Tomorrow is Caroline’s birthday party. She probably won’t remember it since she’s only almost-two years old, but she is aware of what having a party means, who her friends are and that it’s her special day. “BIRT-DAY PAH-TEE!?!?!?” she says, “YAH PAH-TEE!” I’m hoping her head doesn’t literally explode from awesomeness when she sees the sheer volume of cookies available for her endless consumption.

I’m as on top of my 246 point to-do list as I can be at this point, and my self-induced stress level is hovering around a 3 on a scale of 1-10. At 10:30 on Saturday it will be at an 11, but that’s why I bought the BIG bottle of whipped cream vodka to put on the hot cocoa bar. Thank goodness my parents are here to help with everything. EVERYTHING. My dad has crossed more stuff off my “maybe someday we’ll do this” list than I’ve crossed out in months, including dealing with the basement freezer. I don’t even want to TELL you what happened to the basement freezer. But it’s OK now, and hopefully my nightmares will stop soon.

Besides the home repairs and shockingly clean kitchen, my parents are also kick-ass with the kids. Having them here gives me a tiny taste of what it’s like to live near family and I am wildly jealous of those of you who have grandparent babysitting services available all the time. My eyebrows would never look terrible again. I could get a lady doctor check-up without my children in the room. I might see a movie IN THE THEATER without it costing $120. The pitch black hours between 5 pm and 7 pm with no hope of my husband coming home might not seem so soul-suckingly dark.

Basically, I love my parents and I’m not letting them leave. There are a lot of ducks that still need to be fed, and doing it with Mormor and Bumpa is way more fun.

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The kids call my mom “Mormor”, which is Swedish for Grandma. It’s hard to find stuff that actually SAYS Mormor on it (I can only get her so many mugs from the Scandinavian store) so we have to get creative. Take one craft apron, a cute saying, some fabric markers and a couple of willing coloring assistants and you’ve got a special birthday present for Mormor!

I set up the text on the computer and printed it on regular paper.

Then I used my window as a make-shift light box to trace the letters with a fabric pen. If you had better handwriting than me you could just write on the apron and/or make it look neater when you traced.

A couple of simple heart cut-outs worked as stencils.

My assistants needed a little help coloring around the edges so they didn’t go under the paper and to make sure the shape was clearly visible but they loved using ALL the colors.

And voila! A simple, one-of-a-kind present for Mormor’s birthday. I wrote “Happy Birthday” and “July 2012″ on the sides near the ties so she’d always remember the date and occasion. It would be an a great gift for Mother’s Day too – maybe with these potholders as a set? (Those are what I DID give the grandmas for Mother’s Day!)

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The kids an I made you a super cute present, but as usual I didn’t make it to the post office in time for you to get it on your actual birthday.

I bought cards for the kids to sign, but they decided to run off with the pens and  write on each other so I had to take them away.

We’re going to try to FaceTime you tonight, but I’ll have to convince Evan to stop watching PBS Kids on the iPad so I can borrow it long enough to connect.

But you’ve been a mom for half you life now, so none of that comes as a surprise to you.

Thanks for being a wonderful mom and a fantastic Mormor. Happy Birthday!

p.s. With your face right up there next to my face I don’t think ANYONE is going to say I look like Dad :)

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What, you didn't see that one coming?

While my husband and father did demolition in the basement, rewired the family room, fixed our plumbing problems, added gutters to the house, and hauled literal tons of crap to the dump (both cat and human ACTUAL CRAP as well as a zillion pounds of junk, trash and a treadmill I swore I would use every single day if only I could have one please pretty pretty please please), my mother and I took the baby down to Mystic. I know, my life is so hard. Let me tell you though, with the way the baby’s been acting recently I would rather be knee deep in poop than get smacked in the face one more time.

Luckily, my mom was with me and she has the patience of a saint. Or of a grandma. Same thing, really.

Also luckily, Baby Evan likes ducks so a 99 cent bag of duck feed and a few friendly quack quacks earned me 30 minutes of scream-free time.

Yes, this is my child running shoeless through Ye Olde Mysticke Villageeeeeee

World's most patient ducks. I feel like I owe them all writen appologies.

He really liked calling them "duhs! duhs!" and he tried to say "qwah!!" a couple times. Of course maybe he was saying "Dog" and "What is wrong with you woman, don't you see how dirty this ground is?"

My child looks even more hobo-like next to his MorMor (Swedish for grandma) since she always looks so classy. For the record it was 90 degrees that day so I thought his outfit was appropriate.

It’s times like these I am really really sad we live so far away from our family.

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