Dad

Mark and Dan's posts regarding dad were excellent and inspired me to write as well. Yesterday, which was dad's birthday was rough for me-a couple of my brothers mentioned I should go to the Thorton Merc in his honor to eat lunch. I had a really hard time keeping it together at work, but reading those posts made me feel a lot better. I also had some family bring me some jerky just cause they wanted to help support.

Mark commented on Dad not liking people chewing ice. One of my favorite things to do would be to get a jolly rancher or ice and sit down next to him and see how long he could go without getting on my case. It was usually under two minuets. He would tilt his head toward me and say something like "you know I hate that right" I would reply yes and keep chewing until he told me to knock it off. He also really hated the sound of people walking on snow and the crunching noise it makes. He would tell me to stop walking or say "Do you really have to walk right now" Good times.

One of my favorite things is that I had to assist in pulling dad out of snow. I enjoyed this on a number of levels. First it was usually always the other way around. I would be stuck or need some sort of car assistance. This time it was dad calling me because I had a dodge durango. He called and said, "I need you to come pull me out." I said sure no problem where you at? He replied, "I'm at my house in the driveway." I said, "Let me get this straight, you're stuck in your own driveway, how did you do that?" "Nevermind, just come pull me out." I drove over to dad's house and it was pretty funny. He was not even backing out of the driveway, he had already backed in so he could pull out forward, however when he pulled out forward he turned to sharp right into a snow drift and could not get out. I started laughing and he looked at me "Very funny isn't it chuckles." Anyway it brought me great joy to 1-have a vehicle capable of pulling him out and 2-that he was stuck in his own driveway, a fact I reminded him of often.

One of the things I miss the most is his random drop bys at our house. This was more so when mom was homebound, I think he just needed some companionship. He was literally stopping by almost daily to see the kids or drop off random things to us. The kids would come running up the stairs and give him a big hug. He would visit with each one of them for a few min. then take off. He loved each one of our kids and knew them personally. Sometimes he would show up just after we had put the kids down for bed, but it didn't matter we would let them out of bed to come see their Grandpa-after all he was making the effort to come see them and we knew he just needed to hang out sometimes. It was so fun and I miss it. It's funny cause after we gave checkers to him he stopped coming over.

One time we were eating Sunday dinner at mom and dad's. After eating a good meal, I noticed that there was some ham on the serving plate that had been cut in pieces. I asked Brianna if she had eaten all her dinner she replied that she had and she went outside to play. After she was outside dad said, "I hate to rat your daughter out but she didn't eat her ham, I saw her put it back on the plate." He really felt bad because he knew we would punish Brianna for lying which we did. Anyway, he thought correcting her lying was more important than keeping it to himself.

I told Melanie I wouldn't go camping unless we had a camp trailer. So we found a nice 1980's beater and went a number of times last summer. Not long after we got our trailer dad got a motorhome. He and mom came camping with us on the 4th of July when they down the fireworks in IF. He decided he didn't like the motorhome and when we went camping at Rigby lake a few weeks later, he had a camp trailer. After that campout he decided he wanted a different camp trailer so he got a different one. It was so funny-but just like a lot of other things in his life-he wanted to makes things just a little better if he could.

As mentioned by others there are some things I have learned since his passing that make me admire, love, and respect him even more. What a great Dad, happy bday!