Happy Father's Day to Daddy and all the other fathers in our family. I hope you had a great day.
During Sacrament meeting, one of the speakers spoke beautifully about some specific experiences he had with his father and a couple of other father-figures in his growing-up years. So after Sacrament meeting I stayed on our bench and wrote down a few of my favorite memories of growing up with Daddy. Here they are in no particular order:
Twenty Reasons Why I'm So Glad Daddy Was My Daddy
- Upside-down rides!
- Parade of the house on Christmas morning + Santa's letter.
- Father's blessings the night before the first day of school.
- Staying up late, listening to the Space Music program that came on the radio at midnight, studying on the brown rocking chair in the living room, with Daddy working at his desk. It always made it easier to stay up studying when he was up with me.
- Listening to Dodgers games, or sometimes attempting to listen to the faint sounds of BYU basketball over the static on the radio.
- Holding onto Daddy's finger when we would go on errands together.
- Learning to appreciate Gregorian Chant.
- Daddy taking me to the ER after I fell off my bike and busted my lip. It was the first and only time I ever got stitches from an accident growing up (Naomi, have you ever counted how many sets you had? :-)), and having Daddy there with me helped me to be brave.
- Going to Daddy with calculus problems that had me stumped. Most of the time he was able to help me. :-)
- Working in the garage with Daddy building my mouse trap for GATE. I still remember that awesome mouse trap! I wonder how many mouse traps Daddy made with his various children going through that program?
- Spelling quizzes in the car on long road trips.
- Stories of his life on the farm as a kid, on long road trips.
- Long complicated descriptions of the mechanics of the various farm tools he grew up with, on long road trips.
- Listening to oldies on the radio while helping him to wash the cars.
- Running downtown with Daddy while training for marathons. That was a 16 mile run, wasn't it?
- Hanging out at Daddy's office on Saturdays-- watching Gidget and other old TV shows on the TV in the conference room, eating sugar cubes from the coffee service in the cupboards (I still remember those sugar cubes in the pink boxes). Fun times!
- Riding in Daddy's Datsun, singing, "Buy a Datsun! It's good for you! It's good for me? It's good for you!"
- Listening to Rush Limbaugh and cutting my teeth on politics with Daddy. I still remember vividly the time he explained Laffer's curve to me. It was such a revelation and marked an important milestone in my political development.
- Daddy throwing us across the pool at our Palm Drive house. That's how he kept in such good shape-- throwing all his kids around!
- Daddy picking me up from PYSO in his Mercedes, listening to Hugh Nibley lectures on the car ride home.
I think Ben had a good day. No breakfast in bed, but I did make him omelets before church. And that's something, because church-day breakfasts are usually granola bars in the car on our way to church. :-) After church he took a nap and then went home teaching with Brigham (who gave the lesson!) while the other boys and I stayed home and made dinner. Beef and broccoli stir fry, plus peach cobbler. A bit of an unusual combination, but I didn't manage to get to the store this weekend, so I was stuck with what we had on hand. And it was good! The boys wrote cute and funny cards for Ben, and for a present, I bought all of us Mitt Romney T-shirts plus a Romney decal for Ben's car. He's never put a bumper sticker or anything on any car he's ever owned before, but he told me a few days ago that he wished he had one for Mitt. I hope he liked that present! After dinner the boys and Ben and Sandy had a rousing game of chase and tackle in the front yard, and then the boys watched the pilot episode of The A-Team (man, those old 80's TV shows were CHEESY!) while Ben and I kept working at the kitchen sink.
This rest of the week was busy! It was (finally) the last week of school lessons. We didn't end with quite the bang that I had hoped, but it was still pretty decent. Now I'm excited for summer! We are dog-sitting the Dew's little puppy again, which adds another element of chaos into the household. Puppies are SO cute, and a whole lot of work. Just like human babies. :-) Blaze (the puppy) thinks a really fun game is to dart up to Sandy and nip at her ears or tail. Sandy does not think this is a fun game. Lots of loud barking generally ensues. We got granite installed in our kitchen and bathrooms on Thursday. Things are still a chaotic mess around here. We now have the kitchen sink installed and functioning, the dishwasher functioning (although still not bolted into place correctly), and the faucets installed in the master bathroom. Although the PVC drain pipes under the sinks are still not finished. At least the faucets look pretty! I have been to Lowes about 6 times over the past week. We decided kind of at the last minute to upgrade our appliances to stainless steel, since we had to get a new dishwasher and microwave anyway. Ben has been wanting to get our house all fixed up, in case we need to sell the house. No particular plans for doing so, but I guess it makes him feel good to know he's got an escape route, should he need it. :-) The kitchen and bathrooms have been high on his list of things to take care of before we could sell our house. At the end of this week we are having someone come in and remove the old wallpaper from the master and upstairs bathrooms, and texture and paint the walls. After that our house should be nearly ready to put on the market if we ever need to. Or we can just live in a nicer, fixed up house! I'm hoping Ben will like the changes so much he never wants to move! :-)
So, with music lessons, practicing, school lessons, and the upheaval of having workers in the house and the general disruption that big giant messes bring about, it was a busy week.
Speaking of big giant messes, the lady who has been cleaning our house for the past 4 years has retired. And I don't think we're going to hire anyone else. I think it's time for the boys to start taking on some of these jobs themselves. I'm hoping this summer will be a good time to ease them into more formally scheduled chores. I'm hoping the extra elbow-grease they have to spend in keeping the house in working order will in general help them feel more accountable and less inclined to make big giant messes in the first place. :-) Anyone have good advice on teaching kids to do housework?
Well, that's it for tonight I think. I always write the worst, most disorganized family letters. Sorry! I love you anyway! I have to go to bed because I have to get up early and marshal the boys into a cleaning brigade. Someone is coming to look at our fridge later in the morning (I listed it on Craiglist), which means that we need to unload most of the stuff in it into our garage refrigerator, and then clean it out. My boys are totally going to think that is an awesome first-day-of-summer-vacation activity. :-)
Love,
Gabrielle
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