A ribbon for participation

I love being a stay at home mom. I remember a moment I had as a new mom when Anna was under a year old. She had eaten mac & cheese for the first time and made a huge mess. I was on the kitchen floor cleaning it up and I remember thinking that this was probably the first of many.....and I thought, "definitely no where else I'd rather be". That was quite a simple time compared to now and who knows how many thousands of clean-ups I've done since then! I just will never forget that feeling-and now, with four kids, I try to keep that in mind. So I love doing (trying) all the mom stuff, or as it's usually called, "homemaking". My skills are limited and reality is that I feel like most of my time is spent on cleaning and trying to keep the house functioning. Lately with pregnancy, the move, and having the baby, I've missed venturing out to different things. Since Jay worked long hours this past weekend, I dove into things I've done before, but not enough of.
First - homemade bread. No, the tops weren't cut off, this is just my top secret special recipe. Yeah anyways, it still tasted fine (just not totally delicious). Even though Jay called it my "unleavened" bread he still ate it up.

Second - homemade strawberry jam. I majorly screwed up some steps on one of my batches (hence the "questionable" jars I had to label). Suprisingly, both batches actually tasted yummy. Not quite like my mom's, though.

Third - new hairdos. I love doing my girls hair but I'm not good at timing sometimes. These were fun to do for church (thanks to this site). I was amazed that Kate's hair (which goes wacky the minute it's done) looked almost exactly the same the next day with no touch ups!

Where would I be without Polly Pockets to keep my three year old still while I do her hair???

Fourth - planting some more stuff in my garden (squash, cucumber, jalepeno pepper). They are looking dead today. oh well.

All these things were not so hard and I think I should do them more often. I had fun and felt proud of myself when I finished. I think all moms, even if they make flat funky bread or end up with dead plants, get a ribbon for participation.