Home Means Nevada

Home means Nevada.
Home means the hills.
Home means the sage and the pines.
Out where the Truckee's silvery rills,
Out where the sun always shines.
Home means the land that I love the best,
Fairer than all I can see.
Right in the heart of the Golden West
Home means Nevada to me.

Happy Nevada Day!

Well almost...it's technically the 31st of October, but certain misguided citizens voted a few years ago to designate the last Friday in October so as to get a three-day holiday. So Friday is the holiday, but Saturday is the parade in Carson and the 31st is a few days away...so I guess we can just regard it as one long party. I'm happy because it gives me more time to go around humming our state song!

Happy 143rd birthday to my favorite state. I'm proud to be a Nevadan.

Fourscore

I don't know the best way to celebrate a milestone birthday like Mom's 80th, but we did our best to make sure she enjoyed it. Pooh flew down from Portland and we drove up the Mt. Rose Highway to do a little sightseeing. Here's the birthday girl as we visited some aspen groves along the creeks. (We told her that the aspens were her birthday candles.) She sure doesn't look like she's 80!

Just having a family gathering was nice. We christened her new dining room with a birthday dinner. She may have made her own cake (guess she wanted to be ready!), but at least she let Pooh decorate it for her and she was surprised at the extra large birthday candles we found. There were balloons and flowers and long distance phone calls and gifts to open.

Happy Birthday!

Cinderella team

Here we are at the Fall Friendship Tournament this weekend. The Soccer Chicks had a roller coaster of a tournament. They got a hard-earned win on Saturday morning, then looked with disdain at the much-younger and much-shorter coed team later that afternoon and got their donkeys kicked as a result. So much talk, so many tears.

But one loss doesn't lose a tournament, so they put in a serious effort resulting in a win on Sunday morning and an advance to the championship game.

We tied the Championship game, went to overtime, and eventually a shootout. We had our most relaxed goalkeeper in the net and she saved penalty kicks time after time. Our best kickers shot hard and accurately. We could hardly believe we had won the division. So we all screamed and jumped up and down and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

We have a large trophy that is making the rounds of players' homes and each girl is wearing her medal with pride.

These girls have kept their spirits up and had fun even though they have lose our league games. They've kept working and had a great attitude. This tournament win was a surprise and an ego boost. They earned it and they deserved it. They earned their moment in the sun.