To My Mother (and the answer to the riddle)

All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother. ~Abraham Lincoln

Today is my mom's birthday! I wanted to tell her happy birthday and dedicate this post to her and her wonderful life. It is rather long, yet still doesn't contain all the praise she deserves. I encourage you to read it and celebrate with me my wonderful mother! As an added incentive you must read this post in order to find out what those mysterious cubes were that I posted about a few days ago :)

To begin, this is a letter I wrote to my mom in May of 1988, so I was just shy of turning 7 years old. I have included a translation below in case you can't read some of my made-up spellings :)


Mom, I love you because . . . you help me when I get hurt. and let me sign up for gymnastics. and let me buy toys at the store. you're nice to me. you keep the garden pretty. you're pretty too. you do good hair-do's. I hope you love me, I love you, Love Lara

I smile as I look back on my child's perspective of things. If I were to write that same letter today I would say:

Mom, I love you because . . . you lift my heart when I am discouraged. and supported me (financially, emotionally, spiritually) through 3 degrees and 9 years of college. and spoil me with gifts I don't deserve. you're nice to me. you've helped me grow into the person I am today and have helped me to see that the world is a joyful and beautiful place. you're beautiful too. you do good hair-do's (I still have to come to you to get my hair french braided). I know you love me, I love you, Love Lara

There are so many things I love about my amazing mother. Here are just a few reasons she is so fantastic!

She is not afraid to be silly








She has a wonderful spirit of adventure and she (along with dad) filled our childhood with memorable experiences and traditions.

We went on many hiking excursions down in southern Utah during my early childhood. (Check out how sassy she is after having 3 kids!)



We always had a real Christmas tree (which has come to mean a lot to me as I have gotten older and realized how much extra work that takes). In later years we started to go and cut down our own tree which brought many wonderful memories.

No pictures for this one, but one of the things I remember most vividly about my childhood is mom taking us to different libraries and parks. We would drive all around the Salt Lake valley during the summer just to visit a library or a park that we had never been to. She did all that with 6 kids in tow! If that isn't an amazing sense of adventure I don't know what is! Here are some pictures of all the little rug rats she used to juggle (minus one, Andrea)





I don't know how she kept up with all of us! If there is one thing I can not thank my mother for it is instilling in me the false notion that motherhood is easy :) because she made it seem that way. I have very few, if any, recollections of her "losing it" as a young mother of six children under the age of 9. I have no doubt she had many opportunities to do so, but at least from my perspective she never did.

She's not afraid to make a mess!

Every year for Halloween mom would bake dozens of pumpkin shaped sugar cookies which we would then decorate. Letting six kids loose with frosting, sprinkles and candy is bound to be messy, but mom didn't mind because it meant time for us to be together and create memories. By the way, please ignore my scariness in this picture. I was going through a faze :)

Other messes she wasn't afraid to make were carving pumpkins with gooey pulp and all, dyeing Easter eggs, and letting us mix cookie dough with our hands (that is the only way to do it!).

She let us display our own personalities, encouraged our individual development and the pursuit of our interests.
One prime example of this can be found just by looking at each of our bedrooms. I don't have pictures of all our rooms, but here is Andrea in her PURPLE room!!! How many mom's let their kids paint their room purple?! And even more astonishing was that before this, the room belonged to Matt (the walls were white then) and he was allowed to have one entire wall he could use to do airbrushing on!

She is super smart!

Mom was the only one to guess dead on what my mysterious cubes were; salt crystals that spontaneously formed in homemade playdough! Perhaps from personal experience? I do remember her making homemade playdough quite often.

She has a love for traditions and holidays

As I have mentioned probably several times mom has filled our lives with traditions. I have grown to realize the significance of these traditions as I have grown older. They are what bring our family closer together and make us unique and unified. One of my favorite traditions is our Christmas brunch. After the gifts were opened mom would always get to work preparing a delicious feast! She would also always invite someone (or several someones) that needed somewhere to be on Christmas day, to join us in the meal. That is another thing I love about my mom; her sincere spirit of service and love. She has a unique gift of being able to reach out to others.



She is not only my mother, but my friend.




I think it is appropriate that the background to this picture of me and my mom is the BYU motto of "Enter to learn, go forth to serve." Of all the things I have learned from my mother, selfless service is probably the greatest. All her life she has been serving me, my family, all those around her, and most of all the Lord. She is a wonderful and incredible woman and I feel so blessed to have her as my mother.

Some final thoughts from others that describe my mother perfectly:

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie. ~Tenneva Jordan

A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after. ~Peter De Vries

I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. ~Abraham Lincoln

I love my mother as the trees love water and sunshine - she helps me grow, prosper, and reach great heights. ~Adabella Radici

A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts. ~Washington Irving

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!! I LOVE YOU!