Big Helpers...

12/8/2014

I had an absolutely wonderful father growing up. I was blessed with an amazing mother as well, but, I was a typical "daddy's girl" and did everything I could to please him. Being as though I was an only child until I was 8, and it was a couple of years after that before my brother could really take part in sports, my father taught me how to throw a ball (including a football), catch, and bat quite successfully. He wanted his daughter to not only like dolls and tea parties, but also enjoy sports and climbing trees. So we watched sports together on the weekends, yelling at the television screen, had water fights in the summer (always making sure to get in trouble with my mother by getting her wet even with her warnings), and played sports when the days were nice. I lost my father to cancer as a teen, and am sad that he can't watch his oldest grandson excel and dominate every sport he tries...the kind of child that can pick up any ball and just play, successfully. That he also can't watch his youngest grandson's mischievous side, his growing interest in sports thanks to his brother, and the way he thinks more methodically and mechanically, trying to take apart and put back together everything in order to figure it out. I know my dad would be outside all day playing all kinds of sports and instigating all kinds of trouble with his grandsons, because that's the kind of dad he was, and we loved it growing up.

I look forward to the day when Dave can have his own "daddy's girl" as I definitely have "my boys." With my dad though, he was not mechanically smart and definitely couldn't do much around the house beyond changing a light bulb, which he took very seriously. So meeting and marrying Dave, the man who could fix lots of things on my car, literally built my house, and install anything has been such an eye-opening experience (thank you for my fireplace and new floors in 2 of the rooms all in the last month honey). See, I always thought you had to hire people to do those things!

Like my father, Dave is an amazing dad and as the boys get older, Dave is able to have more fun with them teaching and exploring things. It amazes him that David can remember all of Dave's high school varsity basketball players' numbers (this came in handy when Dave needed that information and forgot his sheet one evening), can run the drills with them, and knows the lineage of our cattle. He can tell you which number belongs to which animal (if their tags are covered), which momma they had, and who is bred and isn't. Ethan also knows a tremendous amount about our animals and can identify the cows that have names, knows what each animal gets fed, and what needs to be done to take care of them at 2 years old. He is big into tools and knows the use of each of them including farm tools. This is all because of Dave and his interest in teaching and showing the boys everything he knows. With the addition to our fireplace and new tiled floors, the boys (as well as myself) got to learn lots of new information, like the difference between grout, mortar, and mud and the new tools that are used for those purposes. So here are some pictures of my boys over the last couple of weeks reminding me once again how wonderful of a daddy my husband is as he let them mortar, grout, lay tile, paint, mud, hammer, and a whole lot more, while they had fun, learned how to make a house a home, and pretended to be like their amazing daddy.