Happy Father's Day

While I realize that Father's Day (and Mother's Day, for that matter) can be tricky for people who don't have ideal family lives, I feel very grateful for the great father's in my life: my father, father-in-law, grandfathers (although both have since passed on) and, of course, my husband, who's helping me figure out this parenthood thing. So, to all of you: Happy Father's Day!

This week was all about the cousins. My sister had a writer's conference during the day each day this week, so her three kids stayed at grandma's house with us. The kids seemed to really enjoy one another (well, most of the time), but the grown-ups (my mom and I) started running out of energy towards the end of the week.

Early in the week we made the mistake of promising the kids that they could run through the sprinklers--and then of course, the weather turned nasty (Dan and I got hailed on after a temple session Tuesday night) and it was too cold for the next three days. Finally, on Friday, it was warm enough. As you can tell, the kids loved it. Of all the kids, Evelyn was one of the most fearless. Enoch, probably the least fearless. (Enoch mostly hovered at the perimeter of the water, shrieking with joy when the droplets touched him and then retreating. But he never actually got wet like the other kids did.)




This picture pretty captures what the kids did: the big kids thought it was funny to position their bums over the sprinkler (someone--maybe Jacob?--started calling it his "booty," and so the other kids all followed suit), Enoch ran around the fringes of the water.



Evelyn, making an offering to the water gods.

I even managed to capture some of this on video. My two favorite parts come a little later in the video: Jacob does a funny little dance when he gets sole possession of the sprinkler, and (at the very end), Evelyn runs across the bottom of the screen repeating, "My booty, my booty!" (I'm pretty sure she had no idea what she was saying.)

Yesterday, we enjoyed some family time: we took the kids to a park in the morning and then had a picnic lunch (and Dan accidentally left the diaper bag under a tree). The only fly in this ointment was the fact that the park was right next to a swim park, and Evelyn was heart-broken that we weren't letting her go swimming. (She walked along the chain link fence for some time, apparently trying to find an entrance, and cried when I told her she couldn't get in that way).

Dan escaped for some private time in the afternoon (long over-due, I think!) and saw Clash of the Titans at the dollar theater. (You'll have to ask him for his review, I gather he didn't think it stood up to the original).

Next week, we're (well, me and Evelyn and Jeni and Emi) are looking forward to the Princess Festival, where one of my former Writing Fellows stars as the evil Snow Queen . . .