Cookin' on Mother's Day

All day on Saturday, Nalani kept asking when it would be night time. We couldn't figure out what was going to happen at night that made her so impatient. Finally, Nalani explained it to us.

"When it's night time pretty soon it will be Mother's Day."

And nobody was more excited about Mother's Day than Nalani. This is the first year she's been in preschool and she made her very first surprise for Mother's Day - a laminated picture of her hands...



It was a nice gift, but heck, we see those hand prints on the walls every day anyway.

This morning began very, very early when I was awakened by David, Bretty, Kekoa, Nalani & Malia - all of whom woke up at sunrise to help make a big Mother's Day breakfast. Everyone took a turn making pancake batter, cracking eggs, flipping pancakes and buttering the toast.

Although when Malia butters toast, you can count on far more butter than toast. Of course, that seems to be exactly as she likes it...



We also made a very rich strawberry shortcake topping for the pancakes that the kids loved when smeared in whipped cream. When combined with eggs, bacon and other artery hardening foods, it was a bit much.

Bretty absolutely wore himself out eating all that food...



After breakfast we got around to opening the Mother's Day presents. Apparently my children want to arm their mother with a very sharp knife and make sure she knows how to use it...



The functional gift was a really, really nice Katana 7-inch Santoku knife...



...and the various sharpening and storage tools to care for it and her other knives.

The fun gift was the Wii video game, Cooking Mama Cookoff.

The kids wanted their Mommy to practice cutting in the game before she used her new Katana knife...



Cooking Mama Cookoff is a competition in which two players go head to head in trying to correctly make a meal. Here is Mommy's shrimp sauteing on the top, and Nalani's on the bottom...



It was a tough contest viewed by the whole family...



Well, almost the whole family.

Alyssa slept in and didn't help make Mommy's breakfast so she got to clean up after the meal...



Then everybody decided to take advantage of this 95 degree day and join David in the pool (except Alyssa, of course, who had many urgent life-altering text messages about boys to respond to)...



Happy Mother's Day!