Mother's Day 2003

Mother's Day comes with many expectations. Many expectations are met, and others fade away into never never land. Mother's Day of 2003, I decided to lower my expectations just a tad since Steve was leaving on a hunting trip.

Steve made every effort to make Mother's Day memorable; breakfast in bed, wonderful gifts, but he was still leaving in the early afternoon for his trip. My oldest child at the time was 14 and my youngest was 9 months. My wonderful children offered to cook for me, but visions of the mess, and the contents of the meal kept running through my head.

I took Steve to the airport while the kids were in their Primary and Sunday School classes. After saying our goodbyes, dropping him off at the airport, and against by better judgement; I devised a scheme to have an effortless, no mess dinner.

I knew the kids were at church, and Ben wasn't old enough to ruin my plan. I dropped by KFC on the way home and ordered mouth-watering crispy fried chicken, along with all the trimmings. I hid the bucket of KFC in blankets in my car so I wouldn't be caught breaking the sabbath. I didn't want to be a bad example for my kids. I didn't stop at dinner, I then wrote myself a heart warming, very complimentary note from Steve. It included phrases from love songs, oh yes this was a fun letter to write.

When the kids arrived home they began planning the meal they were going to prepare for me. I quickly snuck out the garage door, grabbed the KFC meal, my choice of beverage, and placed them on the porch with the heart warming note, rang the doorbell and ran. I ran back in the garage door. The kids ran to the door and found a wonderful note to me from their father and dinner.

I acted so surprised. They were so excited and could not believe that their Dad had pre-ordered the meal (not on Sunday), payed for it (not on Sunday), and had it delivered with a sweet note. They were so impressed with his wonderful planning skills. When Sarah read the note she said, "that is too nice of a note for Dad". I thought I was busted, but she was just kidding, phew!

It wasn't until years later that my kids found out how much mischief I had been up to.

The best part of all though, was the note I found later on that Steve had actually written me. It was much sweeter and even more complimentary than the one I had written myself. He had met my expectations after all.