Self pity and gummy worms

Today is my Dad's birthday.  It makes me sad.  I wrote a whole post about it already, and decided it was too mopey.  So I'll just recap the cheerful part:

We'll eat as much gummy candy as we can today to celebrate my Dad's birthday.  He loved that junk.  Our party menu for the day includes gummy butterflies, gummy worms, and gummy letters.

More  fun facts about my dad:
He never wore shorts.  That's him at the beach.  Yes. The beach. In April.  It's warm here, then.

And this is him at Christmas in 1999.  Gifts are very serious business. It was probably sweatshirts. He loved sweatshirts.  I can't even remember how many he had when we cleaned out his dresser drawers.

That picture above may have been the only one, ever, where he was being serious.
Usually it was more like this:

And those glasses.  They were literally as thick as the bottom of coke bottles.  My mom convinced him to buy a different style once, with light-weight plastic lenses, but he just kept wearing these.  I think it's because they weighed him down a little, and he might otherwise have blown away in a strong breeze.

And he loved babies.  All babies. But especially mine.  

And they all loved him.  Babies and old ladies.  Dad was quite a charmer.