14 toddlers and 2 Mother's Day dinners

First of all, happy Mother's Day to all of you mothers out there! I hope you all had a wonderful day!

Today was a crazy day, to say the least. We were scheduled for nursery duty this morning at church, and we were almost really late because Chris and Emma had let me lay back down in bed and take a nap this morning and I almost overslept. Don't ask why they didn't come get me to have me get in the shower, because there's not a good reason why not. We did make it there, and we were only a few minutes late.

So it started out looking like it wasn't going to be too crowded, but they just kept coming. I had counted at one point and there were 11 kids, including Emma. THEN came the triplets. So 14 toddlers between 26 months and 3 years old, at least 4 of whom were inconsolable at one time or another. Between holding the criers, changing diapers, searching for the culprit of the stinky smell (which turned out to be our own darling Emma, by the way), taking kids to the potty and settling the whose-turn-is-it-with-a-particular-toy disputes, we had a hectic morning.

We stopped at McDonald's on the way home from church and picked up food, as I wasn't in the mood to wait to reheat leftovers, and I wanted to get Emma down for a nap as soon as possible. She loves taking apart her cheeseburger and putting the pieces back together over and over. It's pretty funny, but in all the fun she tends to forget to actually eat. We finished eating and got her down relatively quickly, which was nice.

We did our weekly video chats with both sets of grandparents after Emma woke up from her nap, and then we went to a restaurant called New Moon for dinner. It's very similar to PF Chang's, which I love.

We'd had our appetizer and had pretty much just started our entrees when one of the workers was moving a chair from the table next to us and lifted it over his head so as to not run into anyone by accident. He ended up hitting a light fixture hanging just over me to my left and broke a big chunk of it off. It crashed loudly to the floor and shattered in a million pieces. The guy immediately checked to make sure I was OK and Emma was OK (she thought it was an awesome show and was fine). It didn't hit me at all, but there was a broken shard of glass in my food.

So they took away all our food and replaced all our drinks, plates and silverware. We had new entrees in under 5 minutes. It was incredible. They kept coming over to check on us, and the guy that did it was so apologetic. I felt so bad for him, because it was just an accident. He felt awful. Throughout the rest of our time there, Emma kept talking about the light falling down and crashing and getting broken. It was so funny. Did they give us a free meal? No. You must have to actually get injured to warrant a free meal. But we were stars for the rest of our time there. We had so many people on their way out stop and comment on how beautiful and expressive Emma is. By the way, she was wearing the cutest little dress today. Here is a picture of it.
She wore a cropped white sweater over it and black Mary Jane Crocs. Adorable.

So all in all, it was an eventful, crazy day. But I got the cutest Mother's Day card from Chris and Emma. Here is the picture from the front of it. How cute is this??
That's all for now. More later.

Always remember: Sometimes it pays to have stuff fall on you.