Fun Weekend!

I opened my eyes this morning and my very first vision was a sunrise throwing pink onto the clouds above the mountains, and pouring gold over the silken skin and glistening hair of the sleeping beauty next to me. It was, of course, Acacia lying beside me not Nick, but this is a good thing: He was awaking in California where he's been the past few days flying, after a week in New Jersey and another one in CA before that. Life almost seems normal!

Both Acacia and Cayenne slept in today after getting up at the crack-o-dawn on Saturday for a swim meet in Farmington, NM, which as it turns out, was an eye opener. Not just the crack-o-dawn part, but the meet itself. The girls do gymnastics because they love it; they swim because we tell them to. It's a life skill; a good thing to be good at. Acacia is all muscle, has a competitive drive and has done well from the starting gun. But Cayenne is, how shall we say, not a natural athlete in the traditional sense. When they played soccer she used to skip down the field. And if she ever had control of the ball and the other team came to get it, she be like, "Oh, I'm sorry. Would you like the ball?" So sweet.

But get her on a road bike or hiking and that girl goes. And goes. So it really shouldn't have been a surprise that after all these meets in which she's swum and gotten beaten in 25m and 50m races, that she'd smoke the competition in the 100m. In her heat she swam against three (older) kids and she finished at least a full body length ahead of them all. Go Cay!! I went as loopy as an official timer is allowed. ha! They all started out well, but as the others petered Cayenne kept the same steady pace she started with. I was so proud. I almost missed starting the timer for the next heat. She's not going to be competing in the Olympics or anything, but it was a huge confidence booster.

We spent the evening at a hockey league end-of-season party and literally passed out when we got home. The girls slept 10 hours, getting up in time to head to the Taste of Durango, a Kick-Off-Summer Food Festival downtown. So fun!

 Nick got home in time to relax with a drink before we gathered all the sunglasses in the house to watch the solar eclipse.

Jeanette came up the hill for a better view.

Our point-n-shoot camera was no match for the eclipse and couldn't capture what we saw, but this shot shows that there was something adrift with that there sun!