Mother's Day Out (A Day at the Races)

In other news, my Mom finally retired in June and she is enjoying it so much! When she came up for her yearly summer visit, we decided to surprise her with a retirement gift. Something many people do NOT know about my schoolteacher Mom... she has a serious lead foot. My Dad likes to tell the story about waking up while my Mom was driving a late night stretch through Kansas and looking over to see the speedometer over 100 mph. He was afraid she was asleep at the wheel, but she was just driving at a "comfortable" speed! I remember her mentioning on multiple occasions how she should have been a race car driver. When I was a kid, we called her Mommio Andretti.

Naturally, I decided the best way to kick off her retirement would be to put her in a REAL race car. After much combing of the Internetz, I found a racing school about an hour from our house that was offering a variety of racing experiences during her scheduled visit. Of course when I went to make a reservation, there were a few points on the form that gave me pause (namely the reminder that she would need to crawl through the car window, iffy knees and all). I decided it would be in everyone's best interest to spoil the surprise, so we told Mom what we were planning and she got the all-clear from her doctor.

My Mom is usually pretty reserved but she was so excited, and she obviously had so much fun. Adam designed a super cool Tshirt and we had it printed for her to wear for her race. The workers at the race school thought she and her shirt were pretty cool! There was a nice young man who basically picked her up and slid her through the car window and her driver went faster than all the other cars on the track. She even got a professional photo of herself in the car, mounted on a keepsake plaque. She had an absolute BLAST and we had a great time watching her!