Father's Day Attempts



One of the things I've learned a lot about during my 5-plus years of marriage is that there are different ways of showing love.  Who knew? 

Actually, probably everyone that has ever heard of the book "The Five Love Languages."  It was pretty popular amongst many of my newly married friends a couple of years ago, and I even bought it and made Steve read it with me for a couple of months, you know, in order to understand one another better and bring us closer to each other.  I don't think we ever actually finished it, but we got the general idea.

In the book, it talks about 5 different ways that people accept and show love to each other: it's been a while since I've read it, so forgive me if I'm a bit rusty, but from what I can recall, the different languages include Words of Affirmation, Physical Affection, Service, Quality Time, and Gift Giving.

I actually really loved the insights and truths taught in this book, and at the end, they had a quiz--"Find Out What Love Language You Speak!" it was titled.

So I took it. 

Turns out, I speak 4 of the 5 love languages pretty fluently--in fact, I'd consider myself pretty proficient in just about all of the love languages, but there is one love language that I seem to have a mental block in.

What does this have to do with Father's Day, you may be asking?

Bear with me.  I'll get there.

The love language I rated at an absolute zero? Gift Giving.

Guess what Steve's number one love language is?  Gift giving.

Ugh.

I'm going to admit something about myself here--I dread, dread, DREAD Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, basically, any special holiday that requires I go out and buy something meaningful and thoughtful and full of special tender usefulness that shows how much I think I know about a person--or worse, how much I'm willing to spend on a person. 

Don't be fooled, I consider myself a generous person--but because gifts are not important to me, I usually want something useful for these kinds of holidays.  In fact, I've been begging my husband to start buying me year's supply foods for the past couple of years...but he won't do it. 

Problem is, most people aren't quite that way.  A 50-pound bag of wheat is rarely at the top of anyone's wish list--and so I feel lost.  So I stress and worry and fret about what to give the loved ones in my life to show them just how much I appreciate and love them....and usually, I end up missing the mark.  By a lot.

However, my husband is fluent in the language of Gift Giving.  He is always giving me something thoughtful, wonderful, EXACTLY what I wanted but had no idea until I unwrapped it....and I'm usually giving him something like food's supply.  Or tools.  I'm good at giving him tools.

Like I said, I don't speak a word of it.  Siiiiigh.

One of these times, I'll blog about just how difficult it is buying gifts for extended family who already have EVERYTHING, but for now, I'll focus on my husband.

You see, we are blessed enough to live in a household where my husband is the main provider.  I bring in a little extra with piano lessons, but he provides the bulk of our income.  And he sacrifices greatly to do so, but he is pretty good at whatever he does--whether it's banking, being a nursing student, or banking while he is a nursing student.  I'm very proud and grateful for the fact that he is such a good provider, but when it comes to spending his hard-earned money to buy him something that I think he might want...I'm terrible at it. 

So, this Father's Day, when my incredibly talented friend posted an adorable craft that she was making for her husband, I was thrilled. "Ahah!!" I thought, "I finally know what to get Steve for this Father's Day!  It's adorable, thoughtful, and totally fits into our starving student budget.  He'll genuinely love it!"

So, I set out (on Friday, mind you) to make our adorable craft--all three kid's handprints making a cute little family tree, with some lettering underneath it all saying "Happy Father's Day!" and the year.

Adorable, right?

Simple, right?

You forget one little thing--where I am gift-handicapped, I am also craft-handicapped.

I STINK at crafts.

They stress me out, I have no creativity or perfectionism where it really matters, and I don't really enjoy doing them (gasp!!  Yes, I still go to Relief Society activities.  Yes, it's usually just for the refreshments and the socializing).

So, bear that in mind as I begin my story--of where Father's Day of 2013 went wrong.

It started with the fact that we had no green paint.

We had yellow, but no blue--so, once again, no green.

I don't know about you, but when I think of trees, I usually think of green leaves (although, now as I'm writing this, I guess I could have gone with a fall theme, but once again--NO CREATIVITY).  So, I thought again.

What colors did we have?  Red.  Brown.  Yellow.  And a little bit of really clumpy white--along with a ton of markers.

Okay, I thought.  I'll just make some fun handprints.

WELL, this could get a lot longer, but since it's late and you've already heard my "vacuuming-out-the-car" story, you can get the basic idea.

At the end of an hour and a half of me trying to get some kind of adorable, frame-worthy Father's Day craft, Maggie was screaming, Clark was half naked, playing in the dog's water dish as he begged to go watch TV, and Jack was contentedly painting orange paint all the way up to his elbows on both arms...not to mention a good half of the table top ("I'm Spiderman, Mom!"). 

I was frustrated, we had no less than 7 attempts to make a decent card....and this was the best we came up with:



 

I decided to just turn the rest into cards for Grandpas and Great-Grandpas, stuffed them into envelopes, and mailed them off for the rest of our loved ones. 

This one also got stuffed into an envelope, and I ran to Ross on Saturday for a bow tie and a speaker system for Steve's Kindle.

Whatever.  Like I said, I stink at gift-giving.
For the record, Steve was gracious, grateful, surprised, and not the least bit disappointed with my last-minute gift giving attempt, and because I made him breakfast in bed along with the other Father's Day perks (he didn't have to change a single diaper all day, for one), I don't have completely overwhelming guilt. 
But I do still wish that I could have found that one thing that would have just made him absolutely giddy with joy--you know, shocked and amazed that I got him the ONE thing he wanted but never thought he would get.  Better yet, I wish I even knew what that ONE thing was.
Sigh.
That being said, I truly am grateful to have been blessed with so many amazing father examples in my life: my own wonderful dad, my father-in-law and grandfathers, and, last but not least, my ever-enduring husband, who loves me even though I give him thoughtless, pointless, useless gifts.  And cute kids.  I am good at giving him cute kids, at least....but you can only give someone so many of those before they start to get tired of them.
Speaking of which, as a particularly rough Sacrament meeting was ending this morning, both of us were exhausted after an hour and a half of attempted silencing and wrestling with three ridiculously rowdy kids.  We began cleaning up the general carnage under our church pew (you know, stepped-on Cheerios, runaway crayons, and ripped up church programs) when Steve leaned over to me and whispered, "You know what you can get me for Father's Day next year?  A vasectomy."
I'm sure it wasn't the most reverent thing to laugh so hard in a chapel, but I couldn't help it.
I love you, honey.
Happy Father's Day!!