06/16/2013-- Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to the two best dads I know-- my own, and my kids'.
It wasn't too spectacular of a Father's Day for Ben, but I hope he liked it anyway.  Regular church day-- he even had meetings before church-- no breaks for the dads on Father's Day.  But after church I made him a variation his favorite meal, meat loaf, baked potatoes, and corn.  At least, it used to be his favorite, I haven't asked him recently if it still is.  In any case, it was what we had on hand, so I'll stick with it still being his favorite meal.  :-)  We had meat loaf, roasted potatoes, corn on the cob, salad, and watermelon.   And roasted bananas for desert.  I am going to make a blog post on its own about roasted bananas.  It has become my family's favorite treat.
I also managed to get some pictures of Ben and the boys, which I realize are more for my benefit than his, but someday he'll like looking at them.  :-)

The boys look particularly thrilled to be there, don't they?  :-)  They were wanting me to hurry up because the mosquitoes were biting them, and they wanted to get back inside to finish a computer game before they "died."  Priorities, right?  :-)

I talked to my dad on the phone as well, and spent an hour or so looking back through old pictures of my childhood finding ones with my dad in them.  There aren't a whole lot because he was almost always the one taking the pictures.  It reminds me to ask Ben to take pictures sometimes, and not just posed I-set-up-the-shot-Ben-snaps-the-picture shots.  I don't think he has ever picked up a camera on purpose to take pictures just because he wanted to in our whole marriage!  I really need to work on that.  :-)
But my dad did, and I'm glad, because I so love looking back on those pictures.  Here are a few of my dad.

 Daddy with his 1st baby, Rosalynde.

 Daddy with his 2 babies, Rosalynde and Gabrielle.

Daddy with his 3 babies, Rosalynde, Gabrielle, and Naomi.

 Daddy with his 4 babies, Rosalynde, Gabrielle, Naomi, and Brigham.

From here on out I could no longer find any with just Daddy and all of his kids.  I think it took at least 2 adults to manage all of us in a single picture.  :-)  Anyway, this is Daddy with his 6 babies, Rosalynde, Gabrielle, Naomi, Brigham, Rachel, and Jacob!

One of my favorite pictures of our family of all time.  This was the 4th of July in 1988.  Daddy and his 7 babies, Rosalynde, Gabrielle, Naomi, Brigham, Rachel, Jacob, and Benjamin (right to left).

Daddy with his 8th baby, Abraham.  This was just a couple of months before my brother Jacob died, and a hard time for our family.  We did get some family pictures with all 8 of us kids before Jacob died, but I don't have those scanned in.

And here is Daddy with his Rachel on her baptism day, and his 9th baby, Christian.  I love little Abraham looking on from the edge of the frame.  I couldn't find any pictures of our entire family with Christian before Eva was born.  That was the year Rosalynde left for college, so occasions for all of us being in a picture at the same time were limited.

And here is Daddy with his 10th baby, Eva!  This picture is a little blurry, and I'm sure Mama loves pictures of herself minutes after giving birth, but I do love Daddy's expression in this picture.

And, one of the last pictures of our entire family all together in our scanned slides.  This was when I was being dropped off at Rice for my freshman year.  Not a great look for me that year, but we were still a pretty impressive-looking family, I think.  I'm not sure what the other freshmen families there that day made of us, but I was always pretty proud of my family, and took special enjoyment out of listing all of my siblings to my new college friends-- Rosalynde, Gabrielle, Naomi, Brigham, Rachel, Jacob (we all wish he were in this picture), Benjamin, Abraham, Christian, and Eva!  :-)
Isaac was born 2 years later, and now he has the honor of bringing up the rear in the litany of Frandsen names: Rosalynde, Gabrielle, Naomi, Brigham, Rachel, Jacob, Benjamin, Abraham, Christian, Eva, and Isaac.
Thank you for all of my siblings, Daddy!