Father’s Day

I am truly blessed to be married to a man who is a wonderful father to our five girls and an amazing husband to me.

These are the words that I use to describe him – loyal, hard working, happy, handsome.

The words that the girls use to describe him – busy, strong (like a rock), caring and loving.

Here he is at 11 months old.

My husband has an older brother and a younger brother.  His sister came along about 10 years after he was born.  My mother-in-law used to say that if he had been her first born that she might not have tried to have any more children.  Apparently, he was a very fussy baby until they figured out that he slept better with a fan blowing on him.

Today, he is the least fussy person that I know.  He is rarely crabby and is a generally happy, glass half full sort of guy.  But, he does still like to sleep with the fan blowing on him.

My hubby is in the middle.  His older brother is on the pony named Junior and my hubby and his younger brother are on the pony named Sonny.  He was not yet 4 1/2 years old in this picture.

They lived in the country off a gravel road and had a barn and a few farm animals and a large garden and fruit trees and a pond.  The area is now built up with subdivisions and large homes nearby.

I like to tell him that you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.

My hubby and his brothers and sister.

It seems that their household was very male oriented so I’m sure that when their sister was born it was quite a shock.  The boys were all involved in off roading with their jeeps and playing ball and working on cars, trucks, and tractors.  The boys all worked on a nearby golf course and to this day my husband loves working outside regardless of the weather or time of year.

Working on building a new golf course in Brownsville, TX.

He is a very hard worker.  He works hard at work, and he works hard at home.

Senior Prom, 1974.

I met my hubby in high school, but we never dated then.  He had a rule that he wouldn’t date anyone who he worked with or who was related to anyone he worked with and since my mother worked at the golf course, too, I was out of luck.

Our family, 2001.

My hubby adopted our oldest daughter, and our second oldest came to live with us when she was 13 years old.  She is our niece by birth.  I always tell him that he is living the dream being surrounded by women running around in their bras and underpants.  This mortifies him since he is the most modest person that I know.  I have rarely seen him spit or heard him belch or make other bodily noises.  He always closes the door to the bathroom.  In the meantime, our girls have enjoyed sharing their bodily noises and personal information on their hygienic habits just so they can embarrass him.  Who says only boys can be crude?

The girls believe he can fix anything, and he used to laugh when he’d find their broken barrettes in his tool box.  But he can fix almost anything including broken hearts and hurt feelings.  He has pictures of them that they glued on construction paper hammers and popsicle stick frames hanging in his garage work area.

Father’s Day 2011.

We had a quiet day together.  His favorite part of the day was when we went to church with him.  He is a man of great faith.

We had brunch and went shopping for our upcoming vacation and ended the day making homemade pizzas together.  We missed two of our kids that weren’t with us, but loved being together with the three that were here along with our son-in-law.

There are times when I feel that I don’t deserve the love of this man.  I like to pick fights with him, and I sometimes intentionally do things that I know annoy him.  He is the more sentimental of the two of us so I usually pick funny cards to give to him for his birthday, our anniversary, and Father’s Day.  Occasionally, I break down and give him a sappy card.  This year it was a sappy card year.  Well, I have been particularly mean to him lately.

I will be happy, if our girls decide to get married, if they choose a man who is like their dad.  Loyal, honest, hard working, fun loving, generous, caring and kind.  He’s not perfect, but he’s pretty darn close.

And I love him very much.