Dad the Hero... and the Birthday Boy

This is Tim trying out my hand in the blogging world. Today is my dad's birthday and I wanted to do a blog post for him. My dad has always meant so much to me throughout my entire life. I don't have any older brothers, so at a young age I did all the boy stuff with him and I learned that my dad is pretty much the coolest guy on earth. As I have grown and matured, I still believe he's a stud. I've got a couple of pictures that remind me of things that come to mind when I think of my dad. I don't have many pictures of him on my computer, but I've managed to find pictures of things that remind me of him, this first one is him and his two loves in life, my mom and the beach. One of my dad's biggest passions is body surfing, he taught me at a young age how to do it. A quote that I once learned from him was that "body surfing is one of the closest ways you can be with God's creations... it's just you and the wave and your swimsuit... and you don't even need that."One of my fondest memories is playing catch with my dad as a kid. He could throw that ball so high (for my pop fly practice) that I thought he should be in the major leagues. He also coached my little league teams growing up.

My dad also taught me to ride motorcycles. I can't remember how old I was, but he once bought himself and me two old yamaha enduro dirt bikes that got hours of riding and many falls on my part. I remember really bonding and thinking my dad was real cool even as a teenager.

Snorkeling is another great memory with him.

When I was in 6th grade I went to my parents and told them that I wanted to tryout for a soccer team. They both knew nothing about the sport and had no previous experience with soccer and were kind enough to let me go play. My dad is the kind of dad that would research all he could about something I was interested to be able to talk with me about it and coach me. This picture is my little brother, Jonny, playing soccer. My parents were known for never missing a game or meet of ours. When I got into running my dad, again, studied up on that and was one of the best coaches and fans (the only fan) I ever had. I can still picture him sneaking down on the middle of the track field (where only coaches and athletes are aloud to be) with a stopwatch around his neck and in my face chearing me on and telling me how to improve during the race.

Many memories come from the time he was a Mission President in Costa Rica. He was known for getting us out of school all the time to take us to the beach, the jungle, or a volcanoe and he would say that he didn't want school to get in the way of our education.
As I went through school, dad was there for me everystep of the way.

Happy Birthday dad!!! I hope you know and feel how much I love you and appreciate you. We all adore you so much and love being around you. Thanks so much for still being the biggest stud in the world!