Haws Household: Mom's Here!

Mom flew in Sunday night, the night I got out of the hospital and stayed for a week. It was soooo wonderful. Mostly because my house hadn't even been completely unpacked. I mean, it was definitely livable and I'd done everything except for the food storage and the stuff we'd left in the garage, because I was waiting on those things for Sterling since I wasn't allowed to lift them. But the majority was finished, and the house was ALL clean except for one shower in the main bath(we have this really weird MASSIVE shower). But Monday morning mom unpacked and arranged my entire food storage after Sterling set up the shelf. Then he left to go write a paper all day (which he got an A on and an A out of the class, yay!) and mom unpacked onto that shelf. And she rearranged my kitchen. I have WAAAAY more cupboards in this kitchen than I have ever had the pleasure of having. It's amazing. But I'm used to sticking half of my kitchen stuff onto my food storage shelves that generally reside in our living room (med school life). Mom kept laughing at me and reminding me that I could put my kitchen stuff in my kitchen! Novel idea! Haha. That night Sterling and her moved mostly everthing out of our garage and into our house. Then we discovered our van doesn't fit in our tiny, beloved garage. Sigh. That was a big disappointment. So then Sterling set up our other food storage shelf in the garage instead of the house and we put everything tidily in there.

Mom continued to do everything. She helped us hang our pictures in our living room the next night. She made meals and learned how to work our appliances (we'd only lived here a couple days when the baby came!), she took our vacuum to get fixed and after telling our whole life story to the man she scored us FREE vacuum maintenance for the next two years while we live here during school! YAY! She took the kids on bike rides every single morning and usually took Ruthie out again in the afternoon when Will was napping, and also Russell and I were napping. She also took us grocery shopping to stock our fridge because Sterling headed back to Miami on Tuesday to paint some walls/finish cleaning our old apartment---we had a $3.400 deposit, which we couldn't lose, obviously---and he was supposed to bring back everything from the fridge. Only, due to the baby, we'd timed it wrong and our electricity had shut off. So everything in the fridge and freezer had gone bad. Lamesauce. So we had to restock a lot. She also helped us plan and execute a WONDERFUL Father's Day for Sterling--homemade lasagna and fruit pizza, he was one happy father!

I can't even remember now everything she did for us, it's all such a blur. She ended up cleaning that last shower that I had to, while I made dinner that night. Trust me, that shower was a beast and took her a good 2 1/2 hours, which is why I had been dreading it. Best mom ever award. She also finished the quilt for Russell while she was here and PRIMARILY entertained the kids like crazy and they all love her so much. Ruthie cried when she left. Ok, so did I. We love grandma. She did Ruth's make up a couple times which Ruth LOVED, she also gave them gum---I don't know how that became a thing, but last time she visited it did, and now it's cool to get gum from grandma. At least they know it's only an occasional thing! We went on several walks and blessed Russell. She watched me die of over-milk-production multiple times a day. (sidenote: I overproduced milk for almost a month with Molly and really struggled with how full I was. Luckily this time around, he's only a week and a half and I'm already down to pumping sporadically every other day, instead of every day, and initially started out with twice a day because he couldn't keep up. I think he eats more and just generally latches and eats better than Molly and so it has been MUCH easier this time. Hallelujah.)

Okay, so I probably will never be able to remember everything she's done in the last week. But she was amazing. And now my house is all put together to the very last cobweb in the garage and picture frame on the wall and freezer full of loaves of homemade bread and lasagna. All of which I will be forever grateful as Sterling heads in to six weeks of preparing for Step 1 which basically equates to NONEXISTENT. Can't wait for August 3rd to come and go! (he's dreading that date, and I am counting down!) THANK YOU MOM! WE LOVE YOU SO SO MUCH! COME BACK TOMORROW!!!!! Sob.

Okay, so mom ran into Walgreens to snag some airheads for Sterling's Father's Day because it was the one thing I hadn't found. She ended up making friends with this lady who told us about The Girls Strawberry Patch which happened to be about three blocks from our house. So Saturday night, after Sterling studied all day, we had to check it out.

You walk into a strip mall door, and I thought we had the wrong address. It looked like a tiny little shop in the city. But the back door opened into a petting zoo and strawberry field! Weirdest and coolest thing ever!

It had this really awesome souvenir shop back by the petting zoo. We spent forever in there and had a million gift ideas if only we weren't med students!

This is the candy store, which is the actual entrance from the street. It is AMAZING. I have never seen so much/so many different types of candy in one place in my life. They had some Canadian chocolate bars, retro stuff like Necco wafers, just everything you could ever imagine. They had EXTRA LONG licorice twizzlers, the kind my dad loves but ridiculously long---mom had to buy them to give to Dad for his EXTRA LONG horse rides. It was the coolest thing in my life.

Russell chilling while we explored.

They had over 54 icecream flavors. But ordering two bowls of icecream was practically the same price as ordering their JUMBO BANANA SPLIT. Which we tried out. It was MASSIVE. We ALL ate it and I was fully satiated after---it was an intense banana split. Sterling and I want to go back sooo bad. But their fresh fruit and walnuts and just everything was sooooo good.

I think on Thursday morning? we went to the beach. I wanted to check out Delray Beach and see what it was like. It was so awesome. Like everything here, I just can't get over HOW MUCH LESS TRAFFIC there is. It's heavenly. It makes it fun to drive around, just because I can't stop thinking about how LITTLE traffic there is!!!! It takes us about ten/fifteen minutes to get to the beach from our house, parking is a lot cheaper than Miami--and I've heard there are free areas, but while mom was here we just found the closest location. The distance of walking from the parking area to the beach was SOOOO close compared to what we're used to in Miami. And with four kids, that is no small thing. The sand is not white, but it is really clean and beautiful and there were a LOT more seashells so the kids loved it! It gets deeper a little faster than South Beach, but my kids are all comfortable enough with the waves that they did just fine. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so we only have a couple phone pics.