come back late tonight to water my grass some more!
today
is the school kennywood picnic. the kids and i are planning to go but
the rain has made all of us nervous. i've checked the forecast several
times and it says rain this morning, cloudy this afternoon. the kids
are really really excited and i'd hate to see them let down.
maia,
in typical girl fashion has been preparing herself since yesterday. 'i
have to paint my toenails for kennywood tomorrow.' 'oh no! i've gotten
a boo-boo! i can't have a boo-boo for kennywood! waaaah!!!' and so on
and so on. maia lays out her clothes the night before (something no
one taught her because i'm too changeable in small matters to do such a
thing myself) and has already laid out and returned to her dresser
several items.
tristyn is much more stoic and has only resorted to throwing a few glares out the window at the rain.
i
forgot to mention--about 2 weeks ago..i got to go to the Cheat River
Race (may 4) and help out. this was important to me because 1--rick is
the race organizer and 2--i did the website for it
(www.cheatriverrace.com) here is a picture from it:
this
is from just a few minutes into the start. the race is the only
kayaking race in the country that has a mass start. that's right a
MASS START. this year we had 143 racers! prior to the race, rick ran
around doing various last minute errands while i tried not to get in
the way and be helpful if i could. then when registration opened i was
given the task of handing out race packets to those who pre-registered.
after
registration, while rick went to give the talk-up (explain rules and
such) i entered the rest of the racers data into the laptop. we keep
all the information on excel sheets that way after the scores are
entered it's just a matter of sorting a few things to get the winners
of various things: overall, team, class, etc.
i
got everything entered just in time and ran down to the river in time
to watch the race start. i waited for rick to wade in from a third of
the way in the water where he was filming and then we ran back to the
car. it's almost a 40 min car ride to the take out (due to the twisty
roads of wv) and we got there only about 10 mins or so before the
winner came paddling in! we just had time to set up filming (rick) and
scorekeeping (me and some others). i didn't actually scorekeep--three
others did that--but i was responsible for entering in the finishing
times for each racer as soon as the scorekeeper got it written down.
by getting this information in quickly, this allowed rick to announce
the winners 15 minutes into the after-party, opposed to years before
when sometimes he didn't get it announced until HOURS after the party
started--and sometimes not until the next day! i think i really
helped! =D
I'm the long, dark haired one with the laptop on my lap. =D
