Monday, May 12, 2014

My Mother's Day was Just Ducky!

Quack, quack! I went up to Eugene, Oregon, home of the University of Oregon, to spend Mother's Day Weekend with my son Henry. The school mascot is a duck, and I was delighted to find actual ducks walking around campus. This fine fellow was right outside of  Henry's dorm.  The weekend was organized by his fraternity, Sigma Chi, and I was looking forward to meeting many of his friends and their mothers, as well as spending time with my boy.  I arrived on Friday, met up with Henry, and took him to the mall to do some shopping. I bought him a football jersey as a belated birthday present.
That's his roommate, Kent, photo-bombing. Kent is also in the same fraternity (as is Kent's cousin), and Kent's mom and Aunt stayed in the same hotel as me, and we spent lots of time with them.  In addition to his jersey, Henry needed new shoes and more socks. He thought someone was stealing socks from his laundry, until I explained to him that disappearing socks are just a fact of life when it comes to laundry. No one's stealing them, I told him, it's just what happens. And I reminded him of the basket in our laundry room at home which contains about 30 single socks (which had admits to never having noticed). We went back to the hotel and had calzones and cookies delivered before calling it a night!
On Saturday, we went to the Eugene Saturday market, where he bought me a nice bracelet for Mother's Day, and then we played in a mother-son miniature golf tournament with other members of his fraternity. Everyone was really nice.
Afterwards, we went for a walk to the football stadium.
You walk down a path, past the field where Henry plays intramural softball and then over a bridge and into the forest.
Before you know it, you emerge from the woods to see Autzen Stadium:
Afterwards, we went out to a lovely dinner with the rest of Henry's pledge class and then off to a couple of parties. The parties were really fun! I drank, I danced, I played drinking games, I chatted with other moms, I drank some more . . . you get the idea. It's been a long time since I've done anything like that, but I was none the worse for wear in the morning!
Henry and I went to the movies (a low brow Seth Rogan comedy called Neighbors, which fit the theme of the weekend perfectly because it was about a fraternity moving into a suburban neighborhood). And then it was time for me to head home.
All-in-all, it was a lovely weekend. Hope yours was too!

19 comments:

Fiona@Staring at the Sea said...

Sounds perfect :o)

Melissa said...

So glad you had a wonderful weekend & Mother's Day! (Although I have to admit that we don't lose socks in the laundry here! LOL)

scrappyjacky said...

Sounds like a wonderful weekend.

Lesley G said...

What a lovely day :)

Missus Wookie said...

Sounds like a great weekend - Wookie would approve of any university that has ducks :)

Sian said...

It sounds like a wonderful weekend.

When we were at college laundry was a bit of a task because you had to keep going back to see when there was a free machine. Now TTO books a machine by internet. The missing sock thing hasn't changed, though.

Anonymous said...

What a lovely way to spend the weekend.

Karen said...

What a cool thing for a fraternity to host! Sounds like a blast!

Deb @ PaperTurtle said...

Aw, I love this post, Rinda! I'm so glad you got to spend your Mother's Day weekend with Henry and it sounds like he knew how to show you a really good time. Love it!

debs14 said...

Sounds like a perfect Mother's Day weekend.

Lizzie said...

Sounds like a great time! Glad Henry is so happy at college.
Mysterious about disappearing socks - though I've never really had this problem... perhaps I've just been lucky not to have sock-eating washing machines?

alexa said...

Lovely photos of you together :). And I smiled in sympathy about the sock-disappearing fact of life, having found five single ones of my own and no matching ones this morning. Glad you were able to let your hair down a bit!

Irene said...

Sounds Like you both had a great time. Hope you didn't embarrass him too much with your dancing. Just kidding (LOL)

Anonymous said...

It sounds like it was a wonderful weekend and sounds like he was a great host.

~*~Patty S said...

sounds like a perfectly lovely and memorable Mother's Day Rinda!
Eugene is a place we would like to visit one day ...
having ducks greet you really put a smile on my face...
it made me wonder what it would be like if they had turkeys/Hokie birds roaming on the Virginia Tech campus ;)when our son went there
oxo

Denise said...

I kept up with your photos on f book - lovely to see you having a good time with your boy x

Amy said...

Snort! Rinda - reliving your own uni/college days?!

Sounds like a great weekend and a lesson for Henry to know that his mum is capable of anything and always able to keep up with him and his mates!

Annie Claxton said...

Sounds like a perfect weekend Rinda, your son is a wonderful young man you must be so proud of. Great series of photos - I must say that the duck is my favourite! :o)

Becky said...

Sounds a wonderful weekend :)