Top 10 Memories with my Dad

Ok, so I've been totally inactive, but I wrote these for a father's day book our family put together. The post is better late than never . . . and it was fun to recall times with a true American hero. He served our country in Vietnam, served our family before and since, serves his neighbors and community, and has served generations of newcomers to skiing and snowboarding.

1. Learning how to ski. I remember feeling protected between his skis (age 3) and then going straight down the mountain from there.
2. Christmas mornings, 6:00 am. Dad would always go downstairs first and announce that Santa had missed our house so we should go back to bed. (Then he'd have the movie camera ready for the stampede.)
3. Annual trips to Lake Powell. Images include him spending hours underneath a car hood or working on a boat engine. "If you plan on something breaking down on every boat trip, you won't be disappointed."
4. Stopping at Circus Circus in Las Vegas and always "Fooling the Guesser." Top guesses: Dad was a mechanic (actually an anesthesiologist who had grease on his hands from fixing things) and I was five years younger than my actual age.
5. Disneyland and Disney World! The Matterhorn (only thrill ride when I was young)! Then Space Mountain! And now the Tower of Terror, Expedition Everest, and the Goofy Fun Runs!
6. Receiving a Father's Blessing the night before I was getting married.
7. Awesome family trips--Atlantis in the Bahamas, A Caribbean Cruise, and Thanksgiving in beautiful Kauai, Hawaii :)
8. Vietnam--working together (we built a school for a village there and had a medical clinic day), meeting his friends there from 40 years before, going to church in Saigon, and eating at PIZZA HUT (the rest of us about cried when we saw American food after unending rice, but dad enjoyed "pho." He learned to eat like the Vietnamese when he lived there and "had the best job in the war, stationed in a civilian hospital).
9. Watching together our kids/his grandkids play countless softball, soccer, baseball, football, basketball, and rugby, rugby, rugby games (snow, rain, wind, sun).
10. Sitting in dad's Gospel Doctrine class and hearing how his visit to the Christus on Temple Square strengthened his testimony of Christ and forgiveness.