Father's Day

Happy 8th year of being a father, Ben!
This picture was taken after much painful prodding. Brigham and Mosey were willing, Joseph as usual was not. I told Ben to go get him, and this is what Ben says: "Come on Joseph, Mom wants to take a picture. I know she always wants to take millions of pictures, and no one wants to take them except her. But she's going to make us take a picture, so just get over here and take it fast."
Thanks for the support, Ben! :-)
Someday he'll thank me for the pictures.
I didn't have any great Father's Day gift for him, and I felt bad. The boys got him some bags of candy. I wanted to get him a mixer for the bread he likes to make. He's not sure he needs one, so I was hoping to buy one and let him try it out, and if he didn't like it, to take it back. But the more research I did, the more I realized that the best bread mixer out there is a Bosch, and there is no place around here to buy one. I'd have to order it online, and then it's not quite so easy to return if he doesn't like it. So instead I just didn't get him anything. I'm nice like that.
The boys colored these cute paper ties at church with this sweet poem about dads. At the bottom there's a space for them to write their name, and they were to give them to their dads after church. Well, Mosey and Brigham nicely color theirs to give to Ben, but Joseph, the stinker, instead colored dark blue (he told me they didn't have black) over the poem, and at the bottom instead of his name, wrote, "This is not true" with an arrow pointing to the poem. What a sweet kid! The funny thing is, though, he *is* a sweet kid. He is very affectionate and sweet, as long as you don't demand it of him, or point it out. He'll hold Ben's hand when they're walking into stores together. At church, he'll grab my hand and pull my arm around his shoulders. He's very snuggly and affectionate, it just has to be on *his* terms.
Ben is such a good dad, though, truly he is. One of the first really strong impressions I had of Ben when we were dating (and not even dating seriously) was one day when we were driving back to Provo from Gunnison, where we had spent the day with my family who were up from California. My little sister Eva, who was 2 at the time, wanted to come up with me and spend the night in my apartment, so she rode back up with Ben and me in his green Ranger. He stopped to get gas, and as he was walking back to the truck after paying inside, and I was sitting with my arm around Eva, it hit me really strongly that *this* guy would be a great father. And he has not disappointed.