Mother’s Day 2016…

 …and my cheeks are still hurting from smiling so much.

Mother’s Day and Christmas are the days you get to talk to your missionary.

I’ve always thought that was pretty exciting and awesome for moms, but never could I have realized how your heart can fly.  My cheeks are aching from all the smiling 🙂

But let’s back up because I started with the “dessert.”

Let’s start with breakfast and the sweet notes the kids gave me:

 (love that she made it like a text message, thanks sweetie pie claire!)

Lucy could hardly stand waiting to give me this prize-winning pot of flowers and worked all day on Saturday on her special cut-out notes:

These big girls gave some pretty heart-felt notes I didn’t deserve.

 And Dave pampered me with flowers and my favorite omelets and everything good.

Yowzas, I get to be married to him.

Lucy has been praying for her, specifically, every single night for two weeks since she got her foot hurt and was hobbling around on crutches.  She had the biggest sparkle in her eye when she saw that she was all better.

After church we headed on our traditional Mother’s Day hike.

In my opinion it’s the best way to soak in God’s grandeur.

 And slow down time even for a minute with this family of mine I adore so much.

Then it was back to the thing we have been waiting for since January 27th when our boy took off on his mission.

Oh boy have we ever counted down the days!

He told us last week that he’d be calling at 7:00 (which would be 10:00 in the morning the next day, Monday, for him).  We wrote down a list of questions and gathered together totally giddy and testing our technology all shaky and nervous at 6:45. And then we waited.

And waited.

Finally he emailed that he’d be calling in five minutes.

And we waited some more.  (Really, it was only a few minutes but felt like forever.)

Finally the computer started buzzing and we all jumped to grab it.

SO exciting to see his face pop up on the screen!!

That huge smile matched ours and we were all so happy…

…until we realized he couldn’t hear us.  This is the picture I took of our messages to him trying to figure out what to do.

We tried calling again, same thing.

He emailed that he and his companion had to run try to get some other headsets so they could hear.

So we waited again.

And then it came in loud and clear:

Our boy.

We put him up on the big screen and talked and talked.

 And laughed and loved.

Do you think we look excited??

(My brother Josh was here and snapped some pictures of the action, I could have sworn he was in that selfie one up at the top, he was sitting right there!)

It was like a little slice of Heaven to be “all together” at least in voice for forty-five minutes.

Max looked and sounded so great.  He’s so happy!  We “met” his companion for a sec., he told us all about a typical day, what his favorite food is (lots of things in Chinese…he and Dave gabbed on about), how his ward is (very small and great, he was calling us from the barber shop the bishop runs), how he does laundry (he has a washer and dryer right in his apartment), he spoke in Chinese for a sec. and sounded so great.  It was just SO GOOD to feel that connection and to see that smiling face.

He’s growing and learning so much it’s so fun to see.  Yet he’s still the same old funny Max.

We attempted the only kind of “family pictures” we’re gonna get for a while.

Oh boy we sure love that kid!