Father's Day (Observed)

When your daddy goes out of town on the evening of Father's Day, you have to be adaptable.

We tried to make Sunday morning special, but we saved the big guns for when Dan returned from Canada last night.

I got the great idea to film the kids answering questions about Dan from a friend. Which led to me going through our ENTIRE digital photo collection (that is a ton of pictures, people) to add a photo montage onto the end of the video.  When I realized how long it was going to take me to put it together, I suddenly felt really lucky that our celebrating would be delayed.

We really love our daddy so much.

I was doing the dishes while he was gone (his usual daily contribution) and I don't know what got into me, but I started to cry as I thought about the way my life had turned out because of him.  I cry a lot, but I surprised myself enough that as the first tear fell, I actually thought, "Oh crap, am I pregnant?!"

The answer to that question would be a gigantic, NO.

I just have a really great man in my life who makes me feel like I can do anything as long as he's with me. And, apparently, like I could cry just thinking about him.

We made the best of his time away, taking advantage of the beautiful, not too hot weather.

Jack had his first swing on his 9 month birthday, which probably breaks some sort of  Maximum Age of First Swing law.

He may have had to wait his whole life, but he was too busy loving it to be disappointed.


And we had a nacho picnic with popsicles AND pudding for dessert. Which brought many accolades, including Best Mom Ever.

But the next day, we went to work.

I stayed up too late finishing the video, we shopped for some presents, and the kids worked on the banner, balloons, and cake.

I wish I could say that one of the kids wrote the message on this cake, but it was all me.  I have no future as a cake decorator.

The kids came up with a plan.  Upon our return from picking him up from the airport, they would go in the house first.  Then Dan would come in through the front door.  They would wait on the upstairs landing and throw balloons over the edge on him as he read the banner they'd hung up.

It worked perfectly.

Then we ate his requested taco dinner and watched the video together. (I'm posting the youtube link instead of the actual video here, because I'm pretty sure blogger wouldn't put up with a file so big. Also, the first part where the kids are talking is very quiet.  I added captions, but you may want to turn the volume up for the first 6 minutes.  The photo montage has normal volume, so you'll want to turn it down a bit when that part comes.)


He loved it all.  And we love him.

Happy Father's Day to the best dude in town!