The Day We Celebrated Father's Day

So I love that Father's Day gives us a chance to honor and recognize the Father's in our lives. To start with, I am so grateful for the wonderful father that Kyle is to our girls. He definitely knows how to make things fun and can definitely do things with them that I would never think of. For example, an after-work favorite at our home is a good old-fashioned game of "Steam Roller." That activity involves Kyle grabbing one or both of the girls and while they roll along the living room floor over and over each other they sing "I'm a STEAM Roller..." The game ends when they laugh so hard they can't roll anymore or when Brooke remembers that as the smallest component of the steam roller she doesn't always have as much fun as the other two do because she actually does get squished. Most of the time though, they love it and so do I because as I finish up making dinner just one room away I smile just from the happy sounds of hysterical laughter coming from three of my favorite people. Kyle absolutely adores both of them and the fact that Katelyn loves to watch "How It's Made" with him is as good as having a boy to play Legos with. He is a great dad and I am so thankful that he loves being a dad and loves our wonderful daughters.

I am also so blessed to have such a wonderful dad. As an only child, my dad and I have always been very close and done so many fun things together. It stated out with us cleaning out this fish bowl and signing songs that we made up the words to while we did it. We would follow that with a game of "ball in the hall" (rolling the ball back and forth) which lead to our favorite game of all time, "Ball Chase." We would take a plush ball (by request of my mom) and run through the house and all around outside at lightening speed while throwing a ball to tag each other. It rocked and somehow my mom let us do it and no one ever broke an ankle flying down the staircase off the back deck. Those were good times.

We also found other less rambunctious activities to occupy our time. One of my favorites involved marching around our house together when I was little with picket signs, chanting "We want a pup! We want a pup!" It actually worked and we got a dog. There were also Saturday morning donut runs, golf lessons and him teaching me to through a tight spiral pass with a football. We played countless games of ping pong and would laugh so hard we would cry. Then, when I was in high school we got a pool table and he taught me to play. Even though I can give everyone else a run for their money when I play, my dad still kicks my trash EVERY TIME. So then we play "James Bond: Goldeneye" on the Nintendo 64 so that I can clean his clock.

My dad also always let me help him with anything he was working on and taught me as much as possible... that wasn't always easy since I thought I already knew everything. We fished wires through the walls to install an intercom system, installed a fence and sprinkling system, waxed cars, mowed lawns, painted walls and much more. Knowing what I know now, I realize that I wasn't actually helping. I was probably really slowing him down and making it much harder for him to finish, but he never made me feel that way. In fact I was convinced that he couldn't have done it without me. My dad has ALWAYS supported me in anything and everything I have done or that I wanted to do. Not only did I know I had his support, but I knew that he truly believed I could do it, even when I was sure that I couldn't. Recently I have been on a home improvement rampage and last week as I was dangling from a ladder installing a ceiling fan during a lightening storm and loving every minute of it (OK, almost every minute of it), I realized that the way he always encouraged me actually stuck and now today I just get in and try it. My dad "gets" me and loves me in spite of all my idiosyncrasies. In fact, I think some of those are his favorite parts.

Today, he is known as "Pop" to two granddaughters that are crazy about him. They have such a neat relationship and I love watching them spend time with him the way I did. Even though we don't live close by, he makes such an effort not to "miss" anything and make the most of the time we are together. I love you so much dad! Thank you for everything.

I am also grateful for Kyle's dad. Dick passed away nearly three years ago... I am so glad that we always made the most of the time we had when we were together. I loved watching him interact with Kyle - sitting a the kitchen table while they would talk was always so fascinating and fun. He had better stories than anyone I've ever known and the way he told them made them even better. He was also my one and only grapefruit buddy and would sit and visit with me about anything and everything. He immediately treated me like I was one of his own daughters and even made sure that he and Carol made it to Salt Lake for graduation when I finished Graduate school. I didn't even want to go to the ceremony, but they were there to support me and it meant so much. Dick even got me out of my comfort zone when I went on one of his shooting trips with the "fancy" guns (I am not listing the gun by name/type because I don't want any weirdos that Google that kind of stuff finding my blog). We all laughed so hard at my reaction to the kickback that I think we cried - after that he called me Annie Oakley. He adored Katelyn and she loved him right back. I am so glad that she remembers him and that she is confident that we will see him again someday. He was a wonderful man and I am so grateful for the legacy he left behind.

I am also blessed to have countless other wonderful "fathers" in my life and in my girls' lives. We have wonderful grandfathers, great-grandfathers, uncles, great-uncles and pseudo-uncles (my friends' husbands and the dads of Katelyn's friends) that have such a big roll in our lives. I realized the other day that my girls truly have no idea what a "bad dad" is... they have all of these amazing men around them that love them and support all of us unfailingly. That is so rare and so wonderful. So I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you wonderful men for all that you do and for making my job so much easier. I couldn't do it without you. Happy Father's Day!