In a word, this year's Father's Day was: awesometacular.
We started out with a heaping helping of sausage casserole for breakfast (one of my favorites), chai tea, and orange juice, and then we moved to the presents. Man, did I pull in the loot! The kids all made very nifty picture frames with father's day messages on their borders (they did this by cutting out words from magazines that were supposed to make them think of me), such as: "Super, Man," "A Dad With Know-How," "Dude!" "creativity," "challenge," "cyclist," and, of course, "cheesy," and "full of hot air."
Suzanne had smuggled a Lego chess set for me from our DisneyWorld trip in May. I don't know how she did that - she was very sneaky and very kind (and the day we were at the Lego store, I was very cranky - and a little unreasonable since I was angling to get the $500 Millennium Falcon Lego model - 5000 pieces of craziness!). Alex and I played a vicious game of chess that afternoon, and after that Colleen took her turn beating me up on the board.
After going through the cards and presents, (also including The Dangerous Book for Boys) I had one big package left, and after ripping off the wrapping paper I embraced my new best friend: a brand new air purifier (with ionic action!). I clutched it and hugged it and said my dreams had come true. And that's when Alex turned to Suzanne and said, "That's exactly what you said Daddy would say!"
(Here's the thing about air purifier: I'm hoping it will magically transform the air in an after-lawn-mowing sneeze-free zone. When allergies really hit me, I look around for anything that'll stop me from sneezing and scratching my eyes out, including drawing mystical diagrams on the floor, chanting, and hopping around a six inch model of Stonehenge.)
Then we headed out for a geocaching adventure. Geocaching is a treasure hunt where you use a GPS unit that, when you put in the coordinates, guides you to the secret stashed cache of goodies. The idea is that when you find a cache, you take something out and replace it with something else. These are the official rules (from the geocaching website):
1. Take something from the cache
2. Leave something in the cache
3. Write about it in the logbook
We tried to find the cache at Wildcat Bluff Nature Center, and once we saw that the cache was hidden off the main hiking path, I told the kids to wait on the path until I made sure the way was clear of any nasty hiding critters (we had seen a pretty big snake sunning itself just a few minutes before).
So I marched and marched and marched through some pretty thick prairie growth, ducking under mesquite, and pushing my way through all sorts of prickly bushes and plants (although I did run across several deer sleeping areas - all the grass had been mashed down). In finally found the cache after a long sweaty hike. But I didn't want to bring the kids way out there, especially since the grass was tall enough to swallow Alex whole, so I trudged back, and we all decided to find another cache in a more accessible place.
That place was Southwest Park, and it seemed like the cache would be out in the open, so we followed the GPS unit until it stopped us a few feet away from a small, locked gray metal box attached to a light pole. We couldn't open the box because we didn't have the combination (we realized later the combination was part of the coordinates, but we didn't even have those - we were just following the pre-programmed location our friend put into the GPS unit).
Defeated, we went to lunch and had cookies.
The afternoon was lazy, the perfect Father's Day afternoon. We played a little chess, purified the air, and sat around the blow-up pool in the backyard. Midway through the afternoon, we all piled into the car to take Megan to Girl Scout camp (where she'll spend the week). And then we went back home for a delicious meal of extraordinarily good burgers (invented by Suzanne), which left no room for dessert whatsoever.
And then, suddenly, it was all over. The sun had set. The day was done, lulled to sleep by the soothing hum of purified air in the corner.
And I wondered how any family could be any better than my very own.
