Father's Day Weekend

We spent last weekend at my Dad's, which was as much a celebration of Father's Day and the exciting start of a new chapter in Ben's life as it was a celebration of some much beloved heavy equipment. As soon as we pulled into the driveway and unbuckled Alden from his car seat, he made a beeline for the barn, gesturing wildly and squealing "Da-der, da-der!" When first introduced to these wonderful machines, he pronounced the word nearly perfectly - trah-ter. Lately he's been getting a bit lazy, settling on da-der or da-doo instead. I don't know why this has happened, but a lot of his words have gotten sloppier over the past week. I'm hoping it's just a phase. Alden has taken a real shine to my Dad ever since his first tractor ride.We have a wall at home that's covered in photos of family and one of our bedtime rituals is to name the people in the photographs. Mama and Dada are the easy ones. Uncle Ben gets a hand gesture, Grandpa Joseph gets a "Papa", and most everyone else gets a somewhat bewildered "errsh" or

"ba" - even Karen, whom he sees almost every week. However, when I point to a photo of my dad lately and ask Alden for an identification, he jubilantly proclaims "DA-DOO!"

Alden examines the front bucket loader.

One more mutual meltdown with Ben before his long trip across the country. Gotta keep the traditions going.

Ben was already at the house when we arrived, making his final plans for his cross country roadtrip. His little Honda Civic is packed floor to roof with all his worldly possessions, which amazes me because there's no way I could fit all my belongings inside a sedan. Ben had initially planned to leave the afternoon of our arrival, but I managed to guilt him into staying for dinner so that we could fete him a little bit as well. We're all so excited for the start of his new adventure and think he's going to really dig Oregon, but we're sad to see him go. We loved having him stay here in Maine, especially Alden.

I made a whiskey cake and pumpkin whoopie pies with Lydia to celebrate. With barbera rosato and syrah, we toasted to fathers, to brothers and to birthdays.