Father's Day

We celebrated Father's Day a day early with Matt's family. Uncle Rob and Aunt Stephanie had the whole gang over for a cookout Saturday night. The kids played in the little inflatable pool. Ella and Emma looked so cute in their matching swimsuits (purchased separately -- a complete coincidence). Everything was great until cousin Zach took El and Em on a wagon ride through the backyard -- straight through an ant pile. The girls were okay in the wagon but he had lots of bites on his little feet and I got a couple of mean ones trying to rescue everyone. All the other adults were sampling appetizers and sipping down cold ones. Lucky me.

After everyone had a bath and the two littlest ones went to bed we had dinner. All was well. We decided to spend the night because Ella was sleeping so soundly and because they live closer to the interstate we'd be taking Sunday morning to get to my dad's grave. But about 2:30 Ella woke up screaming. Desperate not to wake up everyone else, we put her in bed with us. This is generally a no, no in our book. She thought it was play time. Between the hours of 2:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. we might have gotten an hour's sleep. At one point she had her crotch on my head and her foot in my ear. Again, we're going to blame this one on those darned teeth she's cutting.

We were basically zombies on Sunday. Ella was in pretty good spirits for having pulled an all nighter.

The Father's Day moment for me was when she nearly broke my heart in two. Without any prompting, she picked some flowers and walked over to her Grandpa's grave, knelt down and gently patted the stone. She just sat there for a moment. I became a puddle.

Later that day, after everyone had met at the family cemetery we met back at our house for a cookout (too much red meat this weekend) and some family time. It was as nice as it could be with a nearly 18 month old and a 2 1/2 year old running around.