Mother's Day recap

Yesterday was Mother's Day and it was also Ethan's 8th Birthday!! WOW! When Carter turned 8, I was pregnant with Olivia. I remember thinking it was going to be soooooo long until Ethan turned 8 and my inutero Livs would be going on 4. That time has now come to pass. We had a great birthday, simple but great. Ravioli, salad and garlic bread. Followed by strawberry shortcake. We missed our family who came for all the birthdays these last 8.5 years but invited our friends J+J and their kids. Mom J was flying solo as her hubby is off to Russia these next 17 days so I figured there was no sense in 2 of us moms cooking for ourselves on Mother's Day.

Ethan got a cool bike with gears and hand breaks, per request. A Lego contraption called a Power Miner, a jump rope, a digital voice recorder, and his grown up Sunday clothes (ie. a blazer to go along with new slacks. He also picked out a bow tie to pull the whole outfit together). After a couple of crashes on the new bike he was sporting two banged up knees and headed off for the trampoline to make it feel better.

As for my portion of Mother's Day, we went to this amazing sushi place like a mile from our house on Saturday night. It was so good! We had all tried mediocre sushi before without much success but I love California rolls, so after several recommendations we decided to give Shine's a try. The kids all wanted to try octopus, so we got a couple of rolls to split. They loved it! Then I got tuna, octopus, and salmon with my CA rolls for dinner. I loved the tuna! The boys got some tempura shrimp, and sesame chicken and snuck more bites of octopus from me. And since there didn't seem to be any forks on the premises, even Olivia got the handle of chopsticks.

Then Sunday morning Ethan surprised with a beautiful handmade card and a ceramic bowl that he shaped and painted himself in art, filled with candy just for me. He had been bursting with this surprise all week waiting to give it to me. I loved it.

ps-The candy didn't last long!