Mother's Day Redux

Short version: it wasn't as bad as I feared and turned out better than I hoped.

Brunch went well. Did most of the cooking and prep work Saturday. Went with a fairly simple menu. We had two berry sparkling lemonade; eggs scrambled with lox and chives with red onion, tomatoes and capers on the side; roasted garlic potatoes; roasted asparagus; grapefruit, avocado and butter lettuce salad with poppy seed vinaigrette; pasta salad with chickpeas, feta and and dill, mini bagels and cream cheese; and grapefruit upside down cake with fresh grapefruit-infused whipped cream. Volunteers brought fruit and veggie sides.

Made too much of some things and just right amounts of others; still need to fine tune that part. There were seven adults and five small children altogether. I'm a big lame-o for taking photos of the food but forgetting to take any pictures of the guests. D'oh! I guess it probably wouldn't be kosher to post pics of them on my blog without permission--and to get permission, I'd have to admit to having the blog (where I write unflattering rants about People We Know). It's just easier not to.

PK got agitated and I toted him off to the bedroom to cool off a couple of times, but I didn't have to lock him up. The little girls and two adult cat lovers were disappointed he wasn't friendlier. The little girls had a grand time playing with my salt & pepper shaker chess set and trying to pet the other kitty.

We packed up the foodstuffs in time to get to church. True to form, the service was unique. The opening hymn was "Come Listen to a Prophet's Voice;" the sacrament hymn was "Father in Heaven, We Do Believe," the rest hymn (during which I rebelliously stayed seated) was "Hope of Israel," and the closer was "Today While the Sun Shines." I don't know who's picking the songs, but on Mother's Day, they were curiously all about listening to men, preparing for battle and work.

The speakers weren't much of an improvement. The youth speaker was the only one to focus on Mother's Day. The mission president's wife said how glad she was Heavenly Father made her a girl so she could be a mother and how glad she was that all the missionaries would get to talk to their mothers that day. The mission president bookended his talk about missionary work with a couple of mother-related statements.

Trend spotting: 1) Musically uncoordinated services, despite the handy hymnal subject headers on Easter, Home or Family and 2) the Talks of the Passing Mention, during which the speaker gives a nod to the holiday or event observance but proceeds to give a talk indistinguishable from those delivered on any other Sunday.

Sigh. They had leftover Mother Tribute plants, so I scored two.