"Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back..." 
And you can never take too many pictures.
Your dreams where your ticket out!
And just for the record, I never outgrew his lap, either.
Good night all.
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Can I get serious and not be in Rumors and Spirited echo chamber?
As the Father of two beautiful grown-up daughters, I cannot express how much they mean to me. It's impossible for me to do, and at the same time I hope and think that they share the same feeling toward me that you have for your Dad.
My huge fear is that because they do, they will not be able to remember me without sadness. I have lost both my parents and I remember the huge sense of loss that I felt when they first passed. Every family dynamic is different and ours was not a "love you" every time we were together, but, my sister and I always knew that we were loved and that they were proud of us for being what we turned out to be. I am currently writing a family history of my life based on travel. A huge part of it describes the family trips we took. The fun, the screw ups, the weird happenings that happened to us. Some of it sounds like I'm laughing at my parents for lack of judgement, on their part, when it came to vacation planning, but, it is not what I feel. I admire their adventurous spirit to do that stuff when no one else that we knew was brave enough to venture more then 25 miles from home. I remember them fondly and with the humor that was there, not at the time, but when looking back it was pretty funny.
It is probably likely that I will be gone before they are (at least I hope so) and that they will remember me after I am gone. I don't, however, want that to be a sad moment for them each time my memory comes up. I want them to remember me fondly and not be sad that I am gone, but be happy that I was there for whatever time I have in life to do so. I want them to tell their children and grandchildren that I was fun, strict at times, intelligent and that I loved them with no strings attached. I want them to tell stories about our time together and do it with a warm smile at the memory. Death is an inevitable part of life. None of us are exempt from it. All any of us can do is live the best we can and protect and nourish, both physically and emotionally, the people that we are given the privilege of guiding to, and sometimes into, adulthood. That is what we will truly be remembered for, the love. Slightly modifying the words of the Beatles... "And in the end, the love we get is equal to the love we give".
