Every Father's Day is special to me. The mere fact that your wife and children would spend the day, (most of it anyway, I think they clock out right after dinner), expressing their love and appreciation for you is heartwarming. Of course I would like Father's Day to rival Mother's Day in size and scope and to receive those expressions of love and appreciation more often throughout the year, but I enjoy the day to the fullest.
Father's Day Weekend 2019 will standout to me forever. I say weekend because my wonderful wife planned a day trip to Flagstaff on the Saturday before Father's day. My wife, daughter and I visited the Flagstaff Arboretum. A beautiful 200 acre area containing a multitude of native and adapted plant species, a butterfly exhibit and a very manageable hiking trail that leads you through a marsh, a wetlands area, grazing plains for Deer and Elk and the Forest. The arboretum also boasts spectacular views of the San Francisco Peaks. The cool weather, blue skies and fluffy white clouds reminded me of being a kid on a cool fall day, laying on the ground looking up and trying to figure out what the shapes of the clouds resembled. There was even a wedding at the Arboretum on the day we visited. I thought about my recent nuptials and how great it was to pledge my love to my better half out in God's creation with friends and family.
After leaving the Arboretum, the Father's Day weekend events continued at the Lowell Observatory. We arrived a couple hours before sunset, so we toured the Pluto Telescope, and listened to a couple of presentations on Pluto and Mars. It's unbelievable what those early Astronomers accomplished with the equipment they had. As the sun started going down, so did the temperature. We retreated to our car to get our jackets while waiting for the night star gazing telescopes to be set up. We were fascinated by the brightness, color and glow of the stars that were on display in the telescopes. God is amazing and his creation is something to behold.
Another reason I enjoy Father's Day is that I have been blessed to have learned a lot from father figures in my life. First, my own Father, who I am still learning from to this day and second, my Uncle Phil, who we lost sometime ago. We all have men in our lives that may not be our father but have had an impact on our lives just the same.
On Father's Day, I met my dad for lunch at Claim Jumpers. We talked and laughed the entire time without resorting to the "remember when" topics. He was dropping so many pearls of wisdom that I had no choice but to scoop them up and try to use them in my life.
I hope all of you fathers out there enjoyed your Father's Day 2019 as much as I did. If not, make a point to provide your wife, kids and father/father figure in your life with a reason to want to honor you in such a way in 2020.