But then everyone got sick at once (well, except for Beth and I), the IKEA trip got cancelled and Father's Day was cut back a bit. I still drove up on Sunday morning, though, picking up steak and seafood to grill along the way, so I could spend Father's Day with Dad.
And my brother and Beth were there, too, which meant...
...Sophie!!! And we all know that when Sophie's around, she's definitely the star of the show (which means to expect lots and lots of photos of the li'l punk throughout this post).
I just recently learned to grill...I kind of had to if I wanted to eat grilled shrimp while Darren was out of the country in Kenya...so Jon and I tag-teamed it and cooked everything while letting Dad rest (and take photos, of course!).
And I snatched the camera every once in a while to take photos of the munchkin playing her little Sophie games.
Sophie is big on "driving" these days and insisted that she be allowed to sit in Dad's car (and be buckled up!) so she could "go work."
Yeah, there's definitely a scrapbook page in here somewhere. :)
It started raining just as we finished cooking- thank goodness the grill was under the carport!
And then everyone nommed out on the awesome food. It's so much easier to cook for meals like this, especially with Sophie around. It's just so much calmer having a big meal at home!
I'd also arrived early enough to bake up cupcakes and brownies before we grilled, and the brownies were just cool enough to be scarfed down by the time we finished eating dinner. I set the whole pan down in the middle of the table, which just happened to be right in front of where Sophie was sitting. Her little eyes lit up when she spotted all those brownies, and she exclaimed a very excited, "oh, thank you!"
And, no we didn't let her have the whole pan. She got one tiny piece of cupcake and one tiny piece of brownie, and at it while wearing her little artists' smock from IKEA. And, yes, there's a scrapbook page somewhere in all of that, too!
And of course there were lots of Father's Day gifts, both for Dad and for my brother.
Mom had fun wrapping this one up pretty, and then of course I had to get pictures of it all.
My Dad does the best Cookie Monster, Grover, and Yoda voices this side of Sesame Street. And Dagobah...
Sophie had to help open gifts, of course!
J's Father's Day card from Mom and Dad was sooooo cool- it was a talking Star Wars card that ended with Threepio saying, "we're doomed!" Sophie played it over and over and over.
And over.
And then little bit got bundled up in her pajamas for the drive home (they were hoping she'd fall asleep in the car and they could just put her right in bed), but first she had to stop and pick "rasperdies" (her word for raspberries) with Poppy.
And then we all packed up and drove back to our respective homes. I'm kind of sad that all the weekend festivities got cut short, but we still had a lot of fun. Turns out J and I make a pretty good grilling team!