Mothers Day and the pergola

My kids went all out on Mothers Day. All out creating a never ending series of messes unfortunately. I'm not sure if it's just that I noticed it more, or whether they really did make more of a mess, but I seemed to be cleaning all day. I told myself that I wasn't being sucked into the whole "We value mothers, see you have a whole day just for you / mothers are only valued once a year" dichotomy by not doing anything and insisting that it was Mothers Day. I know there should be an apostrophe in there somewhere, but it's Monday and I couldn't be bothered. I did get breakfast cooked for me, but I'm spoilt and get that most Sundays. I still did some, although not all, of the cleaning up after breakfast was cooked. When told that it was Mothers Day, my children reacted by looking at me through beady eyes for a few seconds, then loudly repeating whatever demand they had just made. I did get a lovely laminated photo of my son under which is said Happy Mothers Day, love C. It even has a magnet on the back so it can go on the fridge, which is a brilliant idea. G gave me a bar of soap, that had a label with her hand print in paint, and a little poem which the lovely girls at Daycare had done for all the Mums of the kids in her room. It was orginally wrapped in red cellophane, but G unwrapped it just in case there was chocolate inside. When she found the soap she told me I could have it. It almost made up for her getting paint all over the clothes I expressly told her not to paint in. Water based house paint doesn't seem to come out that easily.

The paint she covered herself in was a test pot for the pergola Uncle Kev bought for us. I wasn't planning on buying a pergola, but it is something that we have been planning for a while, and the muse to build it hit hubby right at the time the stimulus hit the bank account (he didn't know this, it was just lucky) so it was meant to be. I realised last night that I should have taken some more photos in between part way up and having the first coat painted. Bit late now. After putting the chooks to bed hubby came in and said we definitely need to grow something over it, as in the dark it tends to loom a bit. Kinda like a giant open mouth. How welcoming. We are thinking a decorative grapevine. Unfortunately the style of pot I really like are $135 each. Even if Uncle Kev went mad and did the stimulus all over again (which he won't cause there's no money left) I still don't think I could bring myself to spend that much on one pot.

We also argued about fencing off the house yard. He wants white posts. I think they would look weird. "It will look like we've pinched all the white posts from the side of the road and made a fence with them" I said. "That's funny" he laughed "that's where I got the idea from". We are so not doing that. Everyone else around here has a star-picket fence. I'm happy to do something a bit different across the front of the house, but around the rest of the block a farm fence will do just nicely. Doesn't have to be fancy just has to keep in a potential sheep or alpaca or two. I can see us never being able to leave this place because of the menagerie that we will have collected. But somehow, that's not so bad.