Tribute No. 1

I think I want to start tributes to some of our family members here and there, just for fun. The first one I'll dedicate to my dad, Tom. For the few of you that know him, he's a pretty,,, reserved guy. Or scary as all the boys from high school said. And Ben too. But to my family and now Ben, he has the greatest sense of humor. Extremely dry and sarcastic, but that's our style. I love going home to NM and going places with him, he has the best facial expressions-all telling! He's absolutely brilliant (which didn't get passed on to me) too. Dad coached me and my sisters in soccer for basically all of our soccer careers (from 5 yrs old on). He also helped (did) all of our science fair projects in elementary school, and single-handedly got me to pass Chemistry in HS. I hate Chemistry! His favorite hobby is gun collecting. We've gotten to do a lot of target shooting, which is fun. Heidi and I even got to shoot a real machine gun once! He's been a driving force in keeping Kyndal's face and hands clean (his probably #1 pet peeve is dirty children). If I am particular about anything, the house being clean and organized, my vehicle's appearance, keeping things in order in general, he's the one who passed that on to me. He is the go-to guy for all advice that's needed, he tells it like it is and well, that's the bottom line cuz DAD said so. Here are a couple of pictures of him-the first he was obviously pushing Kyndal's stroller on a walk so that's super cute. And the second needs a little explanation. He put on my beenie (Is this the 90's still? Is that even a word anymore?) and his opinion of how it looks is shown in the picture below. He's always trying to do gang signs, the "west side" one is all he can do, so. Oh, wait, he can also do the L for Loser, because of the song by SmashMouth "her finger and her thumb in the shape of an L on her forehead". That was his favorite one to do to me whenever I went home from school, hmmm I wonder why??!,,, We love you Dad :)