A Father's Love

My Dad and I on my wedding day

The above picture was one of the few last pictures I have of my Dad and I.  He died 5 months after The Hubs and I were married.  This weekend makes me a little sad as I help Little Guy prepare the special things he's picked out and made for his daddy.  I can't look at Father's Day cards without getting a little teary-eyed because I no longer have a dad to give one to.  My Dad was a quiet- even keel- teddy bear kind of guy.  We never really saw him get mad, and if he did raise his voice, we knew he meant business (which he usually only did if Mom was getting upset about something we did/didn't do)!  Dad was a hard working man with an awesome work ethic that he instilled in all three of us- by example, since he was a man of few words.  He was a licensed optician, and had such pride in his profession.  He went to Tallahassee once to help fight for rights of licensed opticians state-wide.  Dad offered quiet moral support for everything we ever did, and he had his own way of showing his pride in all of us.  I miss him a lot.  I think he'd get a real kick out of Little Guy and his sense of humor.  Dad had a unique laugh that made us laugh harder every time we heard it.  There are times when Little Guy cracks a joke and I think how Dad would have laughed at it, not out of courtesy, but because Little Guy is just so funny!

Since I'm working this weekend, Little Guy and I have been busy all week preparing for Father's Day.  We did a craft that ended up being my nemesis.  I seriously hated, HATED the tedious procedure of the whole thing!  It could have been much easier, I'm sure, if we had a PC instead of Mac because of the stupid program not being completely Mac compatible.  I saw an ad in the Sunday paper recently for a T-shirt that had a cute little saying and came with paint for the kids to put their handprints on.  Well upon inspecting said T-shirt, it was pretty poor quality.  You could see through the material!  I mean, what dad wants to wear a see-through shirt?  But then the dad has to wear it because his kid made it!  Sooooo being the crafty mama that I am, Little Guy and I set off to find a good quality plain shirt and fabric paint, along with printable iron-on transfer paper.  Once we were set to do the project, I created a "world's best daddy" certificate in MS Word (for Mac) that I was going to iron on the shirt and Little Guy was going to put his handprints on it.... yeah, that didn't work out so well.  The program wouldn't mirror the image and neither did our stupid printer.  UGH.  No worries, I decided to create a stencil with the same Word program and card stock paper.... Oh, the tediousness of cutting out each letter with the craft knife!  And then I realized that anything with a circle in the letter (O, D, d, a...) got completely cut out, thus creating a huge gaping hole in the letter.  O well.  It did work pretty well when I applied the paint though, gaping hole and all!  Little Guy got in on the stencil action too, but it was very short lived because the T-shirt kept moving a little bit.  

the white is the stencil

words all done!

Once the words were all painted on, Little Guy was anxious to get his hands in the paint.  He chose green for the lettering (obviously!) and blue for his handprints (because that's his favorite color-nevermind that it's Daddy's favorite color too).  He also decided that the shirt looked too plain, so he wanted to paint a picture.  I fixed the sleeves so he could create 2 masterpieces!  Here's the finished product as it's drying:

Our finished Father's Day shirt

The painting on the left side is Mommy, Daddy and Little Guy, and the painting on the right is a clown car that we are all in because we are clowns! (where does this kid come up with this stuff?!)  It actually came out kind of cute, and I hope The Hubs really likes it (and wears it)!  I hope the two of them do something special tomorrow seeing as how I'm going to be at work all day.  They were supposed to rent a boat, but all the boats of course are booked up and they're on a waiting list.  I'm thinking the boating trip isn't going to happen :(  Dads eat free at Beef's tomorrow, so I'm pretty confident they will end up there for lunch or dinner!  Dads also get in free (with 1 paid admission) at the Florida Aquarium, so hopefully whatever they decide on, it will be fun and memorable!  Are you doing anything special for the Dad in your life?