Proud Parents

Satchmo (and his folks) had his first dog park experience this weekend at Lake Padden. We were a little nervous about cutting him loose in this suprisingly large field with all the other kids but, after some initial nervousness, he made a lot of new friends.

In all honestly, it was actually a pretty sweet experience to just watch him play with other dogs. At one point, he got an opportunity to show off his mad frisbee skills in front of his playmates. Lake Padden also has a "dog water exercise area," which we had to take advantage of. Ever since I first saw Satchy diving for toys at the bottom of grandma and grandpa's pool I've been anxious to see how he does with non-man-made bodies of water...like a... lake.

Hmm...wait a minute.

Our Home and Native Land

Right off the bat, we had to go on a business trip for Derrel's new job, which he's very happy at:

We went to Cologna, Canada ( or Kelowna, as it's spelled everywhere else outside of this blog). Seriously, there's some Frenchness going on in Canada, I just assumed some silent letters were involved somewhere. After four hours of gorgeous scenery and at least three partial renditions of "Oh Canada" from my oh-so-cultured husband, we reached the waterside nugget.

But that's when things got interesting. The bridge we had to cross to get into Kelowna was trying to earn its place into the Guinness Book of World Records...

...for the longest bra-chain. Seeing as it's National Breast Cancer Awareness month, a local radio station decided to give it a go. The string of ladies undergarments crossed the bridge three times, amounting to a length just shy of two miles (over 3000 bras). Of course, when we were crossing the bridge, we didn't have this information. We thought that all of the women fallen victim to Canada's male-centered, oppressive rule were finally speaking out. The oppression continued, however, as I had dinner with the other nine men attending the league meeting. I would like to call this particular episode of our lives, "Ego and the City." For a moment, it did feel like I was dining with nine other women, all talking over each other about men and other women, drinking wine and hitting on the restaurant's staff. Only this time, it was men talking about themselves and baseball and hitting on much younger and more married female wait staff. They did still drink wine. I'm so grateful that the game and "the game" have never caught up with Derrel the way they have with the other attendees. It was a definite case study. I knew I should have packed my safari hat.