HALF MOON AND STARS - HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY

Today is my daddy's birthday. He would have been 86. I don't remember him ever being sick up until his 72nd year. He was diagnosed with colon cancer on July 5, 1999 and was gone in November. I was a daddy's girl, and I miss him terribly. I have very few photos of him. This younger shot of him was given to me by the funeral home. It's in a nice frame with a lovely saying that I keep on my dresser, and I talk to him every time I pick it up to dust. 

The other shot is a 4th of July pic, but I'm not sure from what year exactly. It was my dad's tradition to take my girls to a neighboring town on the 4th to the parade and then to his best friend's grocery store. They came home with way too much candy every year, and that part of the 4th was theirs and only theirs.  I don't believe either of the girls have gone to that parade since he died. Actually, Tyler decided immediately that she would never go to that one again. 

He was a good dad, a good grampa and was genuinely a nice person.  To this day if anybody mentions him around town, I'll be told how cute he was and how much they loved him. He drove a milk/ice cream truck when I was a child and was still working for a dairy company as a salesman when he died at 72.  He was a people person, and it suited him well. I don't think he had even considered retiring.  He bowled the shift before me every Wednesday night, and every week was the same. I'd come in, give him a kiss and tell him I love him. Then my best friend would do the same. The guy was just simply adorbs. Truly. I can say that in a completely unbiased way because you wouldn't be able to find a single person in this town that disagrees.

Everybody always said I was his favorite. Well, I always said it, too, and I was damn serious. As with most relationships, it's possible I was wrong, but I don't think so. We had a different bond than he had with my siblings, I think. We weren't big on deep conversations, but we always said I love you every time we saw each other. I wrote him a letter a few weeks before he left and told him everything I wanted to say.  He gave that letter back to me with tears one of the last times I saw him and said it was only for us to see. I made sure I was the last one at his casket before they closed it, and I gave that letter back to him.  It was a pretty long letter, but I told him what I think was important; I told him that even if I really wasn't his favorite, he always made me feel like I was.

Like I said....he was a really good daddy. 

Now that I'm done with that bit of rambling, I do actually have a mani to show.  It's another of the half moon mani's I had done a couple of weeks ago.

It's purple, so I for sure like the color. It's China Glaze Bogie which is an oldie but a goodie for me.  After trying quite a few different stamp patterns I decided on the stars from my Cheeky A plate and used Color Club Fashion Addict for stamping. If you don't already own Fashion Addict, you should. It stamps amazingly well, and it's a very pretty shimmery/almost holo light purple. I love it.

I didn't love this manicure, but I like it all right. I moved on to another one immediately afterwards, of course.  But it pretty much turned out exactly how I wanted it to, and I can't really ask for more than that, right?

I'm trying to get inspired to do some playing over the weekend, but I'm not so much in nail mode at the moment. 

Right now I'm in missing daddy mode so I think I'll just go ahead and wallow in that for a bit.