For Mom

Today we celebrated Mother's Day with our families. Despite the weather, it turned out to be a pretty fun day. We had a feast of Chinese food for lunch with Paul's family which was really fun and different. Although, in case you were wondering, it turns out that Chinese food is a hot commodity on Mother's Day so be prepared to wait MUCH longer than usual for your take-out.

Later we visited my family and cooked dinner for them. We had lemon crusted chicken (chicken breaded with cornflake crumbs and lemon zest and then pan seared in olive oil and finished in the oven, yum), salad with an awesome homemade dressing courtesy of Susan, steamed asparagus, and oven roasted potatoes spiced with rosemary and topped with grated Locatelli cheese. Dessert was Susan's coconut cream pie and Tracy's strawberry shortcake. Tracy actually assembled the shortcake after dinner and everyone was laughing because it ended up looking like an igloo more than anything else... and OK, so maybe it wouldn't win any prizes for cake decoration, but we had some good laughs and the igloo was delicious.

The whole experience was sort of like a frenzied circus complete with dogs and cats running around. Cooking for 9 people was a little stressful, but everyone pitched in and it was completely worth it. We had a fabulous dinner and I actually thought the best part of the entire evening was having everyone together again. It's been a long time since that happened for any holiday. (We're glad you're back, Susan!) I think Mom liked having grown-up kids taking care of everything for Mother's Day, and if I do say so myself, I think we made it a memorable one. It didn't hurt that the Penguins won either.

Love you, Mom!