Happy Fatherless Day

Well that title just sounds depressing, but I promise this is a happy post! Ha! I don't have some crazy daddy issues that I am going to lay out here or anything. In fact, I have one of the best fathers on the face of this earth!! My dad set a perfect example for the man I needed to marry, and honestly, I kinda married my father in a lot of ways - scary! My dad is a man of incredible character. He has excelled in his career, but he has excelled even more at home with us kids. He's had to juggle a lot with work and being a great dad, but he did it so well. And now I have the joy of watching him as a grandad, or Papi, as we are calling him.

I have also acquired two new dads. Ronnie's dad and stepdad are great men who I love dearly. The fun part is that they are both different from my dad, so I get to have 3 unique dads! All totally awesome in their own ways!

But anywhoo, back to my original post...I'm getting sidetracked, which generally happens and my stories go on wayyy longer than they need to. In fact, this is a weakness my dad tried to work on with me from the time I started talking. He lovingly (and I'm sure deep down annoyed) would encourage me to cut to the chase. But again, I'm getting sidetracked...

So "fatherless day?" you ask. Yes, fatherless. Yesterday, Ronnie's first father's day, he was out of town, in Boston, to speak at an event. I was hoping he wouldn't realize it was father's day and when he got back say, "surprise!" and celebrate it today. But that didn't happen. He mentioned it on Saturday on the phone. He followed, "tomorrow's father's day," with "I got a bit choked up when I realize." "AW I'M SORRY," I said. "I'm totally messing with you. I'd be sad if she knew what was going on," he said. Ha! I love my practical husband!! But never-the-less I felt a bit bad that he was going to miss his first father's day. So I set out to do something sweet for him.

I found an idea online where you take a picture of your kid(s) holding the letters D-A-D and then put all the pictures together to spell DAD. So I decided to try it. Silly, silly mom of a spastic, active, 8-month old. Two words: epic FAIL. When she wasn't crawling away, she was barely interested in holding the letters. And when she was holding the letters, she rarely held them that you could actually read them. Mix that with a less than quick to push the picture taking button and you have a total disaster. After 3 separate attempts, I decided whatever we had would have to do and uploaded the photos onto my computer. I soon realized that the backgrounds all should be the same, and unfortunately for me, I didn't do the 3 separate shoots in the same spot. And one of the shoots had all different backgrounds because she kept moving so I'd plop her back down and shoot. So I had several decent photos, but none with the same background. I finally just picked 3 of the best ones with the same background and put it together. I wanted to just be done with it, partly because I wanted to email it to Ronnie yesterday morning and partly because I was so over the whole thing. Here's how it turned out:

Anywhoo, it was probably the best way Ronnie could have spent Father's Day. "Why?" You ask. Because, you see, since he wasn't here and I was on single momma duty, it made me appreciate him that much more. Thank you, honey, for all you do for me and Mckenna. Life is awesome with you around!! Mckenna couldn't have a more loving, special, funny, and fun daddy.