It’s 4:33am and my coffee is made, the dogs are fed but the paper is not yet here. I remember Father’s Day last year vividly. We had a bbq down at Uncle T and Aunt B’s and Grandpa (my dad) came in using a walker. He was still of sound mind but you could tell he was hurting a bit from falling a week or so earlier. It wasn’t too much longer until he passed away, in fact, it was about 2 months later to the day. It’s been a long year for all of us, especially my Mom. I don’t want to dwell too much on this to make my Mom sad but it’s important to remember what a great guy he was. My dad was the most unselfish, caring, humble, honest, hard working man anyone could ever know. The tragedy of the whole thing was that at the time of his life when he should have been able to enjoy the fruits of his life long labors, he was no longer able to. I believe God has a master plan for us all and this was all just part of his plan for my dad, so no reason to be sad. I’m sure he’s looking down on all of us right now from heaven where he’s probably God’s #2 making sure everything up there is running smooth and fair.
So today let’s all celebrate our Dads. You see to me Father’s Day is not really a holiday for me (even though I’m a father), Â it’s still about my Dad. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll enjoy the day and all the extra attention from kids, it’s just deep down it’ll still be a day for my Dad. I won’t go into all the great memories I have, but for me, everyday I try to be more and more the type of man he was. Even though he’s gone, he’s still such a big influence on my life, I think about him everyday and often ask myself, what would Dad do. If I end up being half the man he was, I’ll be ok. Anyhow, like I said, he’s looking down on all of us and is happy and at peace, it’s just I (and everyone else) miss him very much.
Now onto the day, yesterday morning the little one had two swim races, the freestyle and the back stoke. He placed 3rd (I think) in the first race and 2nd in the next. He was so cute and we were so proud of him. He was in heats 18 and 54 so we finished around 10am. After this we headed home and then decided to run over to Bed Bath and Beyond. I remember a friend of ours telling me a while ago that she took this air humidifier/purifier back a few years after she bought it and they took it back no questions asked. As it turns out we had the same one so on a lark I called the store, kindly explained I had the same unit and told them how it didn’t really work, and that I didn’t have a receipt and must have bought it 2 to 3 years ago. Much to my surprise they told me to bring it in and they’d look it up and give me store credit! For the next half hour the misses and I frantically searched the house looking for this thing hoping we didn’t throw it out. She finally found it tucked into a corner of the garage so we loaded up the kids and headed off to the store. When we got there I took it up to the counter and found the young man I talked to on the phone. He looked at the thing and said, “oh yeah, the Venta, they went out of business”. He then explained he’d look up the last price but thought it was around $50 and I’d get that much in store credit. We were thrilled and said “great, we’ll start shopping while you look it up”. Now I didn’t remember what I paid but when I came back up to the counter, he told me I had $199.95 in store credit! Wow, what a surprise. So after some more shopping we came home with about $240 worth of new, much needed items for the house for a mere $40!
After we got home my Mom called and asked if we (the misses and I) wanted to go out to a nice adult place for dinner with her and Uncle T (Aunt B is out of town) for Father’s Day. Now we didn’t have a sitter for the boys and I knew they’d want to be included, plus it’d be at least $200 or more to go to dinner, so I suggested to my Mom that we just get some good food and cook it up here for about a third of the cost. She said she’d get back to me. About a half hour later Uncle T called and asked if we wanted to come to a dinner party at his house. So at about 5pm, we all (Grandma, the boys, the misses and I) headed down to Uncle T’s for a great dinner of steak, crab, asparagus and sauteed mushrooms. It was a really good meal and even a better time at at least half the cost of going out. We hung out in the backyard and after dinner Grandma decided to go home. The misses then went to give Bunkie his evening shot while the boys and I hung out with Uncle T. When the misses returned, we were sitting in the backyard enjoying the evening and Grandma called just to talk. Uncle T tried to convince her into coming back but wasn’t having much luck so he handed the phone to the misses who I told to just say, “I’m coming up to get you in the truck” and then quickly hang up the phone. She did this and 10 minutes later, Grandma was back enjoying the evening with us. We joked that as soon as she got back, we would all say, “we’re tired now, ok time to go”! After another hour’s worth of conversation and laughs we took Grandma back home and headed home with the boys. They were pretty amped up from the Orange Cush soda with dinner but finally headed off to bed.
Today I’ll bbq up some chicken for us all around 5. Aunt B should be home from Pueblo by then so it’ll be Grandma, Uncle T, Aunt B, and us for dinner. Hope the weather holds out as were supposed to get some afternoon storms.
The house is still pretty clean and after we go to the gym and probably head up to Red Rocks to go hiking, I think I’ll tackle the garage. I need to do a little bit of work before tomorrow morning but’ll probably just get up at 4 tomorrow to do this. I have a 6am flight Tuesday so I’ll be getting up at 3:30 then so I might as well get in the groove.
I think I’ll go for a run or hit the elliptical machine downstairs for a cardio workout before everyone wakes up. I should run to the store for the misses since I just used all the half and half which I know she likes in her coffee. One more thing I just have to tell you. The misses was telling me a story yesterday about our oldest yesterday that’s too funny. It seems he was riding home from soccer or something with his good friend whose Mom was driving. Suddenly she snapped at the boys for some unknown reason and quickly caught herself and told the boys that she was sorry and out of line for losing her cool and yelling at them. Our oldest then replied, “it’s ok, my Mom gets pheromones too”. Now of course he meant hormones, we think, but how funny is that!
So to close, think of some fond memories of you and your dad, and enjoy the day as tomorrow it’s back to kids day, which is everyday right? Take care and God Bless,
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