Happy Dad’s Day to Me

First off, my bracelet was found! The last place I was at Thursday before going home was one of our offsite properties doing some work on the server. The bracelet must have gotten caught on the chair or desk or something, because one of the employees found it late Friday… Yeah!! That started off a good weekend.

Saturday, we went to Steve’s 6 year old birthday (Katelyn). Had a good time. Spent most of the afternoon chasing our two tumblebugs around the yard and playsets, so we didn’t get that much time to socialize. It was mostly their family and Katelyn’s schoolmates families though.

They had a magic theme with a magician later in the evening. At one point, they had a pin the tail on the rabbit. Connor did really well, but Alia insisted that the tail belongs on the rabbit’s ear. Later, she collected all the tails on the two rabbits and keep redistributing them. At one point, she had them over on the slide.. because, well, you know… rabbit tails need to have fun too!

Sunday was Father’s Day. Jean made a nice french toast breakfast in prep for the day. It wasn’t going to be an easy one, because my father was coming over in the afternoon to help us setup a 16’x42″ pool for the kids. It was an early birthday gift. We wanted to do some gardening and lawn work, and I had to mow. She also bought me a book of Crytograms and made a really beautiful collage with photos of me and the twins, and Dad is #1 text and whatnot. I know she was amazed at how many pictures I’ve actually *been* in! So many in fact, that she couldn’t use them all, and actually found ones with me smiling. You should see the range of hair styles I’ve had in the last two years.

Worked all morning, got a shower.

We start setting the pool up. The ground needs to be level. It looks level. It’s not. After filling up the first 2 inches, we see that the water is all pooling to one side. So now we have to drain it to move it, and we head off to Lowe’s to buy some sand or top soil and try to stablize the ground. It was about a 2-3″ incline over the 16′, which doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but causes lots of problems with the pool.

So now 1200 pounds (30 bags) of top soil is moved into the car, out of the car, spread on the ground. Whew! Talk about back breaking work. Took a break for a wonderful turkey dinner. Went back outside and finished setting up the pool and beginning to fill it.

Once there is about 3 inches of water in it, you need to get inside and ‘smooth out’ all the wrinkles on the bottom. So I did that, and was shortly joined by my kids, who both decided that they wanted to play in the water too while Daddy worked.

The pool still wasn’t perfectly level, so we had to keep moving the dirt underneath, and I wound up bringing in another two wheelbarrows of dirt from the compost pile.

Alia had us laughing so hard at one point, as she’d grabbed the hose and was having a grand old time swinging it around and watching the water arc through the air. Then it would get slightly out of control, go directly above her, and splash down on her head. She’d startle, drop the hose, and have a shocked look on her face. This happened about 5 more times, each time, she missed the cause and effect. Eventually she got it though, because then she was hosing down Connor and me, neither of us too appreciative of the fact. Sure, the water I was sitting in I’d gotten used too, but when the cold hose water hit the top of your head and face, it really gets your attention.

We left the H20 running from about 5:30P to around 11 last night. It’s about 2/3 full. Maybe Jean and the kids will play it today. I still need to setup the ladder and the filter, and then pick up some chlorine and whatnot to treat the water. Last thing we need is to a giant algae mosquito farm in our backyard.

Anyway, it was a long post and a great weekend. Grandfather and father working hard for our kids. Sure, I could have been sitting on my ass all day with someone feeding me grapes (um, no), but this was much, MUCH better.

Current Mood:  happy