Happy Father's (Gage's?) Day

The kids were excited to get up this morning to give Scott his Father's day presents. He is the proud owner of a new hammock pillow and hammock caddy to use with his hammock in Tuttle. Gage and Emma asked Scott what he wanted to do this morning and Gage was hoping he'd pick going to the Kung Fu Panda movie. That wasn't even on the list, and Gage was quite upset about that. He had a miserable time at church and the rest of the morning for that matter. Gage wanted to know why there isn't a "Kid's Day". He doesn't quite understand that EVERY DAY is kids day! Scott decided he wanted to go to Tuttle and spend the day working on building Gage and Emma a tree house. Of course we had a big fit about going to Tuttle and by the time we were ready to go, everyone was in a tizzy AGAIN! UGH! I told Scott as we were leaving the house we were going to stop at Starbucks and I was going to get the biggest coffee they had. Well, that led us into another problem because Gage and Emma wanted something too. Scott made a deal with them and said that if they got drinks, then there would be NO MORE bad attitudes, or we would not go to Kung Fu Panda EVER, or get it on DVD when it comes out. Well, that worked until we got to Tuttle and they started fighting over who got to use the new hammock pillow. UGH!

It was quite a surprise to me when we pulled into Tuttle and there were 3 vehicles in the driveway. I looked at Scott and wondered what the heck was going on. Well, he apparently told some DU guy out of Minnesota that he could stay there and tour some donors around (also from Minnesota) the study sites near Tuttle. I was real pleased about being informed.............................(yes, that is sarcasm!) Anyway, we pulled into the driveway and found a little black lab puppy in a kennel in the garage that was covered in diarrhea and it smelled TERRIBLE. Then when we went into the house, there were 2 dogs in kennels in the laundry room and it smelled horrible in there too. We went up into the kitchen and I'm not kidding when I tell you there were 10 bottles of hard liquor sitting on the kitchen table. I walked into the living room and it was a wreck. I couldn't take any more and had to get out. I couldn't believe the place had been trashed after we worked so hard to clean it up the past couple of times we were there. The lawn needed mowing so I went out to mow the lawn and listen to my iPod and try to forget about what a mess we walked into. I only got about 1/4 of the yard mowed and ran out of gas, so couldn't finish it up since the gas containers we had were all empty. I helped Scott a little with putting boards up into the tree, and then played referee with the kids. Quite a bit later, people started showing up at the house. I'm sure they were wondering who in the heck WE were. Not too long after that the guy in charge showed up and he said, "I'm so sorry we've trashed the place, when we came in we noticed how nice and clean it was." WAS is the key word here. I'm curious to see how well they pick up after themselves. He was very nice and I'm hoping they leave it the way they found it. I would NEVER treat someone else's place like that!

When we made it back to Bismarck, Scott decided we should eat supper at Hooter's which has just been recently built here. Wonderful! We had never been to a Hooter's before and I don't plan on going back anytime soon. When we pulled into the parking lot and wasn't even half full, I decided that was a bad sign. It was quite funny when we walked in when all of the waitresses yelled, "Welcome to Hooter's!" It was even funnier when we were walking to our table and I saw the look on Emma's face when she noticed the outfits the waitresses were wearing! What a nice family restaurant! Gage had fun reading all of the signs on the walls and we had to explain a few of them to him, like why the "CAUTION: BLONDES THINKING" sign was upside-down. I can't believe people would really want to work in a place like that. The girls had skimpy tank tops on, and the girls who didn't have boobs had bras to make them look like they did, and VERY short shorts. I couldn't even look at our waitress I was so embarrassed for her. (She was blonde by the way!) I made sure to tell Emma that she was NEVER going to work at Hooter's.

Gage had a baseball game tonight and we did pretty well, despite have 4 players missing and only having 8 kids total playing. It was the late game; however, and the kids got to bed late. I'm praying for a quiet day tomorrow. We have a busy week ahead with Camp Edventure for Gage every morning, Emma has her Daisy Day Camp all afternoon on Tuesday which was rescheduled due to the rain last week and we also have swimming lessons 2 days this week, along with baseball and Scott has a busy week with work. I hope I'm able to get rested up tonight and start fresh tomorrow morning.

I called my Dad this morning to wish him a Happy Father's Day. Thankfully their basement wasn't flooded with all the rain they've had in Iowa. I was happy to hear we wouldn't need to bring floatation devices to use in the basement when we come home over the 4th of July, or that we won't be needing to pitch a tent in the backyard, although I'm sure the kids would love that! I sure hope you had a great Father's Day Dad. We love you!