In my experience, how satisfied you feel on Mother’s Day is a little barometer of the happiness meter in the rest of your life. At least that is how it has worked for me. I have celebrated Mother’s day for the past 10 years – ranging from being a Mom in a marriage that was on the way out the door (and then it eventually left), to being a sad depressed Single Mom (that was the year I bought myself an $800 Prada purse – Happy Mother’s Day Me ;ironically the saddest Mother’s day had the most expensive gift (although I had to pay for it)), to being an empowered “I can do this Single Mom” Mother’s Day, to being a Mom/Step Mom married to the most amazing man EVER. The past couple of years have been the best ever. I can say I feel pretty satisfied and pretty darn lucky.

I woke up this morning to breakfast in bed (some yummy Brioche’s from the bakery where Rob and I had our first date) and chocolate milk (of course, my weakness) along with our big bowl filled with gifts:

– A spider plant from Zach (named “Jill” I was informed) in a beautiful hand painted flower pot and instructions to water every Monday (along with “Please don’t kill this one Mom like the last one”. I couldn’t even remember WHAT last one he was talking about )

– A card and a letter from Zandra (the card had the words love, cheery, sweet, cool, beautiful and “busy”). I chuckled. I AM busy I guess!

– A card from Josh (with a frilly flower design) – It read: ”Bonne fete des meres. I call dibs on being (y)our favourite kid(s)”. That is an inside joke. I always tell each of my kids that they are secretly my favourite child. They sort of chuckle and giggle and know I tell each of them that – but…you know who you are – my favourite child (wink wink).

– A Will and Kate special edition magazine (a frivolous gift I would never buy myself but love the indulgence!)

– A couple of travel books for our upcoming trip to Italy to celebrate Rob’s 40th ( We will have plenty of those now since I told Rob’s parents to get him books for his birthday – he doesn’t know this yet!)

– Not in my bowl, but a gift nonetheless – a video message from Gabe(as well as a nice phone call from them – my 3 skids were at their Mom’s today)

– Last but not least, the reason I am actually even now writing on this new Blog – a new camera! A Nikon CoolPix S9100. So excited. I am not a photographer at all – but love taking pictures and I make my kids each an album every year of themselves and their special moments for their Valentine’s present . However, I have been saying I want to become more of a picture crazy mom. I have written a blog for the past 2 years – but kept it private. I did this for lots of reasons – I wanted to document our lives given our newly blended status but didn’t want to go public because of unwanted onlookers. I think I’m over that now though – or at least we are through some of the more volatile times (I truly hope) – anyone with ex’s will know what I mean. I also didn’t have good pictures to put in! So it was just my writing and that is not so interesting. So, I resolved that IF I got a new camera I’d WANT to be picture crazy and then I’d start my new blog. So here I am!

That was my morning. Pretty sweet bowl of gifts! We then went to church where Rob actually gave the best Mother’s Day talk EVER!!! We came home, and then went for a long bike ride on the bike trail, played some street hockey with the kids and neighbours and am now enjoying some down time before we have my new traditional Mother’s day meal (all my favourite dishes from Giorgio’s).

So, if Mother’s Day is an indicator of the rest of my life, it is pretty darn good.

I was reading the other day things what some people say about blogs, especially blogs from mother’s about their family lives. The criticism is that they are written by “shiny happy people” or that they are unrealistic. Yet many are drawn to reading them. I admit, I like reading about what other people are doing, how their families are doing. I like borrowing some ideas to make my parenting better, to make my home more loving and fun, or to make me a better wife or overall person. At first, it depressed me as I felt like so many people do it so much better and have these perfect lives. But then I reminded myself that no one’s life is perfect. Perhaps people just write looking through different lenses. We can’t pick our circumstances, but we can pick our lenses that we look at our circumstances through.

So what will my lense be? Probably pretty rosy coloured. Not because I am that way – but because I am working on being that way. Being more positive helps me “enjoy the journey” – which is something I have been working on a lot the past couple of years. I don’t have a rosy coloured life really. I don’t think I ever will. I have dealt with a few glitches along the way including dealing with disability in a family, death, divorce, loneliness, infertility, career changes and challenges, and all the glories of raising children and step children. I’m sure many more glitches are to come that I will document along the way. But I have also been blessed with kindness, compassion, charity, security, knowledge, freedom, heath and an overabundance of love in the form of an amazing husband, two boys , 3 step kids, a great extended family and amazing friends. That’s the way I see it through my rose coloured glasses.