Parents Return & Marathon Week

        My parents returned today from spending six months in Korea. The entire family waited at the the international arrivals section of Dulles. In a sense, it seems like they left just yesterday. But six months is a long time to be gone. I know they especially missed not seeing their only granddaughter. The direct flight from Seoul was 14 hrs. It’ll take few days to get over the jetlag.
        On another note, I did my first marathon this past week. It took me all week to do it though. Running between 3-6 miles a day, I ran a little more than the equivalent of marathon. Now I need to see if I can do all 26.2 miles at one time. I can already do a 5K and 10K. Next on the list will be a 1/2 marathon. With all this running, I’m flying through the audiobooks on my iPod. Running and listening to an audiobook. That is my kinda multitasking. This is definitely the most ‘well-read’ I’ve ever been.
        On a final note, it was my big boy Lucas’ birthday today. He turned 4. We love our big goofy boy.

Double MnG Weekend

Father’s Day weekend equaled two Meet ‘n Greets for us. Saturday was at the PetCo in Stafford. Surprisingly, the drive up I-95 was not backed up with weekend traffic. Foot traffic through the store was a bit slow. Kris and I met up with a few friends we haven’t seen in a year for a drink at Hard Times near downtown Fredericksburg. Had a lot of things to catch up on, so ended up closing down the place and didn’t get back home till past 3 am. Guess we were still trying to feel young. We slept in late on Sunday and got up in enough time for the Meet ‘n Greet in downtown Fredericksburg. We had a dozen greys there (plus Parker) which is quite the turnout especially considering it was 90+ degrees. We stayed in the shade and had lots of ice water for the dogs. As I write this, we already got an app in from the Fred MnG. That’s why we do it :)

Fosters Fast Lindsay & Heat Capacity

Kris and I drove down to Wilson, NC today to pick up two new fosters. LnL Fast Lindsay is the pup of Debbie’s Ally. She is a small fawn with a sweet personality. The picture is of her with her grammy. Heat Capacity is just a goofy boy. He looks a lot like Graces Thunder who should officially be adopted tomorrow. Jason and Trina have had Thunder for nine weeks now, and I am sure they will have Thunder-withdrawal. Both Lindsay and Capacity have forever homes to go to. So we will be fostering them for only a couple of weeks until their new families return from their vacations. Hopefully Stella and Lucas will mentor them in their transition from the track to their forever homes.

VAGA Golf Tournament

Today was the VAGA golf tournament at Lee’s Hill Golf course. To prepare for this, Trina and Aubry stayed with us and helped us finish a few bottles of wine by the fire in the pagoda till about 2am. Needless to say, when we showed up to help this morning at 8:15 am, we were not in great shape. None of us had been on a golf course much less a golf tournament, so we were pretty much lost as to what to do. We ended up getting assigned to the beverage cart duties. Kris and I drove the golf cart with the sodas, and Trina and Aubry had the beer cart. They were much more popular. It was quite fun zipping around on the golf carts. We had quite a turnout of volunteers for the event. There were many greyhounds to greet golfers as they hit the links. All in all, it was a very successful event. Could possibly be our biggest single fundraising event all year. Afterwards, we went to our niece Kendall’s 2nd birthday party. There were 14 little screaming kids, and only Kris and I seemed to notice the ruckus and chaos that ensued. The parents had learned to tune it all out. I think we will just stick with our greyhounds :) After the party, we went into Kris’ lab for a few hours, so she could get her weekend work done tonight because tomorrow we will be spending the majority of the day driving to Wilson, NC to pick up two greys. One is LnL Fast Lindsay (Debbie’s Ally’s pup) and the other is Heat Capacity. On another note, I was reminded today that I have been slacking on updating my website pictures. Thanks Barb :) I will try to update them within the next week.

Orlando Greyhound Trip

I got a last minute call at the end of last week to go to Florida for work. Miami and Orlando. Three board members of VAGA were on vacation this week in Orlando. So I flew to Miami then drove to Orlando. After visiting both sites for work, I met up with the vacationing ladies and we went to visit the GPA rescue kennel, then visited one of the racing kennels (to see LnL Fast Lori & LnL Fast Jake - kids of Debbie’s Ale House), then went to the Sanford Orlando track to see the races. Carolyn had just gotten a new Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS UMS lens, and we tested it out at the track. Hope we got some good shots. Now I’ll be jonesing for a new lens :) It truly is amazing to watch the greys run. We got to see LnL Fast Jake and Coconut Cream (CC) run their hearts out. CC is VAGA’s Racing for Adoption dog. The profits from her racing go to help VAGA.

Stumpf Cookout

We went down to Richmond for an impromptu cookout at Jason & Trina’s. They still have Thunder. And we took our kids. And the Clarkes brought Logan. So that made seven greyhounds and Parker, Shiloh, and Dante. The weather was nice for a cookout. They have a nice flat square backyard, so the kids could do laps while we threw toys from the deck. Jason is becoming quite the grill master and his home-made pesto was great as usual.

Memorial Day Weekend

We had a relaxing Memorial Day weekend. No big cookout this year. On Saturday, we went to Cooper Vineyards for ‘Lucy’s Day’. Lucy is the hound they adopted from the SPCA. So we took the kids along. And since we still had Murphy, that made two SPCA dogs for us. The greys were a big hit. I always forget that for most people, greyhounds are still a rare site. We stayed for a little over an hour until the guys looked like they had had enough of the heat. We stopped off at the Miller Farm on the way back to pick up some fresh local goods. We got some squash, zucchini and some local meats (ground steak and baby back ribs). Gotta have some stuff to grill for the weekend. The ground steak burgers were great. We had the ribs for Memorial Day. They were my first attempt at slow cooking baby backs on the grill, and they were pretty tasty too. I think my next venture will be big ol’ beef ribs. Then I may move on to paella. That may consist of me needing to buy a special paella pan :)