Happy Father's Day!

Heading up to the 'stee today to see my mom and dad and celebrate Father's Day. I'm so fortunate to have a dad who loves me and spent time with me while I was growing up. My dad has a ton of hobbies, so our dad-daughter activities were always unique. :) He had an old model train, and constructed a huge "landscape" with mountains and rivers and a town with screen and paper mache', and we painted it and filled it in with trees. He had an old photo developing shop, so we'd take black-and-white pictures and develop them ourselves in the basement. When I was learning about clouds and weather in fourth grade, we went out cloud-hunting one afternoon, took awesome pictures, and then developed them. When I wanted to learn about stars, he took me in the back yard with a telescope at night. When I wanted to learn about tornadoes, he bought me books about tornadoes. He bought me a microscope and slides to make my own specimens, chemistry sets, replicas of the human body that we could construct together...I mean, is it any wonder I love science and the human body now????

He did try to teach me Morse code so we could be "ham buddies" but...that's where my interest waned. ;)

Dad taught my Sunday school classes when I was in Junior High and High School. Some of my friends still remember the business cards he handed out with quarters taped to them...he called them "sweaty palms cards." If any of us were to find ourselves in an...um...."situation"....anyone was welcome to call Dad and he'd be available to...um...."talk them down." hahahahahaha!!! (No one ever did call him, BTW.) What made him REALLY popular was during our High School Sunday school classes he took us out for breakfast, instead of staying at the church in a boring classroom. It prompted more free conversation and drew people out of the woodwork who wouldn't normally even come to church.

So Happy Father's Day, Dad!!!! Thanks for being an awesome dad who was always there for me, who delighted in embarrassing me when I worked at Kmart (going down every checkout lane shaking hands with each checker, "Hi, I'm Jenny Mark's dad!"), and grinning cheesily from the top row at all of my band concerts.

I love you Dad!!