Happy Father's Day

Dad had a great start to his morning today. He woke up bright and early and made pancakes for everyone! Hey, in our defense, we would have made him breakfast but he likes his pancakes better than Mom's waffles. After breakfast we headed off to church. It was a little hard to concentrate though since Kim, Ben, and the boys came. Isaac is a real irreverent child, and Aaron, although he was a happy happy baby, was not quiet.

Yesterday all the girls came together to make a birthday dinner for Mom, and today we all worked together to make a Father's Day dinner for Dad. Kim made a jello salad, joy and made a corn souffle and a dessert, and Dana made the salad and meat pie. We needed to be eating by 1:00pm so that Joy would have enough time to make it to the airport. Well that didn't happen. We decided to take some family pictures while the pies baked. Man, next time I come home, I've got to bring some cuter clothes, I didn't know we'd have to be posing so much. Doesn't everyone know how much I hate being in pictures? Oh well, let's hope that at least one of the 20 shots Amanda took is worth putting up on the wall :o) So we took the everybody in it pictures, and then the four girls got together and took jumping pictures (Kim's idea that we could not shake her from), recreations of poses we've done in the past, and some random a-- pictures. The dog pile one was my favorite because we did it in reverse age order so I didn't have to be on the bottom this time! That was fun. I'm really nervous to get a picture CD when I leave, of all the pictures we've been taking and will be taking this week. There's going to be some crazy stuff on that camera, that's for sure.

By time we were done messing around with random poses, dinner was ready. Dinner was good, but I don't know how the company was because Joy and I were at the kids' table trying to get all four of the youngin's to eat their food. Eventually all the kids cleaned their plates and they got their cupcake for dessert. Apparently they looked better to the kids than they tasted because they acted as a good bribe during dinner, but none of the kids actually finished theirs off.

After dinner it was time for Joy to run upstairs and pack her stuff up. It's sad that she could only stay for the weekend, but it super rocks that she was able to come at all. I'm not even kidding you when I say that we said good-bye to Joy and the girls for over half an hour. Well, it's in part because Joy wasn't fully packed when she needed to be going, so we were saying good-bye, but she wasn't ready to go. The cutest was when the cousins were saying good-bye. They gave each other the biggest hugs and kisses. Oh, kids are so cute! Eventually everyone was done hugging Joy, Daisy, and Lilly good-bye and it was time to pack them up and let Mom take them to the airport. Once Joy was gone the house cleared out. Kim, Ben, Roman, Isaac, and Aaron took off in their van, and Josh and Dana left in their car. I was left to clean the place up :o( I'm just teasing. Joy did a lot of the cleaning right after dinner and Grandma offered to help clean, but I was almost done with it when she offered so I just let her sit on down.

Without all the little ones screaming and running around, the house sure is quiet. Tear. I hope the girls make it back to Texas safely.