Our 2nd big family event of the year! Another great day, beautiful weather (a tad on the hot side though!) and lots of people. Usually the actual golfing part has me pretty freaked out. My dad is like the ultimate die hard golfer AND he's freakin' good too! I remember in university, guys my age in town would figure out who my Dad was and they were always all impressed with him and then I'd have to admit I couldn't play to save my life and they'd look at me all strange, as if I should automatically be a golf whiz too. But no, the prevalent golf genes in my family seem to have passed me by. Every year the tournament has been a little stressful as I tee up on the first hole with everyone watching me swing wildly, desperately trying to make contact with that ^%#@* white ball. Not this time baby! I was embarrassed to ask Dad for a lesson but I decided it'd be even more humiliating to go back on that course with no more of a clue than the last 10 tournaments! and it wasn't like he didn't already know that I sucked so I didn't really have much to lose. The lesson went well & REALLY paid off! I had a great time out there! I was with my Uncle Wayne and 2 other cousins of Dad's that I didn't know well but it didn't matter. We all got along and had many laughs.
The tournament has many rules, you must related to Curt or Annie to play, you must be at least 12 years old, teams cannot have siblings or parents on them (cuts down on the fighting), you must use at least one drive from every team member (so the avid golfers don't take over the game), no more than 30 seconds can be spent looking for lost balls (or the tourney would take all day)... just to name a few. Anyway, even though we were only required to use one, TWO of my drives were used. I was quite excited about that. Normally if my ball gets more than 30 feet off the tee, I have to argue to convince the team captain that THAT is likely to be my best drive of the day. Besides my drives, a few of my chips & putts were also used as the best ball so I was pretty pumped about that. The rest of the team as complaining that they were having a terrible day & that we should all promise to never talk about how we'd played. I said the heck with that! this was my best game ever & I was going to tell everybody! So there, now I have. : )))
The kids had a pretty good day, it was very hot and the tourney ran late, so did awarding the prizes and it was almost 7 before we said grace and got to hit the buffet. The kids enjoyed watching the balloon toss and were all psyched up for the sack races but only Honey went to the starting line & then she lost her nerve amongst all the bigger kids. Lovey had a little run in with a sharp metal spikey thing and punctured her lip (tetanus was up to date so no hospital visit for us, whew!) and she wasn't up for any of the games, but my cousin Liz & I got Honey & Sweetie in for the wheelbarrow races. They had trouble grasping the "run with your hands!!!!" concept and kept wanting to stand on their heads. Good training & look out next year competitors! There was also tug of war (my team won!) and 3 legged races but the kids didn't do those ones but had fun watching. They did try the piñata though but the bat weighed almost as much as they did & they coudn't hold it up in the air without help. They got in on the candy when the thing finally broke & were pretty happy with the candy lipstick & necklaces.
Finally, around 9:30, fireworks started and it was quite a display. Long enough to get bitten by 4000 mosquitoes I'd say. The girls looooooooved watching all the explosions of colour and every time, Honey would say "I fink there's gonna be another one maybe!" and they all made sure to announce whenever their favourite colours appeared, or if one of their sister's favourites popped up. Listening to the running commentary of these 3 year olds was almost as good as the display itself. They clapped and oohed and ahhhed but Honey had the most comments so she might be more of a fireworks enthusiast than the others.
Bedtime was about 3 hours behind schedule & it took them awhile to settle down upstairs in the hotbox of a room we were in. There were fans everywhere but the temperature never seemed to drop all night. It took me forever to fall asleep and I was exhausted the next day!
Even with the heat & the messed up routine, I love going to Grammie's for this event. It's so much fun to see everyone (even if we didn't get to play Spoons) this time. We all missed the cousins that didn't make it (only 7 out of 18 of us were there) but it was really great to see Curtis (Grandad's namesake) who hadn't been home in 10 years or so. He lives in Toronto and his dad died when we were little kids so he & his brother didn't grow up around here like the rest of us. Hopefully we didn't scare him off & he'll come back again sometime!
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