Mother's Day

I'll be the first one to admit that I have no idea when Mother's Day is in Norway, even though I give my mum a hug/present/cake/I do laundry/walk the dog/make dinner/buy flowers every year. (is it in February?)
But I do know when it is in France: tomorrow!

The reason I know this is because we celebrated it in church last night. And this celebration was sort of the big finale of two weeks hectic work to see it through. Camilla, Lydia, Emma and myself took on the responsibility to do a surprise thing for all the women in church on this Friday, whether mum or not (Do you have a mum? Happy Mother's Day!)

It's sounds easy enough, but it was crazy work. No one else knew about it, except Brendan who's approval we had to get. (Let me tell you I bet he got pretty tired of all of our wild ideas, he kept saying: 'just keep it simple girls, keep it simple'. We wanted colours! And ribbons! And music! And this! and that! :D)

Our idea was a small gift for every woman. That is about 450 presents... Just a small box with chocolate. As if that was easy!
I went into twelve different chocolateries; asking for chocolates, boxes, wrappings, colours, prizes, availability, discount, deliverance, how hard can it be to get exactly what we want!

Eventually we ended up with small orange, ivory green and ivory white boxes, with purple ribbons, and dark mint/coffee chocolate inside. The boxes were flat; we had to put them together, cut the ribbons, cut the paper, put in the chocolate, tie the ribbon around..... on 450 freaking boxes... in four evenings!
But hey, we did it!

And it was so beautiful. I really think that the women appreciated it, and that is truly what's most important. We put together a team of 20 people, 10 platters with boxes, and as Brendan announced the surprise, we walked in in a parade while Jay was alone on stage playing guitar, singing that boyzone song, you know, "it's amazing how you can speak right to my heart, na nana na something , you can light up the dark..." Beautiful!!

And the best thing of it all - apart from seeing the happy faces of all the women - was that we had BOBBIE HOUSTON in church! She came with her daughter Laura and daughter-in-law Lucille. We have waited so long (perhaps us girls the most) for her to come to Paris; Brian's been here twice, so it was really nice to have her. She is such an inspiration, a woman I really look up to. It was great fun to meet her as well, even though it was hardly more than a 'hello'. But still! We love her.

So this last week's been crazy. Crazy but so fun! I love doing things like this. Isn't it funny how girls just love things like this? Small gifts with ribbons and some chocolate, nothing much really, but oh so fun, and then Jay up on stage singing! It was so worth it all.

Today my plan is to RELAX, do laundry, maybe watch dvd's from last years's Colour in Sydney with Lydia or Sharlene, and go to Paul and Matt's tonight to play Monopoly.
I think we've deserved a slow-motion day...