As everyone who reads this blog can EASILY tell, I LOVE my kids. But there is also someone else in this world who I also care about and think about every day. He is my dad. My dad just celebrated his birthday and I so I thought I should write a post about him.....
My dad was born years ago, in a
different time, the world was different. He has been through a lot, he has seen a lot, there is a lot we can all learn from him.
My dad is the youngest child in his family. His dad was a carpenter. I didn't really know my dad's dad, but I do have memories of his mom. When I was little, she lived in an old folks home type place in Woodland and I remember visiting her there. They raised my dad to be a good person. He has a lot of integrity. One of the things he always taught us was "the golden rule". I know there are many golden rules, but the one he taught us was to treat others how we want to be treated. Good parenting and good advice.
My dad was in the Navy when he was young. For his career, he worked at United Airlines. I know he was well liked there, because I remember a lot of people "roasting" him at his retirement party, and I also remember pilots giving him gifts when they went places. But when we were kids (I have 2 brothers, one older and one younger) we thought our dad was pretty boring on most weeknights. He came home from work, and we had to get out of HIS chair. He'd read the paper or watch the news. A lot of times he'd fall asleep in HIS chair. There was a little thumb motion that he'd give us and we KNEW to get out, there were no ifs ands or buts about it! But on weekends, our dad was FUN! He always went to our games. He never missed any, unless we had overlapping games. I can only remember one game of mine that he EVER missed-----ONE------ I also remember that he was in Alaska and it was before the day of the cell phone, and I had to wait to tell him that I scored the goal that put us into over time, and we ended up winning that game....in the State Cup Championship
Qualifying matches. Anyway back to my weekend memories of my dad......there was a park near our house. It was in Union City. We would pack up ALL of our sporting
equipment- the tennis
rackets, the baseball gear, soccer ball, basketball,
frisbee, kites, any and all gear and we'd play all the games out there. He'd pitch us batting practice, play with us for hours. I also remember helping him mow the lawn and do yard work. We had a great yard. I even remember him hopping on a pogo stick and I think he (or possibly it was Kenny) broke his nose
poggoing in the back yard. Also in our back yard we played games of two square, we had a "pitch back" for baseball, hockey goals for street hockey, a garden area for digging (once a year or so we would try to dig to China), we had fruit trees, and a little patch of lawn for water games like running through the sprinklers and squirting each other. (The grass area was also used often for photo opportunities, like when we got dressed up, or were in our uniforms, etc...) My dad designed and built the deck. The best dinners were on weekends because my dad would
barbecue- YUM!
And can't forget the big wheel crash up derbies us kids had in the front yard, or the 2 on 2 football with me and dad against Kenny and David, or the stick ball game we played with the foil ball or wiffle ball in the front yard.
I remember many trips to soccer games with my dad (and mom). We drove through Niles Canyon to
Pleasanton,
Danville,
Livermore, Dublin, and San Ramon A LOT. Good Memories. My dad was my biggest fan, I think. He missed many Raiders games to watch me, so that must mean something. As
Melanee began playing competitive soccer, I think she took over the spot of his favorite athlete. Sitting watching her games with my dad, I've heard him comment MANY times, that he thinks her team could beat ANY of the teams I ever played on. I'm sure she could have easily faked me out of my cleats....but I may have gotten mad and slide
tackled her the next time the next time she came down the field.
We had a ping pong table in our garage. When we were really little we just watched my mom and dad play each other, but as we got taller, my dad would play us and we all got better and were able to play against him for real, but he never "LET" us beat him, which helped us to become better players. I still remember the first time I ever beat him...it was a few years ago here in Chico. It took me nearly 3o years to beat him. But he probably hadn't played in 30 years, either. My brothers and I would roller skate around the ping pong table in the winter and on rainy days. We'd play roller derby and try to have marathons or try to break the
guiness book of worlds record of times around the table.
haha. We got an air hockey table one year for Christmas and that was down in the garage, too. There was also a
pachinco machine----that was a lot of fun. Sometimes we'd set up a race track on the ping pong table and play that for weeks on end.
My dad would also take us on bike rides. One place we liked to go was to the "bike trail". When we had a lot of time to ride we'd go to Coyote Hills. My mom even had a bike. We had to ride slower when she went along with us.
The coolest place in the house to watch
tv, do homework, talk on the phone, or even take a shower was my parents room. It was WAY down the hall from the kitchen and the front room, so it was a good place to go.
My dad ALWAYS woke up EARLY....
REALLLLLLLY early.
REALLLLLLLLLY,
REALLLLLLLLLLY early...you get the idea. And on weekends, if we would get up before him it was always fun to "wake up dad".....now that I am a grown up, I think that was really mean of us, but as kids, it was fun! Every Sunday he made waffles. The best waffles EVER. Every Sunday! The first waffle was the "tester" but it never tasted bad, I always wanted that one. We would fight over it, so he came up with an idea of breaking tooth picks, who ever picked the biggest one would get the 1st one, middle sized toothpick the 2
nd one, etc.... He'd always go last. What a great dad! My mom would sometimes heat up the syrup for us.
My dad had strange eating habits. He was a "meat and potato" type of guy. He didn't eat things like pizza, tacos, casseroles.... On those days my mom would make my dad a steak or hamburger or something he liked in our little toaster type small oven. When we went out to pizza he'd order spaghetti, or sometimes he
wouldnt even go with us. When we went to a hamburger place like
Carls Jr. or Burger King he would always order his hamburger PLAIN, nothing on it!
He taught us all to drive. I still remember the lesson to learn to drive the stick shift, we went to an empty parking lot in Union City. I also remember when I was REALLY young our FAVORITE place to go with dad was when he took a load to the dump- because----he'd let us drive the car on that dirt road leading up to the dump. (We sat one at a time on his lap for a little while, thinking we were driving......SO fun.)
My dad is the one who taught me how to hold my pencil correctly and how to write neatly. My mom was the one who stayed up all night typing my papers on a typewriter, but I still remember the LENGTHY handwriting lessons in about 4
th grade with my dad.
I could go on and on and on, but for now, those were a few of the memories I had of my dad and my old house and my childhood.
My dad was and still is a great parent. (This was fun, I may write new memory posts in the future.) I love you dad.
this first one really cracks me up because Emma and Tamara went to a party where they were supposed to dress up as a celebrity couple...they dressed as Melanee and Cameron.
<----- William has that shirt, too. 
Do you think the sun was in their eyes?
Isaiah wanted this picture for his grandma's blog.
Bradley thought he might get bit. 
Since I am blogging about basketball, I thought I'd tell you who I think the Kings should draft....and if they get the first pick (they BETTER get the first pick) they BETTER pick this guy Blake Griffin! Have you seen him play? He is TOUGH! He is a balllllllllllerrrrrrrrrrrr who has been ballllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin all season. He is the best player in college basketball right now, he is the best player entering the draft, he is the MVP of this March Madness Tournament, if he gets on the Kings he will be the BEST player on the Kings. 
As everyone who reads this blog can EASILY tell, I LOVE my kids. But there is also someone else in this world who I also care about and think about every day. He is my dad. My dad just celebrated his birthday and I so I thought I should write a post about him.....
Way too often for Family Home Evening we will have the family WORK on something, like last week we planted the garden and a few weeks back we painted the front room, so this week we wanted to do something FUN. We still didn't have any ideas when we got in the car to go pick up Bradley. We still didn't have any ideas after we picked him up....then on our way back to our house we remembered the creek---and the ROPE SWING. So that's what we did for fun and there were a lot of smiles, so I think it was a success.
