Dear Dad,

Thanks for coming to Colorado and helping us paint every single stinking wall of our new house. That's the worst job ever, and you volunteered and did it without complaining.

Thanks for staying up late with me as a kid making the ultimate dioramas and class projects and reports. My Clara Barton civil war hospital is one of my 10 best accomplishments to date, I'm sure. And I still think there's a good chance I can still market my kickball board game I made for "invention week" in 6th grade.

Thanks for teaching me the proper way to color - "back and forth to hide your strokes".

Thanks for being a night owl with me and letting me stay up to watch Dragnet (The story you're about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.), Get Smart, The Dick VanDyke Show, and the likes. I know more of old-timers TV trivia than anyone else my age. I doubt many of my friends know who Patty Duke, Donna Read, or Jed Clampett is.

Thanks for expecting me to get good grades and to graduate college and for making me do schoolwork the right way - as opposed to the half-assed way.

Thanks for always thinking that your children walk on water and loving us accordingly. It probably helps that you deal with delinquents, drug addicts, and punks all day long and so that's who you'd compare us to. But I'll take it anyways.

Thanks for always being nice to my friends. Although sometimes you'd talk their ears off and it was totally embarrassing. :)

Thanks for sharing your gross snacks with us. Perrier is sick and so is liverwurst. But because you loved them, we decided they were awesome. I've evolved to tap water and turkey sandwiches.

Thanks for driving all over Lakewood looking for me because I was late for curfew. Totally annoying at the time, and I love you for it now. (Cell phones would have been useful back then, eh?)

Thanks for leaving cute notes in our lunches whenever you had the honor of making them for us.

Thanks for loving my babies and missing them so much and buying them cute little things because you know they'll like them. You're thoughtful that way.

Thanks for sticking up for me and Taylor when perhaps we needed you to. :)

Thanks for loving the gospel and always reading your scriptures. What a good example you've been to us.

Thanks for loving our mom. (Swap meet arguments, aside.) You helped create a loving home for us to pattern our own families after.

Thanks for being calm, and rational, and loving, and kind, and hard-working, and dedicated, and sleep-deprived, and supportive, and everything else that I needed you to be.

I love you!
Stephanie