This week I started back with physical therapy for my left shoulder/arm because of carrying Butler downstairs. I have a different therapist because I'm doing it at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday right after work. Mike (my therapist) hooked me up to a machine that sent electrical pulses to my shoulder after I had done some stretching exercises and he manipulated my shoulder. And Thursday night he taped me like Blake (my other therapist) had done one time. But Mike taped both my shoulders which was interesting. I was getting ready for the cold stuff that goes on before the first layer of tape when all-of-a-sudden instead of a little cold spray I get both Mike's hands starting at the top of my back and going halfway down. HEL-LOW that was COLD!
Friday night I was able to get together with two friends from my days in Urbandale - we were suppose to have gotten together last Friday night but my shoulder hurt so bad I had to cancel on them at the last minute. Luckily this Friday worked for all of us. My family moved from Urbandale to Pella in '73. Nancy and I had kept in contact through the years but unfortunately Lisa and I hadn't. Nancy had shared Mike's CaringBridge website with Lisa and she reconnected with me last year and it's been great staying connected. Lisa and I decided Friday night that we had seen each other one time since '73. We closed Panera in Ankeny (at 9:00 p.m.) and then stood outside Panera and continued to talk until 10:15 :)
Yesterday was the Third Annual Fall Fest for Living Waters Fellowship at a family's property close to Avon Lake. The weather the past two weeks has been BE-U-TI-FUL (yes I left out the "a") and yesterday was awesome. Festivities started at 2:00 p.m. with fellowship and a hayride which another gal and I took with several of the kids. Then it was time for mandatory family games - see pix below. As we moved to the games area we were divided into four teams (Blue, Red, Green or Yellow...or Gold as that team called themselves). I was a Blue Team member.
This is the Blue Team marked by the blue balloon. Each team had to determine their team name using their balloon color in the name. We tossed different ideas out and then decided on the Smurfs. As our pastor aka Papa Smurf was heading to the officials to give them our name we realized we didn't include the word "blue" so we yelled at him that we were the Blue Smurfs. Aren't we the original ones :) That's Papa Smurf standing in the black t-shirt with his back to the camera talking to our team. Ruth (the gal that rode the hayride with me) and I decided we'd both be Grumpy Smurf. The Yellow (or Gold) Team is next to us.
The first game needed 12 team members with two adults and two children at each team's table - this is my team. The other team members had to hand (one-at-a-time) 36 plastic cups to the four at the table who then created a pyramind of cups. The team with the most cups in their pyramid without it blowing over won. The Blue Smurfs won and we were on a roll! We created a wind block with the rest of our team members' bodies. We were in first place and awarded the Gold mylar balloon to tie to our blue balloons which incidently had a blue smurf as the weight of the gold balloon..............
Another game paired us with the Red team and the Green team with the Yellow team. Each team had a table and either all your cups were in the up position or the down position. Our two teams were in the down position. Those members playing were to then turn cups, on any table, to the position for their team. Judi, in the pink in the foreground, protected our table continuing to turn cups in the down position while the rest of our team went to the other tables to turn cups down. Chaos ensued :)
There was another game where two mothers/children and two fathers/children from each team were paired up. The parent was blindfolded and had to "race" the length of the playing field, to find their child at the other end, with only being guided by the sound of their child yelling "mom" or "dad". Parents were grabbing wrong children and one dad turned the wrong way and headed into the corn field next to me - and I missed getting that picture can you believe it?! :)
We had held the lead during all the games, and were leading by two points when it was time for the final game. Each team member was given three pieces of paper to crumple into a ball and we had to sit in our team's quadrant on the playing field. When the officials said "go" we then tossed our "snowball" into another team's quadrant. As the end of the game, the number of snowballs in each quadrant was counted with the team with the least amount of snowballs getting first and the team with the most getting fourth. The adults had to stay on their patootey (behind) to play this game while the kids could at least move within our quadrant. And we could toss snowballs that landed in our quadrant into other quadrants. Needless-to-say guess which team got ganged up by the other three teams...yep the Blue Smurfs. Check out our quadrant in the picture below - shouldn't be too hard to figure out which one is ours. The team that won had like one snowball in it.
Today I woke up with my eyes bugging me and feeling funky so I didn't go to church. I started feeling somewhat "ok" around noon or at least ok enough to run two errands that I had planned on doing on my way home from church. There was also a Corvette show in Valley Junction that I wanted to check out. See the pictures below. My dream car is a '61 Vette in powder blue with that inland deal in the doors being white - like the LA Law car back when that show was on the air.
Tomorrow if you think about it - say a little prayer for me. It would have been Mike's 64th birthday and it could be somewhat emotional at times. I still miss him everyday.
