Happy Father's Day to the Men in my Life.

I am absolutely the luckiest person ever to have had the good fortune to share my life with three of the best fathers to ever to walk the planet. 

Mom and Dad at Anna's graduation ceremony…a happy day.

My dad is honest and generous and understands people better than anyone I've every known. 

He is fair. Very, very fair about everything.

He is the opposite of a snob and believes that everyone is equally important. He is absolutely crazy about all of his 11 grandchildren and loves all of them as only a Grandpa could. He is 100% supportive of everything that's important to me. He didn't think it strange at all when I told him that we wanted to adopt boys from Guatemala and opened his heart to Jamie and Henry. And then, years later, when I told him that we were hoping to adopt a 6th child, a little girl from Ethiopia, he stood behind our decision and welcomed Rosie home.  

In short, he is more than awesome and I am very proud to be his daughter.

Jim telling Rosie about one of the many times Karl got hurt and needed stitches when he was little. She was appropriately horrified.

I don't know if Karl's father Jim was ever worried about Karl marrying me, and I truly appreciate that it's a mystery to me. Instead he trusted Karl and thoroughly welcomed me, Anna and Mary into his life so many years ago. 

I will be forever grateful for kindness that he showed to me and the kids then and now. Jim is the best father in law I could have ever hoped for.  I love him for being such a great father to my husband, but also I really LIKE him for the wonderful person that he is to all of us. 

Karl and the boys on a helicopter ride… the boys all agreed that if I took them,  I would have definitely been airsick.
So happy not to be included on that adventure.

My kids are blessed to have the best dad ever and they absolutely know it.

 He knows each kid better then they know themselves and

can predict how they will behave in any given situation…bratty, sweet or a somewhere in the middle. His dad instinct is uncanny, he knows when things are a big deal and when they aren't, when to be tough and when to take it easy. 

I don't know how he does it, but I do know that I am very lucky to share this parenting gig with a man of such incredible dad skills.

And so in honor of the three wonderful dads in my world… I thank each of them for being there for both me and our six very fortunate kiddos.  

Happy Father's Day!