happy father's day! & it's a good thing you get better with age...

{1996 Take Your Daughter to Work Day @ ATT&T with my dad, Mike. Notice the super cool and trendy dusty pink polo shirt, the total 90's glasses (which I think were also dusty pink around the frames), and my oily, homely, scraggly hair. Yup. I'm a hottie. I think I was in 8th grade. And dad looks spiffy, too, with that awesome hair-do!!! (jk, love it, dad!!)}**

Now that I have your attention with that awful old school photo (that I should be TOO embarrassed to post for the blogging world to see!), lemme give a father's day shout out to my daddy-O, who is an avid reader (one of the few) of my blog. Because I'm lame and kept forgetting to put his card in the mail, he'll get this today and a card...sometime this week... if I stop being lame and remember to drop it off at the post office.

I love my dad. I think he's pretty awesome. I think (though he may correct me if I'm wrong) that I was a daddy's girl when I was little and I kinda think I still am, even though I'm older, have a baby, and he lives in Las Vegas so I don't see him much. He takes interest in my life and I appreciate that. I also appreciate all the stuff he did with me when I was little (he did my hair a few times in elementary school and boy, was it good!) and all the stuff he did with me when I was a little older (he took me to see my favorite band, Barenaked Ladies, at the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas AND to Dave Matthew's Band AND to San Fransico for my 16th birthday) and all the stuff he does for me now (can you say "shoes?" anyone, anyone??).

He's hip, likes good music, has good taste in books (he, too, enjoyed one of my favorites, "In Cold Blood," written by my literary boyfriend, Truman Capote), and again, he buys me shoes! Cute ones! Often! He was there for me when I had that awful "Cadilac" spacer in my mouth pre-braces and he often turned the key on that spacer, which in return gave me a sweet gap between my two front teeth reminiscent of David Letterman. He let me drive his purple Sebring convertible around for the weekend once when I was in highschool (and later found out how I killed the battery and had to get a jump start after a school dance).

Yeah, my dad's pretty cool.

Here's another Take Your Daughter to Work Day picture, circa 1997. Here I'm donning a fashionable dress from K-Mart (which I thought was super cute!), a wierd growing-my-hair-out hair-do, complete with the same oily, homely, scragly bangs, braces (ugh!), and to top it all off...dangly earings.
Happy Father's day, daddy-o!!!


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Happy Father's day, also, to my husband!!! He, unlike my dad, never reads the blog, but what kind of wife would I be if I didn't post a shout-out to the man who is the father of my little man?? Baby Erich got daddy a fancy framed version of this picture for Father's Day:My husband is a trooper--putting up with me! (And I'm a trooper, too, you know, for putting up with him ;)). All jokes aside, I'm really grateful for Ben. I think I'd be completely lost without him taking care of all the manly things around the house, like squishing bugs and taking out the diaper pail bags and setting mouse traps and mowing the lawn and bringing me a glass of cold water in bed and (sometimes) feeding the baby at night so I can sleep and hooking up all things electric and letting me have the car even though it's raining and he has to drive the bike and tickling my back (not quite like my college roommate, Sheena, used to do, but pretty darn close, after practice) and squishing bugs and COOKING and leaving a light on for me and not getting mad when I accidentally leave the back door WIDE FREAKING OPEN ALL DAY LONG for any random stranger to come and steal the contents of our house (it's happened twice now) and holding me when I'm upset/crying/frustrated/tired/fedup and squishing bugs.

Erich is lucky to have a daddy who loves him so very much and who can't wait to see him after work and who (sometimes) changes his diaper so mommy gets a break and who makes him smile like no one else and who holds him and holds him and holds him until he falls asleep and who watches the fish take with him and who really does love him more than he loves his dumb dog (did I say "dumb" outloud?)

Daddy's little buddy!!!

AND, lastly...another Father's Day shout-out to my other dad!!! Thank you SO MUCH for all you do for me and my family. We love you and are so glad to have you in our lives!!!