A day for the dads!

Whew!
This week.
Man, oh man.

I taught at VBS at our church and the boys got to come along {in their own classes, of course}.  That schedule flipped us around and made us all tired.  I don't know who it was harder on -- Benjamin, Andrew or me! {Scratch that.  The answer is Andrew. Hands down.}

But I think we are back into something normal.  Although I can't say that for sure.  It's Sunday.  Tomorrow will be the real test.

On to more important things, though.

It's Father's Day! I usually have some sort of mixed emotions for a while on Father's Day.  I'm super excited to celebrate Patrick -- who is, by the way, THE most incredible dad ever.  Seriously, I had no clue dad's could be so amazing until Patrick became one.  I get to enjoy having a really great step dad. I have two fathers-in-law to celebrate.

But my dad, the man who knew me from birth, he is not here to celebrate.  I can remember him, though.  And {I just knew this would happen} I find that now, almost six years later, I barely remember the bad and hard things.  I do remember the good in him and his smile and how he said my name or sang random songs to me {My Mariaaaa...Ashley Mariaaaaaa...}.

You know, just your everyday ponderings.
{"Ponderings" is not a word.  Apparently.}

Moving on. Again.

Patrick.  The love of my life.  The man that has made me the woman I am.  The one I long to spend as many days as the Lord will give us together.  The one person in the world that I want to tell everything to.  The one man who makes me think there is good in the world.  The only man I would ever want to be the father of my children.  The one man who teaches me more every day.  The one person who puts up with every single part of me -- good and bad -- and still loves me.

Someday, I hope and pray that those little boys know how very lucky they are to have Patrick McBride for a daddy.  And boy, oh boy, are they so blessed that God chose Patrick to be their dad!

Teaching B to "shave"

Sad baby. Fake smiling daddy. 

Just the BEST ever. My soul....

This baby LOVES his daddy!

Teaching the boys how to work...

Teaching B to build and play and be engineer minded.  Lucky for B, I am not the one teaching him these things.  It would be a very sad outcome.

And a few other things:
*Very soon I will post a lot of pictures of our life recently.
*I'm getting close to 1,000 posts!  Any ideas of things I should write about?
*Maybe I should set a goal to reach that number by {say} the end of summer.
*Any questions I can answer to take up a post or two?