Father’s Day 2010 was a good one. My all-time favorite memory of today was the twins coming home from Primary with photos of themselves, mounted on beautifully colored neckties, labeled with… the wrong names! When asked why they didn’t set the Primary straight on who is who, we got the classic answer–
“We didn’t know!”
I guess it doesn’t help when you can’t even tell yourselves apart.
Meanwhile, we decided to complicate things even more and throw another matching girl into the mix. Olivia couldn’t have been more tickled to be included in what has turned out to be a very exclusive duo…
Even if she doesn’t always get the memo on which direction to run.
Can you believe the color of our lawn (dad especially)? Photoshop need not apply. When our lawn guy promised he’d have it looking like this in a couple of months, I chuckled thinking what a great salesman he was. We are all pleasantly surprised. The only thing keeping us from running our toes through this luscious lawn is a measly couple of thousand violently angry fire ants, of which we have the man of the house to thank for spending hours upon hours slowly warding them off.
An impromptu shot of Ryan Jr. *
The people in the ward just started noticing I’m pregnant! I guess they have not recently seen me in a bathing suit. Every now and then it hits me that this really is the last baby…during the smooth sailing parts like today I think we may want more, but then the heartburn hits and I tell Ryan that we are never doing this again.
And what is a family event without corn on the cob–
and this girl?
The other day, that is before childproof doorknob handles on the pantry became an emergency, I caught Liv going through the trash and scarfing remnants of un-cooked corn on the cob! That is how much she loves it. I think she eats more of it than any member of the family, not even saving room for the main course or dessert.
And a special shout-out to the man behind the camera to whom I did actually shout out, ‘Put on a shirt so I can take a picture of you!’ And so he did and he got all handsomed up and I missed it due to rapidly increasing forgetfulness. At any rate I have loved celebrating you today, and the father you are to our girls.
And my own dad, and father-in-law, how blessed we are to have you in our lives. I hope everyone had a wonderful Father’s Day and got to chow down on some form of corn too.
*Not his real name, though with ten weeks to go we hope we can think of it soon.
The Pfourth
We had ourselves a lovely little Pflugerville Pfourth and kept things simple at our house with the Round Rock Barlows and Ryan’s parents. It was the last day of their visit, of which I will later document, so we had to show them a good time. Who can go wrong with a BBQ menu devised by not one but two pregnant women? Hands down, Lonna’s brisket took the cake for my favorite part of the 4th, but even not including food we really did hammer out some good memories.
James showed up with a box of some pretty hard core fireworks, complete with snappers and sparklers for the kids. Pretty much James and Ryan did the lighting while the rest of us watched out for five kids poking someone’s eye out. Gwen and Harry seemed to get the hang of the sparklers better than my three children, who kept putting them out in the bucket, halfway burned.
Liv and Grandpa Barlow.
and again with Ryan. Love that little tongue.
Little London hams it up for Grandma.
Ok so these fireworks were insane! Blinding, deafening, smoking, shooting fire in all directions. But really, who laughs in the face of danger more than these two? Not to mention, we totally showed up all two of our neighbors who were also setting off fireworks in broad daylight.
And the cheering section, of which I accidentally hopped up on about 2 lbs. of candy.
Liv and Grandma Barlow and said candy.
How nice was it to have two extra adults around to keep the kids away from fire?
I made Baby Liv slow down for a minute but apparently the sugar rush wins over a great picture hands down. I didn’t get a shot of Lonna that day! But I think by then we’d had enough of pregnant belly shots, not that Lonna’s even counts as a belly.
Ok so what is it about Roman Candles that makes some grown men revert back to age six? We finally talked these two into moving things into the backyard as they had previously ALMOST hit the house, the neighbor’s and our cars, oh and what was that about watching for poking out eyes? At any rate, this portion of the fireworks turned into some kind of sporting event, with the rest of us sitting on the porch swing yelling, “Watch out for the kids!”
Ultimately, our 4th resembled New Years where we did most of the celebrating about six hours in advance and wrapped things up right about bedtime. Throw in some apple pie, good conversation, and yummy chocolate covered Rice Krispy treats and there is my perfect kind of holiday. Later we watched fireworks over the lake right from our bedroom window, then I loved watching, and not being stuck in, the traffic on our street for the next two hours. So probably my first fourth with no mosquito bites, now there is one for the record!