Father's Day Fun

MacTroll wasn't feeling very well today. Our plan (mine and X-man's) was to let him sleep in as long as he wanted. I would run out and fetch some bagels for a light breakfast, and then we'd take MacTroll to Maize to order lunch. X-man doesn't like Mexican food (he always orders a hamburger off the kiddie menu) and most places only do vegetarian with a lot of cheese, which I can't eat.

So, MacTroll got his food, and we took it home.

Then he went upstairs and fell asleep for several hours. Around 4 p.m., he came downstairs and sat on the couch watching TV with X-man. Then we went out around the neighborhood for a walk with Lily. X-man whined and fussed about how he didn't want to take a walk. About how he rides his bike too much (he doesn't ride it enough in our opinion). But we gave him the, "This isn't an option" look. And he put on his shoes and went out in the garage for his helmet and bike. As it turns out, the heavy rain last night left a giant, long puddle on one of the new streets of the new sections of our development.

We wondered around looking at the progress on the houses, while X-man rode his bike through the puddle back and forth. He had dirt and water splashed up the back of his calves, his butt and up his back. And he was laughing and laughing. I watched him as he jumped up and down splashing in the puddle in his sandals. He declared there were two kinds of mud in that puddle. The kind that washes away, and regular mud that travels in clumps.

Lily, was very confused, by his behavior. She could tell he was happy, but she was a black dog on a hot, sticky day, and she wanted nothing to do with the dirty water. She waded in it to her ankles, just deep enough to get close to X-man, who was sitting on the curb with water up to his own ankles splashing in it and touching the mud, to see what he was doing. Then when he walked out of the puddle she tried to stay between him and the puddle like she was protecting him from getting gross.

Lily is a retriever mix. But she isn't to hot on water. Mostly because the only water she's ever been in (to our knowledge) is bath water. But she hates sprinklers when we walk around the neighborhood. She runs away from the hose when I water the flowers in the backyard. So, I get that she's not a fan. But to watch her try to herd him away from the water for just a few seconds, was pretty priceless.

We have three sleeping nights left in our house. We're spending Wednesday and Thursday at the iHotel, because I think it would be sad and lonely to stay in our house when it's empty. Then on Friday at 11 a.m., we close, and drive up north. My mom is watching our dog for a few days (until the week of July 4) and the cats are flying to California with us on Saturday morning.

I've been planning for this day since January 2012. It's hard to believe it's actually here.

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. :-)

An Everything Kind of Day

We spent the night at Dad and Barbara's last night in Rockford for Father's Day. This morning, my sister and I did at 50-minute walk while the two Dads (mine and MacTroll) got to play with X-man in the yard. They apparently did Hide and Seek; Duck, Duck Goose and then threw the tennis ball lots for Zippy. We continued playing in the house when it started to rain and then had some lunch before packing up the car and coming home. 

We had 2 potty stops for X-man on the way down. One because he pooped in his pull up and the other because he had to go pee pee. When we got home, he was asleep. He put him on the couch and let him continue to nap until 5:30 p.m.

When he woke up, he ran into the bathroom, lifted the toilet seat, peed, put the toilet seat down and washed his hands. MacTroll was euphoric. :-) 

Then we gave MacTroll his father's day gifts. X-man made him a garden stepping stone with glow in the dark stars. I got him a hammock. Then he ordered pizza. So, he's a happy Dad.

We did finally do one thing we'd been putting off. We sprinkled Loosey's ashes into X-man's gardens in the front yard. MacTroll and I both teared up. X-man kept asking, "Is Looseyfur in the house?" 

But she's got a place, and it's newly mulched and has a great little stepping stone. 

Daddy-o Day

Well, we're all back home except for one favorite elderly cat who will get picked up tomorrow. We tried to take X-man out to breakfast this morning, but he was unhappy about doing anything that required him to leave his house after being gone for five days. So, we decided to say "Blah!' to breakfast and instead X-man played with Daddy (and all of the toys he hadn't seen in days), while I ran out to the store and got a week's worth of groceries.

In the cards was a picnic lunch in the front yard, which turned out pretty nice. We had sandwiches on Ciabatta bread, fruit and some potato salad. There is a lemon daisy cake cooling on the oven, and I got all the necessities to make the fruity mimosas from Beth's wedding (Dude, that was like 9 years ago!) as a special father's day treat tonight.

I'm also prepping some Greek kabobs and making these cool baguette, tomato, mozzerella things from weight watchers. 

Now the trick is going to be keeping to one piece of cake (I successfully avoided Joel's summer sausage at lunch). So, um, I might just put it out of sight and take it for the kids to eat at the garden meet up on Thursday. :-) It's a great summer cake. 

I hope you're all having a great Father's Day!