thunderstorms nixed that; and we instead had our meal in the dining room; followed by an indoor play afternoon that included movies and some naps.  Michael came over for his afternoon break even though he got drenched doing that; and then I went back to the Inn with him to help out with the first buffet – and through until my family came to the Inn for the late buffet.  To be blunt, it was crazy-busy for everyone working at the Inn; and we were all constantly on the go to keep up with all of the work.

I felt a little guilty about taking the long break to have dinner; but then I might not have stayed until close after that if I hadn’t done that too.  Spending that hour or so with my family and some of our friends was really special, though, so I’m glad that I did that, and stayed late – even though I’ve also had to stay up really late to get my studying and work done once I did get home.

There were a few bonuses to staying at the Inn, and while spending that time with Michael and his family was a big part of that; we also got to walk home without having to deal with getting rained on, and the goodnight hugs and kisses with Michael were really great too.

Mom didn’t take the night off from doing some of her family business work or my Magi lesson.  She was doing the first when I got home, and since it was going on eleven by then; she stopped her work and did my lesson right then before sending me up to bed while she and Dad both kept working in the office until nearly midnight.  I stopped in for short chats with Ethan and Ehlana on my way up to my room.  They’d both still been awake and doing some reading on their iPads, but had done the bath and bedtime routine shortly after getting home from dinner so that Mom would then be free to get to her work.

I needed some Jacuzzi time after the hot hours of kitchen work, so I hopped in the tub first and multi-tasked my language studies.  After getting out of the tub and ready for bed, I continued my studying with the archive assignment that Mom had given me; and then moved on to two hours of family business work that would have been more like six if I hadn’t kicked it up into high gear to get all of that done.  While I’m happy with getting all of that done, none of it was particularly interesting to write about here; so let’s move on to the next item on my update list.

Happy 15^th Birthday, Nora!

Michael, Tim, Rowen, and I had almost nothing to do with her big day other than giving her a joint gift when we were at church this morning.  Nora wasn’t having a party because of Mother’s Day, though I’m sure her family celebrated her big day too, and they were at one of the buffets.  I can report that Elliott apparently did well-enough with the birthday gifts from the boyfriend; since they were both all smiles at church.  Since it came up at church today, I should also mention that Nora is not a Mother’s Day baby, and while she didn’t say anything; I could also tell that she doesn’t like getting teased about that at all.

I actually think that would be very cool; though probably not for the Mother’s Day baby Moms.  Spending hours in labor wouldn’t exactly be a joyful way to spend the day – even if the gift at the end of the ordeal would be amazing!

Okay, I need to wrap this up; so let’s take a quick look at the week ahead.

First up, the senior high school students are already on their way to the airport for their senior trip to New York City.  They’ll definitely have more fun than most of our favorite college students; since they’ll be writing final exams this week before coming home over the weekend.  Here at home, our top events for the work week will be Jacob and Miranda’s anniversary on Tuesday and Uncle Mark’s birthday on Thursday.  The Memorial Day weekend is less than two weeks away, so while our weekend highlights will be the incoming college student reunions; it’ll be the holiday weekend prep work that will keep us busiest – and Dad will be getting ready for his trip to the city too.

All of that in addition to our regular schedules will add up to a lot of late nights, so I’m going to need to get sleep when I can – like right now.

Until next time...

...May the Magi Force be with you!