We have a winner in our Mother’s Day Celebration contest! Congratulations to Karalee Hayes! Many thanks to all who participated. I have another contest that will start Monday, so if you didn’t win this one, maybe next time!

Karalee will be ordering up to $40 worth of merchandise from the NanaHood Store. Please visit it to see if there is something there you might like to give the nana in your life as a Mother’s Day gift. Click here- http://www.zazzle.com/nanahood

This week I had the pleasure of speaking to a charming troop of Girl Scouts. The topic was Mothers and Daughters and after I was finished the girls each read something they had written about their moms. I asked them if I could borrow their essays to share with you and they said yes.

Because Mother’s Day is right around the corner I’m going to be posting lots of things to honor mom. If you have a letter, a quote, a thought, a photo, or anything else you’d like to see on NanaHood about Mother’s Day, please send it to me at teresa@nanahood.com

From the Girl Scout Troop….

Hope Anderson, Age 7 writes about her mom, Brandy

I love my mom because she does a lot of stuff with me. She goes fishing with me and she is a nice mom. My mom is speacil to me.

Alayna Rea  Age 13 writes about her mom Susan

Last summer my sister and I went to camp and my mom came as a chaperone. At the camp we had two classes. Mine were cooking and art studies. My mom was a helper in art studio and she took pictures of my friends and me. We made a lot of cool things, such as paper mache sculptures and homemade chalk.

Madison Gray Age 13 about her mom, Rhonda

Me and my mom and my friend went to see the play Hairspray. We laughed at the whole play and had a good time together. After the play we were walking to the car and we saw a puppy behind the bushes. I said, “Oh, what a cute puppy.” Then it started barking at us. We were yelling and told mom to hurry and unlock the car door. I scraped mmy knee and my friend hit her head. It hurt but it was a funny pain. I had a good time with my mom!

Veronica Age 7 and mom Melissa

My favorite memory with mom is when she helped me golf. We went golfing at the Smoky Moungtains. It was fun. Me and mom had fun golfing.

Just in case you don’t remember how Mother’s Day got started….

In the United States, Mother’s Day was first suggested in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe  who was famous for writing the words to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”). But it was a woman who was never a mother herself who led the campaign for national recognition of Mother’s Day.

Anna Jarvis held a ceremony in 1907 in Grafton, West Virginia, to honor her mother, who had died two years earlier. Jarvis’ mother had tried to establish Mother’s Friendship Days as a way of dealing with the aftermath of the Civil War. Anna Jarvis began a campaign to create a national holiday honoring mothers. She and her supporters wrote to ministers, businessmen and politicians, and they were successful in their efforts.

In 1910, West Virginia became the first state to recognize the new holiday, and the nation followed in 1914 when President Wilson declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day. Jarvis used white carnations as a symbol for mothers, because carnations represented sweetness, purity and the endurance of mother love. (Today, white carnations represent a mother who has died, while red carnations represent a living mother.)

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