Daddy O!

X-man didn't get out of bed today until 8:45 a.m. It was a lovely late sleep in, unless you were MacTroll who fell asleep in X-man's bed last night, woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep while it was storming like mad outside.

That said, X-man was very good about helping me bring up the laundry and putting it away while MacTroll took his time getting vertical and ready to start his Father's Day.

We began with a walk over to the dock at Colbert Park, where we fished bass for about an hour, until it started to get really hot a little after 10 a.m., so we walked home. Me with all the fishing stuff and MacTroll with a X-man on his shoulders. It was all I could do not to hum the theme from the Courtship of Eddie's father.

Afterwards, MacTroll took a long shower, and X-man and I reviewed his sight words. He's done with the first two Dolche sight word lists and we're moving on to the first grade list. We'll do the pretest on Tuesday and then start studying two or three each week.

Then he gave MacTroll his gift, a glass blowfish wine bottle topper that he picked out at Pier 1 when he went with me to get my new desk chair. He asked what I was giving Daddy for his day and I told him we'd take him somewhere to pick it out after lunch.

For lunch, MacTroll asked to go to El Toro. We hadn't been there in at least six or eight months. No one was there at 11:45 a.m. when she pulled up but the after church crowd slowly started filtering in and by the time we left at 12:30 the parking lot was full. We left and drove over to get MacTroll's gift -- a bike of his own from Champaign Cycle.

We walked in and there was a young woman waiting to help us. I said, "It's father's day, and we'd like to give our dad a new bike for his day."

And an hour later, we walked out with a Trek 2.1 Apex road bike fitted with a water bottle holder and everything. :-) MacTroll wasn't ready for the whole bike shoe clip sitcho yet, and I understand. X-man also got a new bell for his big boy bike. It has a compass on it, and since he knows which towns are north, south, east and west, he thought it was pretty cool.

When we got home, we had to try out the new bike, so we all got on our two wheelers and went around the block and then we decided in the heat of the day that we'd go to Prairie Fields Playground for a bit. I was proud of X-man. It was his first non-training wheels trip out of the neighborhood on his bike and he did great, even on the sidewalk by the park.

Then MacTroll ran to the movies with LibbyGirl's husband. And X-man and I had quiet time. He on the iPad and me with my second Carl Hiaasen book -- Scat. I fell asleep in the big chair until almost dinner, when I got up and did the hard job of boiling water for spaghetti noodles. :-)

Afterwards, X-man and MacTroll wandered downstairs to play the Original Lego Batman game that we got from the library, and I put on my walking shoes and headed out for a 4-mile walk before it got dark. It was a great quality time with Dad day.

This week X-man is off to half day Lego Camp at the Orpheum Children's Science Museum. I think we're going to try to make it to Sholem after we get lunch and he gets his haircut tomorrow afternoon. And I'm trying to arrange a play date for Thursday with a friend of his from school. We'll see how that goes. :-)