To My Dad

Happy Father's Day to my wonderful, funny, adventuresome dad!

Some of my best memories with him include fishing trips. He tried to take each one of us at least once a year, but if we out-fished him we got dropped to the bottom of the list. (smile)

He also would take us on buying trips for his and Mom's antique store. These trips included antique auctions, miles of driving and singing to the top of our lungs, games of Beaver Cleaver ,(you may know this game as Punch Bug) and always a little speeding on the way home with him saying, "I'm ready to get home to your momma now!"

I also remember hopping in bed with he and my mom early in the morning and he would tell me stories. They were always better when he told them than when they were read from a book because he always changed them up just a little to keep me in suspense.

He took us as a family on trips to the beach or the bay on Sunday afternoons after church, vacations to visit our grandparents, and trips to look for just the right Christmas tree in the woods

I remember the example he set the times he stopped on the road to help strangers, sometimes giving rides to people hitch-hiking that looked a little scary to me as a child. I remember the times he and my brothers took Sunday dinner to a hermit who lived in a dilapidated house in the woods close to our house.

I know that many people grow up never knowing their dad, that is so hard for me to imagine. There are many dads today who don't have a clue the impact they have on the little ones God strategically placed in their care.

I am truly blessed with the most amazing parents! I am so very thankful to have been honored to grow up with them as my role models and heros. Of course, they sometimes had to make hard decisions that I didn't fully appreciate at the time, but now I understand and am so glad they loved me enough to make those hard decisions no matter how unpopular they were then.

I am also thankful that I had the freedom to really be a kid. I wasn't pushed to grow up too fast, but instead I had a long and very happy childhood.

Thanks Dad for being such a great dad! I love you even if you did say I throw like a girl!