Annual Tea Party before the Ellensburg Rodeo

I've never missed an Ellensburg Rodeo...ever and neither has my daughter, despite living across the country.  We all love the traditions and excitement that is celebrated every year at the rodeo and the chance to see old friends, make new ones and spend time with the family.  But what many don't know is the hardest and most exclusive invitation Labor Day Weekend isn't at the rodeo grounds, it's in my parents garage.  It's McB's tea party.


What's even better is that she has made a few bucks running this tea party.  You must respond to the invitation by marking a yes or no (the no really isn't an option she is just being polite).  Then you are required to return it, prior to the time of the party because when you check in at the party you are asked to pay, .50 cents this year.  Last year we paid $1 each, guess she was feeling generous last week. 

a view of the rock center piece in
crystal.

Here are a few pictures of the table, we were at a card table, HUGE upgrade from last year when we sat at a small wooden table my uncle had made when I was her age.  We also had real glasses to drink out of and tea cups, which were washed this year.  She has really gone upscale.  Please note that McB is does an excellent pour, specialty flavored water!
We had cotton candy grapes, little specialty candy, nilla wafers and peanut butter, frosted animal cookies and home made chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven.   Nice sugar high for us before the Friday night rodeo. 

Mac was also a guest at tea.  He had his own treats, and then of course he had a few from my mom too...at the table...with the rest of us. 










Here are those delicious and over the top chocolate chip cookies that were fresh out of the oven.  McB took time out of her serving to pose for a few pictures with the guests.  Please note I am not kidding we are in the garage.

 This is where all the magic happens and where McB preps, samples and rests between serving us all the different courses.  This used to be at my grandpa and grandma's house and my sister and I spent hours playing house, kitchen, etc. with it and the very same tea cups and saucers we still use at the tee parties.  To the right you can see how tightly scheduled our tea is and believe me it ran to the minute.  (I do love this about my girlie, she loves a schedule just like me).

 This is almost the best part, when we are done, she presents us with the bill! She also reminds us that it is a cash only tea party since she doesn't deal in credit.  This year we got off with only $3.50 total for the five of us.  Luckily Grandpa Bill could afford it.


A toast to another fun filled Friday afternoon before the world famous Ellensburg Rodeo later that night.  Well done McB!

 

 

 

Our Crazy Fun Summer

 I thought our summer would be the usual...McB swimming, me juggling swim and a new dog along with teaching some swim lessons, a few nights out with the girls, and Brad when I could have him at home would join us.  But, luckily for us, he took the summer off and has been here at home.  It was such a nice treat and he was able to enjoy and live the entire summer swim team season, along with all the adult social activities we gals cooked up for everyone. 



I have a few pictures posted of Brad and two of the other swim dads he hangs with both for indoor and outdoor swim season.  They are obviously enjoying a cool glass of lemonade or ice water at the swim team end of year private party at the pool.   Here I am also enjoying some lemonade with some of my close girlfriends that same night.  It was a fun evening complete with the 10&U kids on top of the adults shoulders playing volleyball in the pool.  The evening ended with many of us mom's saying 'forget the rules' and wearing goggles on our faces down the slide! Yep, that's us, wild and crazy swim moms!  End of the season and totally out of control!

Like I said in my previous post, it's not a summer post without at least one (and we have way more than one) picture of McB and Ry so we needed a few of the moms together too.  Our annual pool selfie on the left and out to dinner at Walkers in our matching Eddie Bauer dresses with Brad on the right.  This was just in June....we have a whole slew of photos from this fun filled summer!

But, let me show you some of the other really fun nights we had at Springboard Pool or because of Springboard Pool. 



Here is one of our Friday Night Pasta Rally's this one was July 3 and the theme was obviously Red, White and Blue.  We took the opportunity to get a few family photos in. 


We spend a lot of time at the pool in general because it's fun, easy and we always see friends when we are there.  There is no shortage of kids for McB to play with and there is never a shortage of friends for me to chat with either.  We also spend a lot of time at the pool because of swim team and summer league and those are the friends we spend so much time with and thus the pool bonds us together.


 But since we're talking 4th of July...and I'm not too insecure to post this one on Facebook so I will put it here too.  I attempted and succeeded in doing the Ryan off the diving board on the 4th of July, in my 4th of July swim suit.  It was the first time anyone had attempted it and after about 3 tries I succeeded well enough.  The original owner of this move informed me my left hand wasn't exactly in position but for a mom I did okay.  I will take that and keep working on it for next summer. 

 As I said before, we spend a lot of time with our swim team family in the summer and here are almost all (missing a few in here because it was in the middle of the afternoon) of the swim moms hanging out at the bowling alley while the swim team has their annual bowling event.  Good food and a lot of uninterrupted chatting that afternoon. 

 Since my friend, Nessa, was a pool board member and in charge of activities, we were recruited to help with a lot of the events.  All fun for us, as you can see.  I brought my grandmother's embroidered aprons for us all to wear a few times.  This is our first Saturday "Welcome Back" dinner for the pool.  We served Red Hot and Blue and then sweated our fanny's off because the sun was at our backs and it was HOT! But you know what? Super fun too!

 We three mom's did manage to pull off the concert of the summer and take our girls to their first concert ever! It just happened to be the Taylor Swift 1989 Tour.  Huge fun for the girls and especially we three moms.  Great concert and Taylor's guest was Lorde, I think Marcia and I were more excited than the girls over that!

Our group likes to spend a lot of time reminiscing about the good old days in the 80's so it made sense that Nessa turned a Friday Night Social into an 80's theme night.  We had awards for best outfits, flare, music and movie trivia and of course my folks were in town so they won for best chaperones in the 80's because they spent a lot of time doing that back then!  Brad flipped his collar up but I will say there were quite a few guys that went all out and rocked the 80's look complete with mullets, boom boxes and some serious prepsters too!

Cheech and I testing out
one of the photo op
backgrounds.

In August we got the aprons out again and this time had a Hawaiian Luau complete with lumpia (Filipino egg roll) a smoked pig, fruit and photo ops galore around the pool.  Here we are in my grandmother's aprons again, this time serving a Hawaiian meal. 












I tried to get a potential Christmas card picture of us, especially because McB and I love Brad's summer goatee, but I don't know if it worked of not.  I do know that people had a great time taking pictures. 

The whole 80's swim pool gang that
was in town and could make the game.

 I have mentioned our love of all things 80's and here we are just last weekend at the Nationals baseball game all dressed up ready to watch baseball and have a few beers.  A few of us even did 30 seconds of squats for a fee beer koozie.  Totally worth it, furr sure! We also enjoyed listening to the Legwarmers, an awesome 80's cover band that played in the stadium.






I managed to get a picture with Brad at the Dedication sign.  You can't really see it but we are pointing at our names as 10 year Nationals Baseball Season Ticket Holders.  (We've done our part now it would be nice to see them win it all, sooner rather than later too).

Finally I will end with this picture.  We try to get all of us together at least once a year, sometimes in swim suits and sometimes in swim team gear.  But this year we managed to be all dressed up for a surprise 50th birthday party at the pool.  Again, we are missing a few but you can see we are a fun group of gals.  We all love our pool and we love getting to spend our days together having fun, whether it's in or out of the pool.  The memories are awesome and I'm very lucky to have such wonderful women in my life. 

Summer Swim League in the NVSL...Another Great Season!

Awesome Foursome Relay

If you've read any of my past summer blogs you know I love summer swimming and in part because of the incredible opportunity here in Northern Virginia with the Northern Virginia Swim League (NVSL www.mynvsl.com ).   This summer was no different and I was able to enjoy watching my 10 year old and her 3 relay teammates achieve the (before now) unthinkable in July.  They not only went out and won every time they swam their medley relay, missing the pool record by .08 hundreds of a second, but at Relay Carnival they won the 100 free relay too and qualified for All Star Relay seeded 15th out of 18 teams.  We were beyond shocked and so proud of them.  This was the icing on the cake since our team, Springboard Barracuda's went undefeated and also won the Relay Carnival!

Us posing and Brad working

Before the season began though, I had to attend a few official classes and qualified to work not only as a stroke and turn official but also a starter and meet referee.  Frankie even let me run one of our B meets as the referee! To be honest I thought for sure I'd be going to recurrent training two years from now never having worked a single meet as a referee, ha ha.  The picture on the right is me the night I did work as a referee, a better one would be Frankie (a good friend and someone I can work and have a drink with, all around good guy) and myself but it was just a crazy summer with a lot of rain. Not a great photo opportunity when you're just trying to keep the paperwork on your clipboard dry and the starting system too.  I do love working the meets, it keeps me calm while I wait to watch McB swim, if it weren't for that I would be a nervous wreck every Monday and Saturday...and sometimes Wednesdays!






 I think the Monday night meets were warm and sunny and all the Saturday A meets were rain and ponchos for us.  Despite that McB had her best times in everything but the 50 breast this summer and kept getting faster as the season went on.  She rocked her fly again and really, even though her Divisional meet wasn't what she wanted it to be and we were all disappointed for her, the swims she had in the relays and the All Star Relay meet really made the season the best ever.  I will say in this picture to the left, she is a mini me.  The swim suit, cap and ears out but most telling is her stance and her hands on her hips, exactly the way I've always stood prior to a race.  When I saw her standing like this that night it brought tears to my eyes.  I know she loves to swim and I can only hope she continues improve and enjoy the rewards that come from hard work in the pool.  




Around this time in July my folks were here to visit and honestly they came to see McB swim and compete.  They got their money worth because they flew in the day before All Stars, and left after seeing 4 meets in 4 different pools and getting to hang out at Raft Night at our pool too.  Here is my dad her McB after the IM Carnival Meet.  I'm so glad they get to see her do these things. I'm sorry we did have so many meets that we didn't take them to a Nationals or Potomac Nationals baseball game or down to sightsee but I think they got to do what they wanted to and that was to see a small slice of McB's summer and all her friends.  I will also add that all my girlfriends are my mom's too, I swear she has a very busy social life here in DC!



Let's get back to the Awesome Foursome 10 year olds.  Like I said earlier they were seeded 15th but at the All Star Relays but they dropped 3 seconds and jumped up to 8th overall! It was the first time a relay from Springboard had ever made the All Star meet and to get 8th was huge.  They were the only relay to qualify out of Division 14 and the lowest division to qualify at all.  It was so great to see them do so well. 

Before the race with Coach Kellee

They were cool and relaxed during the meet and I think really just enjoyed it and took it all in.  Meanwhile, I was a total mess on the inside and I think Vicky was too.  We appeared to be calm on the outside though and managed to keep the girls focused.  Tiffany did an awesome job of securing seats for us as well as the rest of the family members that were there.  (She had her folks, my folks and Kaitlyn and Erin- nothing says love like sitting in 90 degree heat on a pool deck to watch your girlfriends little sister swim for about 15 seconds and have a crazy mom screaming like a freak above her head-that would've been me).  Yuko and her family were over to the right from us and managed to get a normal video of the swim without a crazy mom screaming in it.  Thank goodness the moms all work as a team too!

The girls and Sarah and the Relay
Carnival Trophy

So there you have it, just a little snippet of our summer swimming this year.  It's hard to put into words the fun, laughter, races, workouts, movies, bowling events and all the victories we enjoyed seeing McB and her friends experience.  As an adult it's fun to relive our summers through our kids eyes these days and to really appreciate these beautiful days they are having.  I say it every year, I feel very blessed to spend these summers with these awesome parents and kids at Springboard Pool. 

 

So here, for a good laugh, is the video I referred to above.  It also shows why I'm better off being on the deck working the meet than sitting in the stands watching. 

Finally, you can't have summer without at least one picture of McB and Ry!

 

Dubya ~ the newest member of the family

A girl needs a puppy

It wasn't in the plan, at least the plan I had, to adopt a puppy at the beginning of March. I had been following an organization called Last Chance Animal Rescue on Facebook for about six months and kept seeing these adorable litters of puppies, many were labs mixes.  So many cute little loving faces and even though I wouldn't admit it to the rest of the household I was ready to adopt a new family member.   That said, I wasn't planning to adopt one until AFTER our Spring Break trip in early April.  I should have thought of that before I took not only McB but Brad, the older daughter and her girlfriend to see a sweet looking batch of puppies that were billed as 'Lab/Australian Shepperd mix' on Saturday March 7.  At one point all four of them were holding puppies from the litter and they were all sweet and cuddly.  I thought we'd love Hades, I loved the name and he was very cute in the pictures but when we saw him in person, cute as he was the little guy laying next to him was cuter.  That puppy's name was Zeus.  He is now called Dubya and he is our puppy.  As you can see from the two photos he knows how to snuggle.  In the pictures from Last Chance Animal Rescue he is all of 10 weeks old.  They were fairly sure he was born around December 19 or 20 so with McB's birthday being on the 19th we just gave him that birthday too. 

Age 11 weeks 7 pounds

Age 14 weeks 12 pounds

We brought him home and thus began my readjustment to having a puppy.  I had to get him outside before accidents, picking up poop every day and saying NO a lot! I have also enjoyed buying numerous beds (little pistol chewed up two of them before I bought out an old one of Myles that he'd never used and told him the last dog that laid there died and he'd best watch it, so far no chewing on that bed), at least two extender leashes and we are now on the third collar.   The collars are due to him growing...a lot...in the past 4 1/2 months.  I had forgotten about puppy teeth and how they are small, sharp and fall out, until there was one just dangling and I had to gently tug it out.  I don't even do that with my own kid!

Age 12 weeks, size comparison

Just like having children, things and products change a lot.  When I adopted Myles over 19 years ago they didn't have near as many bed options, kennels or even food and toys.  Dubya has two large kennels with two doors, one on the end and one on the side and they fold up.   He has two different kinds of beds and just this weekend our friends brought over an unused one from their dog that's probably too small for Dubya but he likes it because it's cool on these hot days. 



Dubya met Mazie before he even made it home to his own new house.  We had to stop and borrow a kennel since I had two on order but they weren't due in for a few days.  I will say that Mazie is good with Dubya, she tolerates his puppy energy and that's good because I still remember her as a puppy being all over Myles.  She will occasionally give us the look, like the one in this picture.  I'm sure she is thinking, "what is HE doing here and when will he get off my bed and stop chewing on my bones?"

Another new item to add to our house, a new dog door.  After debating quite a bit where to put it, our friends, Maurice and Mercy, came over to meet the dog and they are the ones that helped us decide.  Maurice is a fabulously talented contractor who has made our home beautiful.  He made the dog door decision easy, it was pretty much the only place we could cut into wall to install. 

Puppies sleep a lot, it's due to them being puppies and that they seem to be growing non stop for the first six months of their lives.  Here is a classic shot of him at almost four months.

He is still small enough to hold, but in this picture, taken in early May, he was only 25 pounds.  His ears were growing and his baby teeth were falling out and sometimes it seemed he'd grow overnight.  This leather chair used to be McB's but Dubya decided it was his chair and he snuggles up in it all the time. It's as if he is playing and running and then decides he needs a time out so he hops up and just sits.  Or he watches TV in it.  McB sat in it a few weeks ago and he came running over and barked at her until she got out and let him have it.  I would like to say there is no 'only puppy' syndrome going on but I'd be wrong.  Otherwise I'm giving Brad and myself an A for puppy parenting again at our age.


 

I thought Dubya just liked the chair because it is his size but now I'm starting to think he just likes leather furniture.  He also made our coffee table his nap mat.  He can sit on it and sleep or turn around on it and watch TV with us.  I have to admit the dog's got personality.   Here are two pictures of him, about six weeks apart, look at how much and how fast he has grown!

This pictures of Dubya is him at age 5 months, in May.  He was weighing about 40 pounds by then.  I did the genetic testing called Wisdom Panel to see what he really is.  I decided to do this because of his markings (all the white) and the fact that he showed no remorse at all when he'd have an accident in the house.  A lab would self punish for sure!  It was fairly easy to do, just swab the inside of his mouth and send it off to a lab.   Turns out he's got no lab at all! Dubya is a good mix of English Cocker Spaniel, Siberian Husky, German Shepherd, Rottweiler, and a touch of Bull Terrier.  He should get up to 65-80 pounds and clearly he's got Shepherd ears!  He's smart and he listens and he learns so he brings us a lot of happiness and laughter.  He's unsure about swimming but has a small wading pool he goes in since it's hot.  He loves playing catch and brings the ball back and drops it.  That has been an unexpected surprise for me. 

He loves his little girl and she is becoming really good with him.   We've enrolled in a beginning obedience class and even though Brad and I are there it's all her and Dubya.  Both are learning to listen to each other. 




Here Dubya with McB in June.  He's about 45 pounds now and almost 7 months old. 

Stay tuned because I know he will show up in more blog postings.