Happy Mother's Day, Mommy!

Dear Mom,

Happy Mother's Day! 

Thank you for giving me a fairy tale childhood!  Thank you for making sure I had the security of a consistent schedule.  Thank you for making it possible for me to find any toy I wanted to play with because they all had their own spot to be put away in.  All three of your children have the organization bug - apparently it was catchy!  Thank you for letting us get filthy dirty, even though dirty children were not your favorite.  I remember more than one hose bath before we were allowed to enter the house - it was a good compromise. :-)  Thank you for moderating a thousand disagreements between us kids - we didn't mean to be so petty.  Everything just seemed so important at the time!

Do you know that one of my favorite memories was getting to pick the vegetable for dinner?  I used to hover around while you were making dinner just so I would be the easiest kid to send to the pantry!

I remember playing with your doll house furniture for hours - please tell me you still have that in one of your boxes!

I remember running through the snow in swimsuits after getting out of the hot tub.

I remember you putting a blanket on the front porch for us to watch the lightening from. 

I remember you making us dolls out of flowers and tooth picks.

Thank you for documenting all our many memories in photos that I will never forget:

Mommy and Megan vacuuming together.  Everything about this picture is endearing to me... including those care bear curtains I had forgotten about!

This picture is excellent!  We spent hours and hours playing one kind of dress up or another.  Poor Matt, I'm sure to this day he wishes he had been the oldest!  This picture is confirmation that he was a victim of my persuasion, lol.

You were always good at matching outfits. :-)  I love this picture of Sarah and I.

See?!

You tried to talk dad out of letting us climb on the shed and run down the roof to jump on the trampoline.  Praise Jesus we are all alive to laugh about this!  Thank you for being the voice of reason in that craziness!  Before I drop my kids off with their grandparents for the summer we are having a long conversation about how grandma gets to make all the safety decisions!!!

You made sure there was never a dull moment at Vacation Bible School.

And you made sure that we were never the kids who didn't have a costume.  It's hard to guess what Christmas event you had us all dressed up for.  Probably Awana.  But no one was ever gonna catch a Schenk kid not participating on dress up day! :-)  I'm also guessing that not everybody's Awana came with so many dress up opportunities, lol.

Happy Mother's Day, Mommy.  I love you!