Happy Mother's Day!

Oh my sweet mom... I really do have the best one.  Please do not try to argue with me.  I will not believe you :)
Although it has been easy to be thankful for my mom every year on Mother's Day (especially since becoming a mom myself), this year I couldn't even really find words for how much I love her and appreciate her presence in my life. (Sorry about the lame card Mom.  Just couldn't bring myself to really sit down and process all that I would like to write to you - so maybe reading this will make up for that a little.)

Treatment Update:
They are now "symptom treating" for the most part.  In the last week she has really been struggling with low blood pressure.  The only thing they have treated it with so far is giving her more fluids, so hopefully that starts to work soon!
The most annoying thing is still the battle she is having with nausea and keeping food down.  She is on 3 different nausea pills but nothing seems to be totally kicking it and they can't figure out what exactly is causing it.
Obviously if you can't get much food into your system it makes it hard to keep your energy up.  The lack of energy and stamina will just continue to be a battle that she will be fighting for a long time.  On a good day this seems to be a 2 steps forward, 1 step back process; on a bad day it is 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

Prayers:
* That the drs could figure out how to treat the low blood pressure and nausea so that she could just focus on getting stronger.
* For her strength to supernaturally start to recover.

Praises:
* That she has still been able to be home through this whole process.
*  For all the encouragement and support she has received from people - all of you reading this included.  It is so fun to see the stack of cards that she has gotten with people's thoughtful words and prayers for her.  Thank you for loving her in this way.
* That we were able to go be with her for Mother's Day.  I know she wasn't feeling super but it was really nice to just go have lunch at the house with her and the Papa's (my dad - aka Papa and her dad - aka Great Papa).  The girls just love getting to be with her and I think they are doing an ok job of understanding that Mimi doesn't feel good and they try to take it easy on her. 

Shepherd Update:
Some of you may have thought that my lask of blogging was because Hope had arrived.  A lovely thought, but no.  I have been staying up late almost every night sewing and kicking out a few other pre-baby to-do list things.  The late night sewing will probably continue this week if I actually am going to finish all of the orders/projects that I would like to so that I can take a couple of weeks off after baby. 

My dr update from the past week was this "If you were anyone else, this baby could come at any time.  Your body is ready, the baby is ready.  Because it's you though, let's just go ahead and schedule the induction. " (My intrepretation of the doc's words).  So I am scheduled to be induced next Monday, the 17th at 5:00 a.m. which is my actual due date.  I haven't had too many grand ideas about her arriving on any other day as the 17th works well in our "plan".  This is what happens when you are induced every time: you get married Dec. 7th ('01). You have your 1st baby Dec. 17th ('04), your 2nd Sept. 7th ('06), your 3rd Sept. 17th ('08), and your 4th is actually due May 17th ('10).  I completely expect that May 7th, 2012 will be some sort of significant date in the life of our 5th child.

In upholding the promise of cute children pics, I will post a few from this week.  I do have one disclaimer:  I am actually going to put a pic of myself with my girls on here for the sake of celebrating Mother's Day.  Yes, I am fully aware of how incredibly puffy I look so you will not be able to use this pic as blackmail against me.  Please try to focus on the cute little girls in the picture and only look at me fleetingly.  Thank you :)

These are pics I took this week to make our Teacher Appreciation gifts for preschool/First Friends (Mom's Day Out)/Mother's Day Gifts.  Then I couldn't find my camera cord so I ended up using ones already on my computer.

This was the most frugile gifts I think we have ever done.  We made 16 for right around $30.  In retrospect I would have looked harder to find terra cotta pots or something actually made to hold plants because I am worried the flowers might die in these.  But if you are still looking for an idea for the end of the year teacher gift, here's what I did: Bought plastic bowls at the Dollar Tree (Sidenote: I love this store.  I think there should be a reality show on trying to live with only things you can buy for $1.) They were 4/$1 so 4 bunches of bowls.  2 8pk sets of clear plastic dessert plates to set underneath = $2.  I let the big girls each pick out 5 4 packs of  flowers from the Dillons garden center - on sale for $1.59 each.  Plus a bag of potting soil $2.59.  Oh I would also have splurged and bought Miracle Gro instead of regular ol potting soil, but that's all they had.  I used a screwdriver to poke holes in the bottoms of the bowls.  This worked better on some bowls than others, but it got the job done.  I used a sharpie to write messages on the bowls and then let the girls paint on them.  This is where something other than plastic would have been nice since we apparently do not own one art supply that adheres to plastic.  Then the girls picked out 2 or 3 plants for each bowl and helped plant them.  I finished them off by making the little flower sticks with wooden skewers, cardstock and hot glue that I had laying around.  The most time consuming part was finding the flowers I wanted to use to put their faces on, but they turned out cute.  Not only did this add a super cute little touch, it kept me from writing out cards to go with them :)

This is Lucy in real life.  She can be so so cute, but at any given time she looks like she has never seen the inside of a bathtub.  This girl loves her chips and Cheetos.  We are all going to be making some food adjustments when Hope arrives and Mommy gets back on the weight loss band wagon.

And this is Lucy the rest of the time:trying to keep up with the big sisters!

And if anyone is still reading, here is my puffy Mother's Day pic.

Happy Mother's Day!!!