Happy U.S. Open Dad!

Well, it was a happy Father’s Day yesterday. I went to my parents’ house along with my brother, his wife and their three girls and my sister, her husband and their little boy.

When it was time to eat we all gathered in the kitchen. We seem to have a lot of these celebration days when Mom spends most of the day preparing an abundance of food and fun for the rest of the family (for a related story, read my post about Mother’s Day here).

So we had a beautiful Father’s Day meal of barbecue pork sandwiches, fruit, salad, and chips. The only thing missing was Father.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked.
“Oh,” my mom began to explain, “Our Father's Day present to Dad is to let him receive us today at his leisure – which will probably be when the U.S. Open breaks for commercial.”

So we all sat in the dining room eating and Dad would occasionally pass through to get more food from the kitchen and we would exchange a few seconds of pleasantries.

“Hey everyone!”
“Hi Dad! How’s the golf Dad?”
“Great, thanks for comin!”
“Good. Our gift to you.”

When he was ready to receive us, we were all on the porch eating butterscotch pie. My dad asked my two-year-old niece Piper if she wanted him to read a story. As always, her answer was, “Yeah.”

And this is what he came up with.


On a more serious note, I will say some nice things about my dad. This story makes it sound as though he's not really around, but I had the fortune of having a college professor for a dad, so his schedule was the same as mine growing up. We would leave for school at the same time and he was usually home when I got home. My dad was around a lot. And he also got summers off like I did.

One of my favorite things about Dad is that every summer he made it a point to take the family on vacation. Vacations were great because most of the year we were very frugal with everything, but when we were on vacation we were free to eat whatever we wanted and buy whatever we wanted (within reason of course).

He took us to the Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City just about every year since I can remember, and then San Diego most years. He's taken us on road trips to Monterey, San Francisco, Oregon, Canada and South Dakota. We also were fortunate enough to spend two months in London as a family when he taught school there. As I got older, he would take me on his little business trips to Boston, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Toronto. Dad's great to travel with.

Thanks Dad for instilling an importance of not only education and family, but travel as well. It's an expensive importance, but like you said, "It's an investment in yourself."