Weddings, soccer, and Mothers day

Again, I know it's been a while since I last wrote. Life seems to have been extra busy lately. I will make an effort to catch up a bit this morning!
This past weekend is a fine example of how hectic it's been around here. We warmed up for our weekend by having a girls night doing our nails, eating popcorn and watching The Wedding Planner, to get us all in the mood for my friend's wedding that the whole family was attending the next day. We stayed up too late, and the next morning the girls woke up too early - of course. Or so I thought. Why is it that I will think we are totally on schedule, and have plenty of time to get everyone organized for an event, and then suddenly I will realize that we have time warped into the future and we find ourselves rushing like crazy people to get out the door? That was the case Saturday morning. Despite all my pre-planning over Thursday and Friday, there I was shrieking at Mike when he accidentally shot shaving cream all over and into my make up bag, while I was attempting to dry/curl/straighten my three daughters hair as well as tame my own, help Mike with his shirt collar which was too tight and appeared to be slowly choking him, and keep the girls from killing each other before we left. Somehow we managed to get it together and remember all the items we needed to bring, and make it there right on time. Well, apparently we did forget one thing, or rather Emily did, which my mother in law discovered at the end of the day when we had dropped the kids off at their house after the wedding was over for a night with Grammy and Grampa. Turns out that Em attended the wedding commando, sans underpants. Which probably explains why she complained that she was so chilly during the ceremony....Anyway, we survived otherwise intact, had a lovely time. As we drove off to deliver the girls to their grandparents for the evening, Kate announced from the back seat that she was in fact, ready for bed - and it was only 4:30 in the afternoon.
After the kids spent a quiet night at my inlaws, and Mike and I spent a rowdy night watching hockey and celebrating Cinco de Mayo with friends - or should I say Pablo and I spent a rowdy night together, since Mike went in a  mariachi outfit, complete with tight shiny black pants, sombrero, guitar and a wig...let's just say the morning arrived a little early for me. But as I lay in bed, I remembered that it was Mother's Day, and I knew I just couldn't miss Elizabeth's early soccer game! The kids had spent the night with Mike's parents, and we knew Grampa was taking E to her game, but we rallied and after a pit stop at Tim Horton's we made it to the game, moments after E scored a Mother's Day goal for me, yay! My mother in law and Em and Kate arrived shortly after, although their game wasn't due to start for over an hour, but they wanted to watch their sister. We all made a brief coffee/bathroom stop at Grammy's house between games, then back to watch the twins play. It had been quite warm out while Elizabeth played, but it had clouded over and the wind had picked up, making the day suddenly much colder than before. Em compensated by racing up and down the field chasing the ball with total abandon, except for when she was subbed out, where she danced around singing a song and watching the clouds race by. Kate was in goal for the second half. She looked very small and lonely at the far end of the field as she waited (I'm sure anxiously) for the action to come her way. Grampa and Elizabeth repositioned themselves over to the side of her for extra support, while we all watched from the other end, waving two thumbs up at her now and then. I was hoping she would remember that she could use her hands, as so many of the kids forget at this age and try to kick the ball away. I need not have worried, I mean, duh, if Kate could read the entire rule book before each game she would. We are talking about an overly prepared child. It is vitally important to her that she do things RIGHT. So when the other team managed to break away with the ball towards her, she didn't hesitate to dash out to meet them, hands out to snatch the ball away. Her form was excellent but unnecessary as it turned out, since the ball actually ended up taking a hard bounce off her thighs and veered off to the side, but a save it was nonetheless. We all cheered madly for her, and she survived the rest of her term in goal unscathed, un-scored upon. Meanwhile our team had run away with the game after a slow start - the other team's first half goalie had stopped everything that came her way, but the poor kid in the second half became completely overwhelmed and just got out of the way every time our team came near her. Their coach finally made a change, and as Em put it afterwards, she ALMOST scored 2 goals! Which seemed to please her about as much as if she had actually scored.
So. We retired home for lunch, and I had the great pleasure of opening the girls mother's day gifts that they had all made for me - the very best kind of course. Handmade clay bird sculptures from the twins, and a pot of parsley from Elizabeth, that she had apparently been hiding in all manner of different hiding spots in the house since bringing it home from school - under her bed, behind her dresser, under the window in the bedroom. She said she had to keep moving it so I wouldn't find it. Like I'm that good of a housekeeper...!Fortunately she had remembered to keep watering it from time to time. We headed over to my inlaws house again for an early dinner of Chinese food and finally made it home for the night just in time for bed. I was so glad to see Monday arrive that was I totally unstressed this morning when Kate pitched a fit as we were leaving, screaming that her shoelaces were double tied wrong - I just gathered her up with her school stuff and packed her into the van with everyone else and drove off to school humming along with the radio. Even she seemed to realize it had been a pretty weak attempt at sabotaging our morning, and smiled and kissed me goodbye when we got there. And now to play catch up with the rest of my life, aka laundry, groceries, and giving the dog some much needed attention. Happy Mother's Day everyone!