Father's Day Weekend

We have not fully celebrated Father's Day yet, but we did some celebrating over the weekend.  Most of my brothers and sisters and I gathered at a buffet that my dad likes for lunch on Saturday and treated him to lunch.  We could not convince him to let us leave the tip, so he practically paid for his own lunch just by doing that.  That's Dad.  If not for him our family would not be going on a vacation this year.  Our budget no longer allows for such extravagance.  With a new baby, Jonathan is in the same boat, so Dad is renting a beach house for the entire family.   We still don't have a gift because four of us are going in on something together and have not yet decided what.  

We have also failed to do anything for Andy yet.  My intention was to get him a fire pit which is the only thing he has mentioned that he wants.  Unfortunately, Saturday ended in a bit of a bust.  The car wouldn't start and had to be towed.  This ten-year-old machine has been pretty low maintenance all these years, so we are hoping this fix is minor, but the jury is still out on that.  Zach worked until 9:30 that night, so I intended to take him to pick up some swim trunks and to buy the fire pit so that Zach could carry it.  However, 9:30 rolled around, and I was fighting hard to keep my eyes open.  Andy took him for the trunks, and we have yet to get the fire pit.  I have no vehicle today because Andy needed to go to a different location for part of his work day, so he had to take the van rather than let me drop him off.

Both my dad and Andy have birthdays in the next few weeks, so we looked into combined gifts for both.  The fire pit was going to be Andy's combination gift, but I think I am going to go really cheap on that and get him some clothes for his birthday.  Andy has lost about 30 pounds since the year started.  He has simply been eating right and running daily.  His clothes are not quite falling off of him yet, but they definitely look pretty saggy.  He is not likely to buy clothes for himself.

A friend of ours mentioned at church on Sunday, that Mother's Day better not be overlooked, but men better not dare to complain if Father's Day is overlooked.  Well, we had no complaints about our sad failures this year.  Good for the dads in our family!  This family is used to doing things late. Wyatt and Julia are still awaiting Gotcha Day gifts, and we are nine days late on the most recent gotcha day right now.

So what did we do for Father's Day?  We drug Andy to an amusement park.  We wanted to do this park in June this year which is one of the lighter months for crowds. Father's Day is a light day according to the park's website, and we were trying to coordinate family and friends going as well.  We gathered enough people to get the group rate, but never saw our friends for the entire day.  

Don't get me wrong when I say that we drug Andy there.  He doesn't hate amusement parks, but Andy won't even visit his family on the weekends because they are three hours away, and he really wants Sundays to be easy as he prepares for the work week.  This park has a great water park, and instead of enjoying the water, Andy ran around riding coasters with Savannah until he was so beat up by them that he had to stop.  We were supposed to switch out so that he could enjoy the water park, but everyone was finished with it in short order because the breeze made it pretty cool to run around soaking wet.  So yesterday was definitely not about Andy - proof of what a great dad he is.

For the trip, Julia made herself a bed in the van.

Zach drove both ways, and Andy sat in the passenger seat to coach him.  No napping for Andy.  Zach and I struggle to get along and have realized that I cannot coach him in this area.  Therefore, Zach no longer drives with me and is sadly low on his required hours as a result.  He really needs his license by October.  Andy travels again then, and I no longer have the flexibility to change my hours at work to get everyone to school.  The only family who can help us no longer has a child at Julia's campus, so I need Zach to take on that role.

This ride was closed most of the day. It closes before the park and only opened about an hour before it closed again.  We texted the kids, and they literally ran across the park to make it onto this ride a few times before closing.  

My fear of heights kept me off this one.  I will only go so far.

Andy has a great free throw, so he won a basketball.  I was trying to capture Julia doing tricks with the ball.

Miss Independent was determined to ride something by herself.  Julia's first attempt at this was on an 8 seater rapids ride.  I wouldn't let her do it.  Really, what's the fun in that?  That is the ride that you want to ride with others so you can laugh at them if they get soaked and you don't.  She loved this 65' high swing.  After riding a few times with various family members, she rode by herself.

We didn't argue when she wanted to ride the Revolution by herself.  What adult over 30 can even ride that thing?  Joshua rode it, but he is not quite 30 yet. He rode before Julia and wouldn't get on again when she asked. Julia was with the adults when she rode it.  She got off of it and ran around to the entrance to ride again and was disappointed when we cut her off after the second run so that we could ride one more coaster before closing.

We almost forgot that we promised Julia ice cream after the last coaster ride, and Andy had to run with her to the shop to get some before closing.

Julia always makes me think of my mom when we are at amusement parks.  She just laughs so much on every ride, and Mom used to laugh on the coasters.  It set Mom's best friend at ease to ride coasters with her.  I can't imagine anyone being more fun in an amusement park than Julia.

You may be wondering where Wyatt was in all of this.  When we visited the park last year, there were only about three things that Wyatt enjoyed.  Andy and I tried to talk him into going with us, but he really was adamant that he did not want to do so.  Wyatt is terrified of height and and hates spinning which rules out just about everything, so he stayed with Dad while we were gone and had a great time. They ate Chinese, and Dad called me last night to find out where Wyatt was from in China.  He said that every time he takes Wyatt out for any kind of Asian food, the staff just makes over Wyatt and asks questions that Dad can't answer. We usually do take-out, so we don't get that experience much.

We had some glitches but had a great day overall, and the group rate for this park is definitely the way to go.  We will try to give Andy a good Father's Day this week.