Happy Birthday Mom :)

My mommy is just about the greatest person in the whole world. (This sounds like an essay that a 5th grader wrote for Mother's Day).

But really, let's be honest. When I was growing up, everyone else always wished they had my mom for their mom. She was the coolest, prettiest, most fun mom and was just plain better than all the other kids' mothers.

So this is a dedication to my mommy for her birthday :)

My earliest memories of my mom are of us playing school in the house in which I was born. I remember learning to write and coloring in coloring books together (Mom always colored in circular strokes. Not back and forth like everyone else. And she always gave the Disney princesses blue eyeshadow. Hey, it was like 1989.) I also remember playing in the back yard and making floorplans for houses in the yard with lines of pinestraw.

I will never forget when I was about 4 I kept talking about how I wanted a brother really badly. Mama paid attention and about ten months later... here came Boli. (Not a brother. Dangit.)

I think my love of music came from my Mom. I remember her blaring music when she would clean the house--and she would blare anything from Bolero to the Eagles. To this day, I equate listening to anything by Ravel, Vivaldi, Pink Floyd, or the Eagles to the smell of Lemon Pledge and Lysol. But because my mother was an accomplished vocalist, I wanted to be too. We used to hold hands in her BMW and listen to the Sound of Music on tape and she would sing the Maria parts and I would be all the VonTrapp children. I think I secretly desired to be better than Mom at singing one day. And dear goodness, I would NOT let her help me. I remember preparing for my All-State audition in 8th grade and she tried to give me pointers and I was NOT HAVING IT. I should have listened.

I was cool growing up as a tomboy because all the things I was learning, Mom already knew. Her dad knew lots about cars and she grew up around racing, so we all would go to races together. If Mom could go to the racetrack (and look hot doing it) then I guess I could too! Everywhere Dad wanted to go, we all tagged along... to train museums and the Indy 500 and air shows... (and everywhere we went, Mom got hit on with the family right there watching!) I will never forget being at an airshow at Dobbins AFB and Mom and I were standing next to a fence on the tarmac and two guys jumped into an F-14 Tomcat and curtsied the nose/flapped the ailerons at us. I think I was like ten. It was awesome.

Now that I look back on it, my mom devoted her entire life to the pursuit of my and my sister's interests. She was room mom in elementary school and ran our fundraising programs in middle school. She was chauffeur to ballet (30 minutes each way, 6 days a week, so that we could go to the top dance academy in Georgia). She was the swim team bullpen mom, corraling dozens of wet kids and making sure they didn't miss their events. She woke me up every morning at 5am and drove my sleepy butt to Mountain View Aquatic Center for morning drills. She came to every showchoir performance, symphony concert, track meet, swim meet, ballet recital, math bee, spelling bee, play, musical, and award ceremony.

My mom can make ANYTHING. Especially Christmas decorations. (I have also inherited that from my mom--my love of Christmas). No but really, Mom has made everything from her own wreaths made from kudzu that she literally cut from the side of the road to building her own koi pond in the back yard using concrete and chicken wire. My mom did the decorations for a wedding once and the hotel actually asked to buy them from her.

When I was in high school, my friends would actually vocalize how awesome my mom was and I started to realize how lucky I was. Everyone (everyone) raved about how well she cooked (I didn't know any different, I just ate what she fed me). I literally had friends request that she make them sweet tea, of all things. My friends from church who had her as a group leader thought she was the most fun leader they'd ever had. Heck, my mom was the person who took me to roll my first house. How many people can say that?

So Mom, here's to you: thank you for making me who I am today. Happy Birthday to the best sweet-tea making, Coco Chanel wearing, Goldie Hawn look-alike, does back-handsprings in the pool, loves-my-dog-more-than-me Mom in the world. :)