About Fathers....

I love my dad.  I can sit down and think of so many experiences with my dad that have helped to shape me into the person that I am today.  I grew up with parents who taught me to do hard things, to never give up, and to be honest and dependable and respectful of others.

My dad is a good dad.  He has always been willing to drop anything and everything to help.  He will lift heavy things, listen, and rescue nearly on demand.  I loved growing up with that.  Of course there were frustrating periods of my childhood, and lots of reaching around to the back seat to pinch our legs when acting out, but the older I get, the more those intense periods with my parents fade from memory and I only remember the good times.

My husband is a good dad.  I can't say that in the very beginning I looked at him and said, "golly he's going to be a great dad!"  I'm pretty certain that for the first three years of our marriage, when there really weren't children on the horizon, the thought about how Ross would be as a father almost never crossed my mind.

But now, as we are inching our way closer to 3 boys, I couldn't be more in love with the boys in my life.  They are rambunctious and curious.  They love to sing and dance and tell jokes and play imaginary games.  They are mostly nice to each other, and are so smart.  Sometimes, I spend so much time with these two crazy monkeys that it gets a bit overwhelming....I am very lucky that I have a good husband and my boys have a good day to pick up the slack.

He never hesitates to take them on adventures to the dumps, or to run his Saturday errands with him.  The three of them love to visit Home Depot together and almost always come home with slush's from Sonic.  They build Lego's.  They dig in dirt.  They learn about sports and the boys give their dad a forum for all that knowledge and useless trivia just bursting out of his head.  He gets up with them in the night, reads them stories, and is patient with them in ways that I am not capable of.

I know that I often take my husband and our relationship for granted - unfortunately it's pretty easy to forget each other, and the ways that we quietly support each other when life gets so busy and brains start to swim.  We wouldn't be able to get through this life without each other, and our kids wouldn't be such great kids without both of us.

So, it's a day late (and probably a dollar or two short), but I'm really grateful for fathers.