Happy Birthday Daddy!

Happy Birthday to the most important, inspiring, amazing man in my life - my papa!!

*My dad actually left today for a church mission trip to Honduras so we celebrated his birthday with a dinner last Sunday. My mom made two cakes for the occasion (one strawberry with chocolate icing - my absolute favourite!! and one chocolate with vanilla icing) That's me in the background - the blur whizzing by - Maddie took this photo and said I look creepy! ha life in action :)

*One of the gifts I gave my dad was to make him World Cup ready :) He's not a football fan or anything but he was hecho en Mexico so he's representing! :) And me - well I made sure I was ready too!! CANNOT WAIT! Tomorrow baby!! I'll have to watch it on my computer at work :(
*Philip and I. Can you see in the balloons in the background? Me and Maddie did a jungle theme and picked the wildest, most colourful animal print ones for Daddy :) Every birthday he always buys us balloons. It's a bit of a tradition in our family

Micaela posted a lovely pic of my father as a little one on her blog so I thought I'd share some more photos of our papa as a handsome boy growing up -
And with us growing up (my dad is such a goofy father and ironically he's not smiling in either of these photos haha but it was the first two I could grab on my lunch break at my parents house to scan here at work so I just grabbed them :) - truly he's not so serious in real life :)

*As you can see Micaela has never grown out of rompers - I sure did. Not a fan - but Micaela always did like fashion more than I did :)

My father's birthday also marks an anniversary of sorts - nearly 19 years ago my family and I evacuated the Philippines because of the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. I remember my mom was getting ready to have a big birthday party for my dad and everything. Twinkie and I were 7 at the time and it's some of my earliest and clearest memories. How sad and scared my mom must have been to leave her family behind. The Air Force took care of us when it came to evacuating - but we couldn't do anything for my Lola (grandma) and the rest of my mom's siblings. My dad also had to stay behind to help with the evacuation. I'll never forget watching my parents say goodbye as we got loaded onto a bus and said bye to my dad. It was one of the only times I remember seeing my mom cry growing up. When my sisters and I were little our brother gave each of us stuffed animals of the Tiny Toons characters. I had Babs Bunny. I loved Babs and her pink fur and purple bows. I use to chew on her ears when I was scared or sad. When the volcano erupted there was soooo much ash that day looked like night! I tore her little ears up during that experience. I still have Babs to this day! She means a lot to me because not only has she always been there for me, but growing up as a military brat you don't get to keep a lot of your childhood toys. It was easier for my mom to sell a bunch of stuff instead of moving everything to our next base. Thank you Marco for my darling Babs! :)

*I miss our childhood - we had such a fun and loving one :) This is us at Christmas in Abilene, TX where we moved to after the Philippines.

Happy Birthday Daddy! Thank you for being the most loving and supportive father and for being such a part of our lives! xo