Dad Street

This morning while laying in bed…What? Wait!! I was laying in bed! Thanks to my beautiful wife, even though the kids were up at their usual 6′ish (Yes, as in 6am on the weekend!) she let me sleep in.

So we were laying there and she reminded me that this was my 4th Father’s Day! I sat there for a moment recalling the last 3 of them and just noticing how grateful I felt. Having experienced 4 years of infertility we both only dreamed about celebrating Mother’s and Father’s Day. It’s almost like a second birthday for sure!

I haven’t really spoken about being grateful much in the past and thought now would be a perfect time. Just recently I made a conscious decision to be mindfully grateful.

What is Mindfully Grateful?

Basically my definition of this is that you are very intentional to be aware of what you’re grateful for. There are different ways of doing this. For me, I actually use an app on my iPhone called Gratitude Journal to write down specifically what I’m grateful for.

I can’t go any further without telling the whole truth…I got the idea of writing down things I’m grateful for from Oprah.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way I thought it’d be best for me to use an app. I’m a little geeky that way and I like the idea of having my list on me throughout the day. I need to do a better job of my consistency but basically right before I go to bed I’ll write out 5 quick things I am grateful for. Most of them are relevant to the the day I just had. Normally they are things that are very simple such as a glass of wine, the sun, a hug, etc. The point is in appreciating what I do have and what is in my life. Giving attention to what I have not only keeps me mindful of the positive things in my life but keeps me in the present (the now). I’m not thinking about the future and I’m not really thinking about the past. Everything I’m grateful for is happening right now and I do my best to live in the right now. So you can see how something so simple that takes literally minutes a day can have such an impact on your life and self awareness.

Below is a screenshot from the list I made tonight. I put my wife first on the list because I very literally wouldn’t be a Father without her. She was amazing through all of our Infertility and I owe all of this to her.

I had an amazing day filled with plenty of time with the wife and kids, even a little “me time”. It was so nice to hear from so many friends and family today as well. Special days like this make it easy to find so many things I’m grateful for. What’s even more special is that I know tomorrow night before I go to bed I’ll have my list and I’ll be celebrating all over again.

Are you mindfully grateful? Do you keep a list or take mental note on a regular basis?

What a great weekend it was! Not because we took some fab trip somewhere or because I went on some extended golf excursion (both of which would have been nice). Rather, this was a somewhat “normal” weekend and that is exactly why it was so great!

Spending time with the family and soaking up the time with O and Jake was really all I wanted. I was hoping Saturday to have at least gone food shopping so that was one less thing to do on my Father’s Day but that didn’t quite work out. Wasn’t it so much better when we were kids and “grocery shopping” didn’t fall into the equation of, “Geez, how am I going to rock this weekend”?

So what did my Father’s Day look like?

Well I woke up around our normal time with O laying next to me (she must have made her way in, in the middle of the night). Soon after I awoke, Jake was calling from his room and I went in to change him and brought him back into bed with us so The Boss could nurse him.

Just after we all got up the kids brought over two awesome cards!. Both had a printed pic of them and both had each of their artistic renderings applied both front and back. I have no idea what they drew but it was colorful and there were a lot of curves. I’m thinking it probably looked a lot like what your 1 and 3 year old would do. Only this was closer to the fine work of Picasso or Rembrandt until you take out my biased opinion and then it’s back to looking like what you’d expect from a toddler of this age. How cute!

It was a casual morning, I did the bills <—Sounds fun, huh?

Read the paper (more like skimmed) and my favorite part, the comics!

The Boss asked what I wanted to do and really I wanted was to go for a walk with the kids (pic above is from our walk)

After cleaning up the house, feeding the kids, ourselves and each other we were off for a ride.

I totally loved them and it even brought a tear to my eye. I get all sentimental like my Mom….terribly annoying when you’re trying to be cool and all (of which I cannot do).

Once in the car both O and Jake fell quickly asleep. We took a drive around the coast and into Carmel (which is only about 10 minutes from home). After stopping off for sandwiches we parked by the ocean and ate while we watched the surfers tackle the waves.

After the kids got up we headed for that walk I wanted. It was a blast seeing them run and play. One of the great things about going on walks with them is that they’re always exploring and seeing something new. Whether it’s the ocean or just the little plants and flowers they find along the trail.

After our walk we wound up going to one of their favorite parks in our neighborhood. They had a ton of fun and we got to soak up some extra sun while we watched them tackle the jungle gyms.

Our Sunday Father’s Day couldn’t be complete without Sushi, right? Well apparently it could cause the one place I wanted, Sushi Heaven, in Carmel was closed!

Runner up? Chinese take-out so we could enjoy it in the comfort of our own house. If any of you have kids O and Jake’s age you know how nice it is to sometimes just eat it at home. For the most part, they’re wonderful kids in restaurants. We’ve been taking them since nearly birth on a regular basis. But when they’re tired or just have had enough, you know better than to risk it.

Back at home the funniest thing happened. Actually this was the second funniest thing but I’ll start with this. The kids were playing outside just after dinner and when we looked in their rom, O was giving Jake a pedicure using a branch off a small bush!

Oy Vey!

So this was only second funniest to the first funniest thing that happened today. Earlier on we saw O laying on the couch lifting her shirt and Jake running over. What was crazy was that he immediately put his mouth on her stomach! We were like, “What is going on here?”

Turns out, O was trying to be nice and decided she’d breastfeed him. The only problem is she’s not exactly able to to do that and unfortunately for Jake he had no idea! I’m pretty sure he left still hungry but O was happy she felt like she was helping Mommy out! lol

So overall, even though this was a “normal” day it was all I really wanted. I was thankful to have just one more normal day with each of the people responsible for why I’m able to celebrate Father’s Day. After all, that’s really what it’s all about and although, a great trip or some golf time would have been tons of fun, spending the day with my family just doing family stuff is really the only gift I could get – And lucky me? – I get this every day!

A Grateful Father’s Day

A Grateful Father’s Day

Father’s Day On The Street