My dad is visiting right now from I'm not quite sure where. He travels quite a bit and I never know where he is coming from.

This morning, he sat me down and told me his thoughts on what I should do in the next phase of my life. He loves doing this. He thinks of himself as a man full of wisdom and loves telling us how to live our lives.

He always did this growing up- sit us down and talk and talk for hours and hours. We would always roll our eyes and pray silently that he would get tired and stop.

But for some reason, this morning, I was really thankful for his advice. I don't agree with all that he says, but I know that it comes from love for us. He doesn't want us to make the same mistakes he did, and he wants nothing more than a better life for us.

So it made me think of all that he has done for us. Yes, I've written a bit about how my mom on this blog, but, I wouldn't be who I am without my dad's passion to teach us and to make sure at all costs that we would live a full life without regrets.

He is the one that signed us up to piano lessons, ice-skating lessons, community classes, made sure Richard learned golf, moved the family to Cerritos so we could attend Whitney. It's a big joke friends who are close to me, but my dad even signed me and Claudia up to an etiquette/ modeling class. We were really young, about 10 and 12, and we thought our dad had truly gone off the deep end. At that time, we didn't know WHY my dad would even care to sign us up for something like that. It was only years later that I realized that it had made an impression on me at a young age. It finally made sense and I understood why my dad went through the trouble.

Can't say he was always encouraging, but I thank him for making sure that we had as many experiences as we could growing up because it made us who we are.

He tells me things straight, as only family members can tell each other. He is brutally honest. He is as funny as hell and no one, I mean, no one, makes me laugh more than him. He is a smart man. He is a survivor. He is a doer. He is a mover and a shaker. He is never at rest and he is always thinking...mostly of us.

Thank you to my crazy, eccentric dad.