Keeping It Real: My Dad's Cooler Than Your Dad

As I was taking this picture of my dad this evening, I had to chuckle to myself. Remember those grade-school verbal competitions you used to have with your friends, comparing whose Dad was more heroic or who's Mom was the awesomest? I remember one specific instance in kindergarten being in such a competition and after bantering back and forth with a few modest claims about my dad, I very seriously proclaimed my dad was stronger than everyone else's dad because my dad could lift up our house with his arms. I don't recall ever being one much for stretching the truth, telling tall tales, embellishing stories, or just flat out being a liar. But on this day, I was absolutely out to win the Dad Competition and was willing to pull out the big guns.

This evening my Dad surprised me by knocking on my door with this beauty in the driveway. "Come see my new motorcycle!" He exclaimed. I was excited. My Dad loves motorcycles and this Harley looked like it had my Dad;s name written all over it. Turns out he was just borrowing it from my sister's neighbor. Several of them get together on bikes every year and pass out candy to the people camping out for the parade the next morning. My Dad went with them and was loaned out this bike. Before returning it, he stopped by my place to show it off. When he got back on the bike to leave I couldn't NOT take a picture of him on it! And I couldn't help but chuckle thinking how awesome if I could've had this picture of my dad back in elementary school. I would have whipped it out and proclaimed, "MY DAD'S COOLER THAN YOUR DAD!!!"

My dad is definitely cool!

And not just cause he looks good on a Harley well into his fifties (though, that seems to be when men seem to reeeeally get into the Harleys).

Today he presented me with my birthday present. He's been working hard on it for several weeks.

My parents remodeled their kitchen not long ago and my dad started really getting into his kitchen being exactly how he wanted. So he began designing and building his own drawer organizers. Every time I went over to their house I would open their kitchen drawers and just stare and sigh blissfully. I LOVE organization. To see his drawers so perfectly beautiful and organized made me so happy to just see them. Well, Dad picked up on this and told me that he wanted to do it for my drawers. So he came and measured the drawers and then told me to give him the measurements of my desired layout and he'd build it. Weeks went by and I still hadn't done it. So finally he and my mom came over and while my mom was reading 342 books to my kids, Dad and I began designing the layout for the drawer. This is the end result: