2008 May 11 Mother's Day

For our first speaker at church today I played the DVD of M. Russell Ballard's Daughters of God presentation from the April 2008 conference. Then I had the oldest son or daughter from each of the four families present come up on the podium with me after I had presented Grandma Graham with one of the pink roses that I had in a vase behind the podium. The fourth family's oldest son is about two, Emilito Martinez. I had gathered him in my arms and brought him back to the podium on my way back from giving grandma a rose. I commented that I had warned each of the older children that they would get a moment to make a presentation to their mothers, but I hadn't forewarned Emilito so he was speaking extemporaneously. I asked Emilito, "Do you know where your mother is?"

And he said, "There!" and pointed straight at her with a big smile. And I said would you like to give her a nice rose and he shook his head "yes" on cue. So I picked up another of the roses from the vase and carried it and Emilito over to his mother. He had latched onto the plastic wrap that the rose was wrapped in, with a ribbon, so he handed it to his mother with a big smile. I'm not sure who smile was bigger, his or hers. Then he reached out toward his mother and sat on her lap during the rest of the presentations which were made from youngest to oldest. We had enough roses so all of the younger children were able to come up and get a rose and take it to their mothers too. There were nine children present ages 13 or under.

After church mom and I went home and ate some sandwiches for lunch and then went over to Huis Ten Bosch to see the Rose Garden. Last year Mother's Day was a week later and the roses were splendid. This year because of the drought they were only half as splendid. It was the first time that I hobbled around without my crutches since I stretched my Achilles tendon last week. Everything went okay, though we covered most of the distance by riding a bus to the castle where the Rose Garden is. After we took a leisurely hour stroll back to the front gate passing through all of the gardens on the way and having our traditional melon flavored ice cream cone, we decided to take a boat ride all the way around the park and back to where we started at the front gate.

We went home and took our naps and I made pizza for dinner. After dinner I put my lesson together for Monday having to create eight of the 10 slides in the PowerPoint presentation for Geometry Day 79. So all is ready for next week. That will be the last lecture in geometry for the year. The rest will all be tests and student presentations of their May projects. In a couple days more than a month we will be on the airplane back to the US for summer vacation.