It's Father's Day

CoolGuy spent yesterday and Friday in the pool with the visiting grandchildren. They have a great game that involves 1) jumping off the side into the pool as close to Grandpa as you can get, then 2) standing on Grandpa's hands and having him toss you into the air from the pool so that you land--kersplash!--back into the pool where you swim over to the side and [see #1]...We can do this for hours. Seriously. Too much fun!!

That is what you do with the big kids, but with the Amphibian Child (see photo) you just hang out in the pool and smile and laugh because being in the water is the BEST THING EVER!! Especially if you have a long foam tube to play with. She is a little fish and spent all her time in the pool laughing and smiling and splashing in the water. Fun times.

The kids sang some Father's Day songs in Sacrament meeting today and after the final kiss was blown, I recalled a rendition of "I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home" that our family performed years ago. I can't remember if I've written about this before.

In 1990 CoolGuy went off to Saudi Arabia with a group of Marines. He was a civilian at that time, but he was the person who kept their remote-control spy plane functioning, so when the 3rd RPV Company deployed, CoolGuy deployed, too. It was when Iraq had invaded Kuwait and so there was a big face-off in the Middle East which eventually ended up in what has become known as the First Gulf War. Anyway, when CoolGuy first got there, he was busy, but they weren't undergoing rocket attacks--that came later. We were living in SoCal, and a local television station offered to families of deployed people the chance to come to their studio and film a short video, and then they would pay for the tape to be mailed to your loved one.

At the time, our children ranged from 1st grade to freshman in high school. So, we made a plan that each person would choose something they'd like to demonstrate to Dad, or show him and talk about. The high school son played a selection on his clarinet he'd learned in band.  The next daughter read something she'd done for school. The other sister performed a cheer from her cheerleading gig for middle school. The third grade son did some karate moves, and the 1st grader was too shy to talk on camera, so I narrated what he was going to say about some new toy he'd gotten while he demonstrated it. Then we talked a little about something and, for our finale, we sang "I'll Be So Glad When Daddy Gets Home"--a slightly modified version of the original--more pertinent for the occasion, since we really didn't know when that was going to be.

When we finished singing, and the director called, "cut" to the cameraman,  (I think the whole tape was about 25 minutes long) we got a round of applause from the crew, and a few of them wiped their eyes, surreptitiously. They were effusive in their compliments for our "dear little program and adorable song." They'd taped a lot of people just sitting around chatting and umm-ing and ah--ing because 25 minutes is a long time to fill without a plan. But, I knew that, so we'd planned ahead.

The tape was a big hit for CoolGuy. He watched it several times there in the desert and his co-workers thought it was pretty cool, too. And of course, they marveled at how anyone could have five kids!! It was fun to do, and it made his day. He'd been gone for about three months when it arrived. So, whenever I hear or sing that daddy-getting-home song, I'm reminded how really, really glad we were that time that our Daddy came home, and he came home safe and sound. Lots of daddies don't make it out of that part of the world alive.