To Dad, Because I Love You

Dad,

That's right, it's YOUR day today!

Thank you for being the best elementary school teacher in the WORLD because we could read in closets, dig holes in the field, play with legos and computers as part of LEARNING, take field trips, and listen to Paul Harvey at lunch time.

Thank you for fostering a love of ham radio, computers, and electronics in my husband when he was your student because that meant you would have LOTS IN COMMON and you would really like him when it came to the day when he would ask you for permission to marry me!

Thank you for filling our house with music and passing a few musical genes on to your kids. I'm happy that you continue to share your musical gift with the community and that you have a lot of fun doing it.

Thank you for reading five or ten books at a time, loving bookstores and libraries, and sharing a love of reading with your children and grandchild.

Thank you for buying me the complete set of Winnie-the-Pooh books for my 4th birthday and for The Secret Garden—my imagination was born through those stories.

Thank you for telling us bedtime stories about Freddy and Mr. Poppins and your version of Daniel and the Lion's Den. I think you should tell me a few of those again so we can write them down.

Thank you for taking us camping—at the beach, in the woods—and for being a teacher so you would often have SUMMERS OFF to take your family on all these trips!

Thank you for marrying a pretty AWESOME girl who would help you raise such WONDERFUL daughters! (Tough, I know, to live in a house full of opinionated females!).

Thank you for your forgiveness when this opinionated female got into lengthy DEBATES with you.

Thank you for accompanying me to England—my first flight anywhere—and then later to Arkansas to show me around where you spent your childhood. These trips I will never forget.

Thank you for taking the sign language class with me and supplying me with books to help me learn more.

Thank you for playing games with your family, even getting in to character when we had to guess MARILYN MONROE! Have we ever laughed harder?!

Thank you for supporting my studies and helping me through college—your alma mater. Especially thank you for showing me what it means to think for myself, ask questions, use logic and reason, study, and want to learn more. And thank you for teaching me to never EXPECT a handout but be willing to OFFER my hand out to someone in need.

Dad, you don't play golf, play video games, drink coffee or beer, watch much sports, fish, hunt, eat meat, bowl, recline in a Lazyboy, partake in fine wines, or wear ties or cufflinks, and I have to say that I LOVE YOU FOR ALL THIS! There is no TYPICAL gift for a guy like you because you are a ONE-OF-A-KIND father.  So there is no point at all shopping for a Father's Day gift for you!!!!!  OK, honestly I wasn't trying to get out of it. How about for my birthday this week you come over and we'll go out to dinner? Hmm, we'll have Mom pay!

I love you Dad! Happy Father's Day!