Dad's Gift

The story of our travel fund gift...

So, you know I'm a Daddy's girl, right? No? Well, I am. Big time. And my dad loves taking care of his kids even though his youngest is 23 and lives on the other side of the U.S. and his oldest is married with two kids, a stable job, two paid for cars and a nice home. It's so bad that my Dad still even pays for a AAA membership for me. Yeah, that bad.

About three weeks ago Chuck and I mentioned (first mistake - never mention anything you want to buy around my Dad) that we wanted to buy a new portable DVD player. We went to Iowa a couple weekends back to visit Chuck's sister and brother-in-law and their newborn son. Our portable DVD player was working intermittently and we envisioned a long car drive with a 4 and 2 year old and not much entertainment. My dad and his fiancee immediately said they'd like to buy it for us because they never know what to get the kids for birthdays and Christmas. Chuck and I agreed as long as the money spent went towards any future gifts they would purchase. They promised. We'll see.

Anyway, we found a dual screen DVD player on clearance for $80 and snatched one up. My Dad came over with a check for us and I saw that he had cash with his check. I questioned him as to why and he said he wanted to give us a little spending money for when we were in Iowa but he missed us before we left so he wanted to give it to us anyway for us to use on our family vacation this summer. I thanked him (there was no way I was going to be able to turn it down) and gave him a big hug.

After he left that night I counted the money. He had given us $200 in cash and a check for $100. We snowflaked the $20 to the HELOC and the $200 went into our travel fund. I'm very grateful to have such a terrific dad.