Happy Birthday, Mom!!

Today is my Mom's birthday...she would have been 68.

 This is her last visit with us. We had Family Hair Evening with Mark and Kami...what a great time it was!! Mom, Vanessa and I all got our hair done. There was so much foil in our house that night and Mark even brought magazines so it was a salon in the kitchen :0)
 I am so glad we took this picture!

 

 This is a picture of Mom with my cousin Marie. It must have been about 1983 in Logan, Utah. I have mentioned before that I love the look of pure joy on my Mom's face. She loved her nieces and nephews so much! I mean I think she just loved kids and it was her chance to have "babies" around again.

 When Vanessa was born, Mom and Dad drove out to Utah from Reno to be there. So basically they drove all the way, hoping that she would be born while they were in SLC...and she was! My Mom loved being Mam--see above.
Mom was a great cook! And I don't mean fancy, gourmet food. I mean real food, real cheap food. She made the BEST potato salad. She could make Franco-American canned spaghetti taste fabulous (I am not kidding). She made burgers with gravy, potato soup, tacos, and pot roast...oh wow! I'm sure the cuts of meat were never expensive, but it always tasted amazing. I still wish I knew how she got the potatoes brown and kind of crispy and her gravy so delicious.
When it was time to talk, Mom would take me to lunch at Frederico's for ham and cheese salad and we'd have some great girl time. I don't remember ever being embarrassed by her.  I didn't always like her and I certainly did not appreciate her like I should have, but I hope she knew how much I loved her, and how grateful I am now, as a Mom, to have had the life we had together. When I was in the 6th grade we only had one car so in order to get me to my accordion lessons, we had to put the accordion in the wagon with my little brother and walk there.
Mom put up with a lot of crap and there were a lot of sad days and hard days and lonely days, but she had the best laugh when she was happy!
She liked to do unexpected things too. Some of those times were when we had moved to a new school (again) and she took me to register, then instead of staying there for school, she took me out to lunch...at Pizza Hut! We never ate out when I was young! Once I came home from school in the 8th grade and she had bought me a new bed spread. I loved it and I had no idea! Twice when we had moved to Indiana she drove up from Louisville without a word to me.  Once was my birthday. Once she showed up when I was gone, but Calah was home by herself so Mom took her to Cici's for lunch :0)

I still miss her, she was gone too fast, too soon. I will always miss her and wish I had been able to have one more phone call with her, one more of her warm and wonderful hugs.
The last real conversation I had with Mom, she told me how lucky my kids were and what a great job I had done. That meant the world to me...I love you, Mom...Happy Birthday!!