Here's to Fathers on Father's Day!

May he enjoy every hour.

But let him remember at the end of the day,

The Queen is back in power.

--As remembered quoted by Ed Jones

10+1 Random Facts About My Dad (10 from me, one from my bros)

1. Two of the things that I am most grateful for from my dad is learning the piano and giving me a strong ability to reason. As a piano teacher, all of us kids learned the piano to some degree, and he was always asking us "why" we felt or thought certain things and expected us to be able to defend our opinions.

2. One of the most random things about my dad is his incredibly strong fingernails/toenails. Whenever he opens something my mom has canned, he takes off the part that screws on, then he just uses his fingernails to unseal the lid and pull it off. He's his own can opener. There was also a time when he was clipping his toenails and the blade of the clippers actually broke off.   

3. My dad's greatest fears are heights, hair loss, and car accidents. He really has no reason to fear as far as hair loss (unless he has chemo or something) but you can see him checking his hair line from time to time just to make sure. Also, he is probably the most cautious driver I've ever seen. If you want to get somewhere on time and my dad is driving, you either 1-leave really early (our dad's choice) or 2-someone else drives (the kids' choice). 

4. He looks young for his age. Again, it's probably his hair. Although he is in his sixties, his hair is still the predominant brown it's been all my life with just a hint of gray at his temples. 

5. His favorite way to travel is by train (probably because he has no fear of a train wreck vs. car or airplane accident). In some ways he is just like a little boy loving a train ride. When we lived in Colorado the favorite part of his visit to us was his train ride.

6. His favorite color is purple. He once tried to convince my mom to paint their bedroom an extremely bright color of purple. They tried half of one wall and my mom couldn't take, so it got painted over (after a huge paint spill on the hallway carpet--whoops!). Overall, he likes bright colors. He still doesn't understand how people could want beige carpet or a gray house.

7. One quirk he has is his unusual sleep schedule. Before he married my mom, and still for several years when I was young he worked on my grandpa's dairy farm with almost 300 cows. He often worked the 2AM milk shift (there were 3 milking shifts a day to get to all the cows), and I still remember a couple of times when I was three or four, hearing someone come into the house in the middle of the night. I remember once I thought it was a burglar or something and snuck out into the laundry room to see my dad just inside the back door taking off his milking boots and coat. Anyways, because of getting up and working a few hours in the middle of the night for about a decade, he often takes naps in the day. He still has a hard time sleeping through the night and takes naps since most of his piano students are either in the morning before school and then in the late afternoon after school.

8. One thing my dad wishes he could change is that he could have better access to health insurance. Being self-employed, a lack of benefits/health insurance is the biggest drawback. However, one thing I appreciated about him being self employed was that he could usually make it to big events by moving around piano students.

9. He greatest pet peeve is waste--any sort of throwing away of things that could be used, especially food. He didn't grow up during the Depression, but if you knew him well, you'd think he did ;) He is a tiny bit of a hoarder (I think having 100+ button down shirts is a bit much), and I won't go into detail about the food part, but there is a classic post about it written by my brother here. 

10. One of his greatest talents is his memory. I have never met another normal person that has a better memory than my dad. When he left for his mission, he could quote every heading of the Doctrine & Covenants, all 138 sections. He can hear any two opening measures of a Mozart sonata and tell you the opus number, K number, name, etc. He remembers exact dates that things happened, and when he starts a sentence with something like, "On June 16, 1979 . . ." my brothers and I just start laughing since it happens so often. He loves facts and has memorized a lot of them, especially connected with history, politics, and economics.  

11. Last year before our family reunion I videoed my three brothers separately and asked them all about memories of my dad. I was surprised that all three of them mentioned the campouts my dad took them on every year Memorial Day weekend to my grandma's birthplace at "Black Rock." It only happened once a year, and honestly neither my dad or brothers are particularly fond of camping, but it was a small tradition that really stuck with them. Two of my brothers also mentioned something they admired was  my dad's work ethic and how he never complains about what he is asked to do, either as a dad, or for a Church calling, or for work. They commented about the time they heard he managed the dairy farm for 36 hours straight when several people temporarily left. 

Really, I have the best dad for me. It's especially fun for me now to see what an amazing grandpa he is to my kids. He gets down on the floor to give them rides, likes to tease them, watch them ride the plastic horse my dad played with as a child. They adore him. Happy Father's Day!!