Showers, Tennis, and Lakes

My good friend Janie Rydalch is soon to be Janie Pace. I love weddings, drinks all around! No, but really, I do like weddings because it gives us all an excuse to get together for showers and stuff. It is always so fun to get together with all the girls again. I wish everyone could have made it to the shower, but here at least are the fabulous five who lived for one incredible semester in AG6. I'm so glad I have such wonderful friends!

Although my tennis skills are near pathetic, I still like to go play whenever I get a chance (Mark, we still need to have that lesson, I have improved in ping pong under your tutelage, let's see what you can do with tennis). Kati, Abby, Annie, Todd, and I all went last week to play some rousing games. I think the other more serious tennis players thought we were pretty crazy when we started playing "around the world" but come on, with skills like mine you just can't take it too seriously.



And summer is never complete without our regular trips to rockport, and even finding a little dead fish down my swimming suit when I returned home after this particular trip will not deter me from going back to cool off from the summer heat.

All the Pretty Horses

I can't remember a time when I did not love horses. I grew up around horses so when I wasn't actually riding them I was pretending that I was, and if I wasn't pretending that I was riding I was pretending I was the horse itself. I loved horses of every color, black, chestnut, white, grey, buckskin. Horses galloped through both my waking and sleeping dreams, and I found horses doodled across all my notebooks from school. When we sold our last three horses before my parents moved to Mexico I was devestated. I was in school when one of my teachers (we all know each other well since it is such a small community)pulled me out of class and handed me a check for the three horses. He assured me they would not come to get them until the evening, but when I returned from school the fields were empty. I thought the grass looked lonely as it swayed in the breeze. All I could think of was that I did not have a chance to say goodbye. Not to Sundowner the clever and often naughty little pony, or May who despite her lazy and cold manner I had come to love, or even to Shaker with his crooked feet and homely face who loved his ears to be scratched. It has now been five years since a horse of my own as been in these fields and earlier this summer I convinced my mom to buy a cheap horse that I had discovered. He has turned out to be more of a project than I bargained for. Despite the fact that he is nearly unrideable and has been christened "Bucky" as a result, it still feels good to have a horse of my own. Here are a few pictures of my years with horses.

Quotable Quotes

So I just finished reading a funny little book entitled, "The Mouse on the Moon." Contrary to what you might think, it is not about a mouse at all. Instead it is about a tiny country named Grand Fenwick that makes a rocket fuel out of wine and makes it to the moon before the U.S. or Russia. While this might sound like a zany plot, I did discover some fine quotes from love to politics whithin the yellow old pages. I thought I would share a few.

Talking about a single young man of twenty-five......"He's emotionally immature. He still thinks of himself as the most important person in the world--the one who has to be suited in all things. That is the attitude of the perennial bachelor, who by his nature is emotionally immature."

Talking about the nature of politics..... "Governments are elected so that nations may prosper while really not knowing what is going on at all. That is the art of successful government. Nor can governments carry on their business effectively with each other by telling each other frankly what are their policies and objectives. Good heavens, what a monstrous handicap such an arrangement would prove. Deceit, my dear boy, is the very lubricant of the machinery of international diplomacy. It is by subterfuge that the whole mechanism works smoothly."

And of course, true love..... "I don't mind dying as dying. But since dying would entail not seeing you again--then I am afraid."

The 4th of July!

The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays, probably becuase it is such a big deal in Oakley. I love the Rodeo, the Parade, the Town Program, and of course our Family Reunion at the Ranch. This year was a real old fashioned 4th of July becuase we have horses again at the Ranch, I played my violin in the town program, attended the rodeo, and Rich and I rigged up a new rope swing. Sigh....the glory days are coming back.

Kati and I giving the town folk a good ol' fiddle tune.

Kati, Abby and I had a grand time at the Rodeo. The new rope swing works fine!


And here is a little taste of the Rodeo for ya. As they say every year..."If you're not livin' on the edge, you're takin'up way too much room."

Washington D.C. with the Girls!

Last week Annie, Kati, and I hopped on a plane for Washington D.C. We met Jane (who is a nanny back there) and Abby who was making her way home from Italy. The five of us had a blast. Jane's kids were on vacation with their mother and Lock, their dad, was so gracious to let us take over his whole house! Surprisingly he didn't seem to mind having a loud and crazy group of girls there for a few days. We also were able to see Todd Neiman who is back selling security systems. I think we gave him quite a shock when we arrived since he had no idea we were coming. We saw too many things to tell you about...hopefully the pictures in the video will speak for themselves. We had a rough time coming home (we were flying standby). We flew from D.C. to San Francisco, to L.A. and finally to Salt Lake. While we were traveling from place to place I made the very wise observaiton that "It is better to be going somewhere than nowhere." I think that will go right under "Wherever you go, there you are" in my quote list.