My Mother

I was going to find and put new pictures of my mother up...but I got lazy so I just stole these from my sisters' blogs and previous posts that they have done about my mom. My mom is beautiful. I consider it lucky that everyone says I look like her. Also, it is what convinces me that I was not adopted into the family...because she is the only one I look like. I don't look like my sisters at all really. (I decided to post a pic of me as well, and you can decide how much I look like my mother)

My mom is an amazing person-she knows how to do EVERYTHING! I used to get annoyed at how often my older siblings called home to get recipes/advice/etc. from her, and I'd say "She's MY mother right now, you moved out!" But, ahem, I have to repent for that, because I do it ALL THE TIME! She is amazing at cooking, cleaning, and organizing. A kid I was dating once said "You say nine kids and all I can think of is a sticky house" which is kind of a weird thought, but anyway, not at all true with my mom. She is also helping me get a fairly decent food storage going, even if we only live in an apartment...and its amazing.

My mom also has incredible energy. Sometimes I get tired just watching her fly around doing a thousand things. You'd think as an empty-nester this year she would find some time to herself...but she always says 'yes' to a thousand things and a thousand people, and is running all over the place. Not that I can complain, cause that means she says 'yes' when I ask her to help me make bibs and sew up a hole in my quilt, etc., etc. She is like an energizer bunny. I get tired babysitting my sisters six kids for one day. Makes me nervous that I'm not destined to have the energy she possesses.

She taught me tons and tons and tons of things. But I still have to call home all the time to glean her head. One time I was calling my mom about something and Sterling asked "Why don't you just google it?" Well, dearie, because my mom has years of experience to back up all her information and, therefore, I trust her lots more than google! My dad commented a while ago that it was rather funny that I never cooked a thing in college (I don't think making 5-minute rice in the microwave counts as anything in his book) and then suddenly started making bread regularly as soon as I graduated. Lets just say, when you grow up with my mother's marvelous cooking, it takes a lot to get used to anything else. I managed three years of college (my year of early college I still lived at home) without decent food...but I had to find a way to remedy that as soon as possible...and the first step was homemade bread. I can't eat store-bought bread. And now, neither can my husband. I've spoiled him as well. But really, when you could have homemade jam with homemade bread...why in the world would you ever go back???

She taught me how to make strawberry jam...and I LOVE strawberries!!! (so does she, the last year I lived at home, we ate them for every meal for a couple of weeks while they were in season) I just made three batches yesterday, all by myself, because she flew off to Switzerland to visit my sister.

I don't know how pioneer women did it without Kitchenaid choppers! Lifesaver!

Mmmm...strawberries!

All chopped up and ready to make into jam! Last year, when I had mom's help, I was rather lazy and left my strawberries rather large for jam, so this year I overcompensated, and maybe made them too runny. Oh well.

My mother is also an AMAZING grandmother...my baby is going to be number THIRTY-FIVE! (And this is me a couple days ago...26 weeks) and I just hope I can be half the mother she is!