Our Best Daddy

John was with his mom in Santa Cruz for Father's Day, so the girls and I had a little fun with sidewalk chalk to send him a sweet Father's Day message. Surfs Up!

We followed that up with a repeat of last years Dad's day photos to update the pictures in his office... thought it would be fun to continue this each year to see how the girls change over time.

Both photo shoots were disastrous, actually. It's hard to compare to their first year, but this was the hardest day I've had with the girls in recent memory. It's amazing any decent photos came out of it. We must have all just really been missing JR. Maybe it's the ultimate compliment when your family completely falls apart without you, right? Well then, we totally fall apart with you...  Happy Daddy's Day, JR! 

In Memory of Antoinette Robison

This was a tough month. Some of you may know this, some of you may not. John's mom fell in late May and broke her hip.  At first it appeared that the hip surgery and recovery would be manageable but after a series of complications, that seemed less likely. John spent the first three weeks of June in Santa Cruz with her and his sisters. The girls and I flew out for a portion of that time. After a few weeks in the hospital, his mom returned home with the support of hospice. She was very weak and very tired, but in the moments that she was awake, her sense of humor, lightness of being, and reassuring nature was fully intact. Antoinette Robison passed away on June 19th, surrounded by her children. She is terribly missed!

I'm so glad Lela and Cate had the opportunity to know her, if only for a short time. Her strength and humor lives on in these two spunky girls!

For Antoinette's memorial service in early August, the family will be sailing on The Chardonnay (a 70 ft sailing yacht which happens to be just above her head in this photo). She loved the Chardonnay and often walked Jema along the harbor, stopping to sit on the benches in front of the Chardonnay office.

Here is a link to her obituary
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/santacruzsentinel/obituary.aspx?n=antoinette-marie-robison&pid=165562211#fbLoggedOut

Update

Okay. Here's how this works....

I'm babysitting. Helping a friend and also gaining some very valuable popsicle sticks (good old-fashioned babysitting currency around these parts) and I have exactly thirty minutes left before she gets home to update months worth of blog posts.

Here goes....

Having been knee deep in the car business lately (sold two, bought two, one more to sell), we've been washing cars a lot! We wash them, show them, move mulch in them, wash them, show them again, wax them, leave wax on too long, scrub for hours, etc. Here's JR and the girls hard at work on the old Nissan truck. This was in May and the girls can still tell you the name of the guy who drove off in Daddy's truck. It hit them pretty hard, even though they had never ridden in it.

Mother's Day at the Zoo... The girls weren't all that interested in taking a photo with me, so we bribed them into acting like they liked me. True story. I can't remember what we bribed them with but it must have been good!!

As seems typical for Boise in May and June, we have a few scorching hot days (or so we think) and then it cools off again for a few weeks in early/mid June. What better way to pass at least two minutes on one of those early scorchers than with a turtle sprinkler? They really did lose interest that quickly and haven't given the turtles the time of day since. Can we expect three minute attention spans next year and four the following year? Maybe we'll keep the turtles around to test the theory.

Oh dang.... time just ran out.