Sunday, June 17, 2012

Father's Day 2012

By the end of each weekday, I'm run down and exhausted.  Andrew rides home on his white horse (err, white Subaru) and saves the day. No matter how hard his day's been at work, he still finds enough energy to take the kids outside or chase Oliver around the house.

He has buckets full of patience.  He's genuinely interested in what Oliver wants to share with him.  He has a keen eye for wildlife and catches snakes and grasshoppers and other critters to show the kids.  He's the kind of guy the neighbor kids love to see outside, and they drag him around to show him their neat finds.  Actually, that type of thing happens everywhere.  When we go to the park or the mall play area, all the other kids see Andrew playing with Oliver, and they start demanding he "Watch me!" or "Look what I can do!"

The truth of the matter is that I couldn't do this whole parenting thing without him.  Parenting is hard, even though it's wonderful.  The house gets torn to pieces, there's lots of poop, and there's little sleep.  He deals with as many middle-of-the-night wake-ups as I do, but he gets up to start the day with the kids at 5am and often lets me sleep to 6am, sometimes as late as 7am.  I love Andrew as my husband and partner, but I appreciate him most as my children's father.  He's incredible.

For Father's Day, I decided to be the one to get up at 5am.  This was after handling two wake-ups from Jo and one from Oliver.  I felt like a zombie.  How does Andrew do this?

We set up his Father's Day loot, and Oliver colored on a card I whipped up.  We got him a new chopping knife he'd wanted, and we made him a photo gift.


I let Andrew sleep in until 8am, and then I woke him up to play Minecraft while I took the kiddos to Starbucks (I needed espresso).  When I got home, we all worked on making homemade waffles, which Andrew had requested.After waffles, we took a family stroll down to the creek.  It was about 10am, but it was already over 80 degrees out.







Following creek time and nap time, Andrew put his new knife to work and made us all delicious grilled veggie sandwiches.  Then, he and I alternated watching the kids so we could both get a haircut, because the temperatures outside reached 95, and we were miserable.

I came home to find Andrew and the kids playing with the water table.   They are so stinking cute.





We waited for things to cool off a little bit and then drove to Red Rocks to walk around a bit.  The scenery is breathtaking up there, but we were reminded there isn't much shade.  We walked around until we polished off all our water, and then we headed home.


In all, I think it was a great Father's Day, and I love celebrating my husband for all the work he does at home and with the kids.  Happy Father's Day, Andrew!

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