It was a happy Father's day...

Step one... Preparation.

I was a bit late on Father's day prep this year... with a week full of sick kids I didn't get out of the house very often.  But after putting Emerson to bed on Saturday night, Caleb and I "snuck" out of the house to do a bit of last minute shopping.  We went to Home Depot and Rona to find the perfect gift (only to discover that it was out of stock) but ended up at Walmart to pick up a few supplies for Sunday morning.  While we were out, Caleb and I came up with a plan... we decided to make Breakfast for Daddy, bought him a mini-gift until the real gift was back in stock (Caleb picked it out-- Cheetos and blue Gatorade-- he was CONVINCED that Daddy would love it) and picked up some card making supplies.  We also came to an agreement on our Sunday morning wake up time-- Caleb first suggested that we get up at 4:44 am. I nixed that one pretty quickly but readily agreed to his second suggestion-- 7:48 am.  Much better.  I worked him into such an excited frenzy over Father's day while we were shopping-- he could hardly contain himself.  He was SO excited.  Although at one point he did ask, "Mommy, when is it going to be happy Caleb's day?"  I told him that every day is happy Caleb's day-- but that we would have a special day for him on his birthday.
When we got home that night he was pretty pumped to keep our plans a big secret.  Upon entry back into the house he quickly told Doug that the only place we went to was to the movie store-- For two hours-- and he scurried away to his room to hid the bags of supplies from Doug.  Somehow I managed to convince him that hiding the bacon in the fridge was still a reasonable hiding place.

Step Two... Execution.

Father's Day morning... the previously agreed upon wake up time was forgotten.  Caleb was at my side of the bed just after 5 trying to get the party started.  I sent him back to bed... but there were many more sleep interruptions to come.  Finally I told him to drag the bags of groceries and other items out of the closet, I dragged myself out of bed, and the kids and I got to work in the kitchen.
Emerson was more of an onlooker when it came to making pancakes and frying bacon.  She happily munched on cheerios.  Caleb was more than willing to help her.  The help wasn't wanted.  I may or may not have threatened with a time out more than once.

But Caleb was very excited to help with making the pancakes.  Gotta love the just rolled out of bed morning hair.  Cute on a three year old boy.  Not so cute on a sleep deprived Mama.... hence the lack of pictures of me.

Caleb also made Doug a card.  He came up with his own unique message: "I love you Daddy.  Can you take me to Castle Fun Park and Swimming?"  He also wrote it himself.  The word "swimming" took up the entire back page.  The letters were also in no particular order and all faced different directions.  You might say that they were "swimming" around the page.

Time to serve breakfast.  We decided that we were going to serve Daddy breakfast in bed.  It was a little bit scary getting both kids and the tray (Caleb insisted on carrying) into our bedroom but somehow we managed to make it there with no spills and minimal tears.

Caleb was pretty pumped to eat his syrupy pancakes and bacon in my bed.  I tried not to look.

I may or may not have found crunchy bits of bacon under my pillow on Sunday night.  Should have washed the sheets...

And Eme really had no clue what we were doing.  She didn't really care.  She was pretty pumped about her glow worm.

And that was how we celebrated Father's day!

We've sure got one great Daddy in this house :)