On a perfect spring day, my husband and I arrived in Washington DC yesterday, dropped our bags and headed off to collect two of the world\u2019s coolest little people.\u00a0 A couple of hours spent singing every verse of \u201cShe\u2019ll be Comin\u2019 Round the Mountain\u201d followed by \u201ceating\u201d mulch prepared by the almost 4-year-old train conductor on the playground was sheer bliss.<\/p>\n

We hopped into a cab, zipped across town and, in pretty spiffy surroundings, changed into our grown-up clothes to begin another “family extravaganza.” \u00a0My co-author father is being inducted into the Horatio Alger Association<\/a> this week; family and friends from lots of parts of his life are here to honor his achievements and help him celebrate. (By the way, Mayor Bloomberg, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jim Rohr are also part of the group being honored this year.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve attended previous meetings of the Association; it\u2019s where I first connected with at least one of the people I wrote about in What Kids Need to Succeed.<\/a> On one level I know what to expect: \u00a0 American Dream stories providing a truly awesome level of inspiration along with high school seniors (the Horatio Alger Scholars) who will become the real stars of three days of gala events.<\/p>\n

But on another level, I have no idea what’s coming.<\/p>\n

My Dad<\/em> is going to be up on that stage.<\/p>\n

Thousands of people are going to hear the story of his journey from the cold, snowy winters in New Hampshire’s White Mountains to the successful entrepreneur and philanthropist he has become.\u00a0 My Dad.\u00a0 They guy who used to carry me on his shoulders to the Kirby meetings and had me convinced that our weekend trips to land sales were vacations.<\/p>\n

Somehow eating imaginary chicken at the playground before going to dinner on M street seems like a perfect circle.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My co-author father is being honored by the Horatio Alger Association. Some initial thoughts….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[435,497,512,515],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-2045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-four-foundations","tag-raising-future-adults","tag-solutions","tag-struggle","tag-success"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2045"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=2045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}