Father's Day 2012

In an unusual stroke of brilliance (otherwise known as pintrest), I came up with the BEST ideas for Father's Day gifts. I was so excited about them, I was near giddy.  (silly that something so simple makes me so happy.  I suppose that's what motherhood does to you.)  For the grandfathers, we cut out a brown tree trunk and pasted it to white paper.  Then we dipped the girls' hands in green paint and used their handprints to press "leaves" on the trees.

Daddy's was a little more complicated.  I dropped small amounts of paint onto a paper plate in various colors and then let the paint settle into each other, which allowed us to make a multi-colored tye-dye style handprint.  The girls took turns dipping their feet into the paint and then pressing them onto the paper.  We did this backwards (big toes on the outside, little toes on the inside) so that once we added the slender body, head and antennas, we had perfect, brightly colored butterflies.

We celebrated at my parents' house.  We drove up the night before and went to dinner with them, plus my grandma, auntie and some favorite cousins that were visiting.  Our kids ran around like crazy people, the food was delicious and the evening was a blast.  Then in the morning, I made honey wheat waffles, generously laden with fresh strawberries, bananas, whip cream and my homemade strawberry syrup.

It was also my mom's birthday!  So we had double the excuse to celebrate.  The girls had found a wall hanging with a 1940's style Mickey and Minnie sitting on a park bench. It was cute, sweet and a perfect little something for my mom (especially considering our Disney crazed family).

We attended church (with all of our usual noisy chaos--except that the adults actually outnumbered the children in a very unusual and absolutely wonderful happenstance) and the girls looked adorable in their beautiful new dresses.  After church, they twirled and danced and pretended to be flowers with their soft, full skirts spread out around them.  A quick lunch was followed by a blissfully quiet afternoon of naps and a movie.  Butterfly is becoming increasingly reluctant to take naps, especially if we aren't at home.  So she typically has 15-20 minutes of quiet time in her bed and then we cuddle for a movie (her new favorite is the Princess Diaries--a fun new surprise, her first non-animated favorite movie).

My brother and his family joined us for the evening.  The girls were thrilled to play with their cousins and my sister and I made a fabulous team in the kitchen preparing our celebratory feast of chicken parmesan, pasta, salad and chocolate cobbler with ice cream.  We feasted, we sang, we played, it was a wonderful evening.