Father's Day (my sister's perspective)

My sister is totally creative when it comes to cards and presents. She always makes her own cards out of family photos and then makes up her own funny captions (based on my other post about the difficulty I have finding Father's Day cards for my dad, it seems that I could learn something from my sister!). Sometimes she draws pictures or uses construction paper. I have not gotten any glue-and-macaroni cards yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see one arrive in the mail from her.

For Father's Day, my sister got my dad his favorite thing EVER -- chocolate! She got him one candy bar for each year that he's been her dad. For those of you who don't know my sister, that's 30 candy bars! Around each bar, she wrapped a piece of paper with a memory of my dad written on it. When I read the list, I laughed out loud a few times and got a little teary by the end. Although I know some of these items are "you had to be there" moments, I am posting the list here for folks to see because I feel that it's such a great snapshot of the way my dad is and what a fun and interesting person we have as a father.

(1) Red wagon rides from the top of the hill all the way to the house
(2) Convincing Mom to let me go visit Jonathan (my sister's husband) in CA before we were married
(3) Getting the joke about 20 seconds later than everyone else and bursting out laughing, spitting tea all over me and the table in Russia
(4) Your Russian dances at your daughters' weddings
(5) Going to the Farm Show
(6) Hiking the Appalachian Trail with us in several states
(7) Making jokes when Lisa’s head got pooped on by a seagull at Sea World
(8) Saying that the huge Saint Bernard in a nearby yard would clean up after me when I got threw up on our road trip out west
(9) Waking me up with a drum made out of a Quaker Oatmeal container after a nap
(10) Rescuing a wild and weak stray cat (Twinkie) from the farm
(11) Going along with my great idea to vacuum Twinkie to reduce the cat hair around the house, then getting scratched by Twinkie as I operated the vacuum
(12) Asking if I needed money (деньги) in Russian
(13) Hiking up to Katadin with us to finish the Appalachian Trail
(14) Never making it through a whole movie without falling asleep, but talking about it as if you had watched the whole thing
(15) Cleaning up Twinkie’s puke for all those years
(16) Joking about sending Uncle Chauncey a video of stunt bike tricks after he fell off his bike and broke his hip
(17) Trying to keep Lisa and I in line during family prayers when we would always start laughing
(18) Staying up late to put all our Christmas presents together
(19) Stacking up change on the table to get me to eat my veggies
(20) Making me cry at every meal before we went to Russia, because whatever we were having was the only thing that they served in Russia, and if I couldn’t finish my plate, I would never survive in Russia. Interestingly enough it worked, and I ate everything in Russia while Lisa lived off Tootsie Rolls
(21) For always asking “What’s for dessert?”
(22) Helping me to get a clear version of Mona Lisa
(23) Taking care of Charlie (our dog) and making him fat and happy
(24) Being supportive of whatever it was that I was interested in or wanted to do
(25) For cursing when you found the moldy spaghetti sauce I had thrown out in the trash ("We can just eat around the mold...")
(26) Picking us up almost every night when we hiked the AT through PA
(27) Making sure the house is stocked with my favorite foods when we come home to visit
(28) Hiding in corners around your office to scare me when I was walking around
(29) Warming up the car for Mom and I in the winter time, so we wouldn’t be cold
(30) Cleaning off the porch of dead animal parts that the cats had left for us as presents before we went to school so that we never even knew about it

Dad, I hope you can feel the love, even if you don't read about it here!