Family Fun for a Fabulous Father's Day weekend!

NOTE: I wrote this post over a week ago - on the 16th, but originally I was refusing to post until I could add pictures. Well... clearly that still hasn't happened. Our computer is being a pain and not acknowledging the camera, so I can't download any pictures and I haven't made it to Wal-Mart to put them on CD. So here we are. I'm posting it 'bare' - I will add pictures to this same post later - so check back!! For now, enjoy just the written word from our fun father's day. Oh. And yes, I am back-dating it because it would've been posted last week. So there!

First of all, I want to say "Happy Father's Day!" (again) to my very loving husband - he is a wonderful 'da-da' to Ethan. We are both so blessed to have him in our lives.
What a fun and interesting weekend we had! Last weekend we spent most of Saturday FINALLY getting our own bedroom completely clean and super organized. It's now been a week and it still looks just as good. Yay for us! Saturday is typically our main cleaning day. We are super-busy during the week, so we tend to keep the house just picked-up and save the hard-core cleaning (other than the kitchen) for the weekend. Well, this Saturday we found ourselves with a clean house: floors vacuumed, dusting done, kitchen clean and dining room, living room, bathroom and our bedroom all picked up, with Ethan down for his first nap. Sean and I sat down on the couch, looked at each other and realized.... we were bored! "Now what?" we thought. So we did something we only occasionally get to do on a Sunday afternoon. We took a nap! It was great! After Ethan woke up, we had lunch and headed to a new park a couple of miles away. It was a little disappointing - not as toddler-friendly as we were hoping. Ethan did thoroughly enjoy the toddler swing and large sandbox, though.

We didn't stick around as long as we thought we would. The park was in a new housing area, so we decided to take a tour of the model home that was open for showing that day. Of course, they had their largest home on display, but it was gorgeous! Three large bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, plus a spacious kitchen open to the dining and living rooms. There was also a laundry room and den. Made me wish we had the money right now to own a home!

After a stop at 7-11 for some much-needed slurpees and then a quick trip through the car wash for a much-needed cleaning, we headed home so E could go down for nap #2 and hopefully lose some of his crankiness! While he was down we got invited over to Melissa and Zack's for dinner. We haven't seen them since each of our boys' 1st birthday parties - their 1-year old, Perrin is a few weeks older than E, so we gladly accepted. We had some delicious stromboli and fresh cantalope and then played a round of Nintendo Wii bowling. A very fun evening!

Now on to Sunday... It got off to a rocky start. Despite being out past his bedtime, E was up by 7am - a good hour or two before he should have. He was only up for about 45 minutes before we decided we try putting him back down because we could tell he was still really tired. He went back down without much of a fuss and slept (thankfully!) for another 2 hours or so. This threw off our whole morning, though, because Sean and I went back to bed! It was rushed, but we managed to get in a french toast father's day breakfast before rushing to get ready and heading off to church.

Apparently the extra sleep did not do Ethan much good. What a crab! He was a handful almost the entire 3 hours of church!! He would do ok when it was just me and him - one-on-one, but he didn't want anything to do with sitting still on someone's lap or playing quietly. We made it through most of sacrament ok, but it was a struggle. Sunday school we usually let him play in the empty YW room or we wander the halls to keep him entertained and get out some energy before the 3rd hour. The 3rd hour started ok - we made it through the opening (prayer, song, announcements, etc.) but actual classtime was a nightmare!! Luckily I don't teach anymore because I had to take him out a couple of times - the last time we just went outside and spent the rest of church taking a walk around the building and observing the plants, etc. He calmed down quite a bit but overall it wore me out!

There's more - sorry this will be pretty long! After church, our good friend Katie Blair came over for lunch and to show us her Brazil pictures! She just got home from her mission, and we were anxious to see and talk with her. It was great to catch up! After she went home to her family, and Ethan woke up from his nap, we gathered up all the bread we had in the house and headed to Alton Baker to feed the ducks!

It was a great family activity and Ethan did a good job throwing the bread chunks into the water for the ducks and the geese. We only got a few cries when one of the geese nipped his finger while eating a piece of bread and when we had to leave. The video is more for the grandparents/aunts & uncles, but feel free to watch. E kept eating the bread chunks that were intended for the ducks!

We then headed over to the Grandparents Graham (g-ma Mary and g-pa Ken) for a very quick Father's day visit and finally to my parents' house for a late dinner and to wish my dad a happy father's day. We had our ups and downs, but we're putting it down as an overall good weekend. Sorry it's so long, but hope you enjoy the pictures (that are coming - check back soon)!

PS: A shout-out to all of the fathers in our lives: My Dad (Grandpa Greg), Sean's Dad (Papa Loren), Grandpa Chuck, Grandpa Ken, Grand-dad Stockett and Sean's brothers, Ryan and (new daddy) Todd. Also, to all of our friends that are fathers... Happy Father's Day!!