The Rock Wall

It was an unusual Picnic for three big reasons.

No. 1 – because Adrian was here with our grandson, Van. At almost nine months, he couldn’t have cared less about the Picnic. He’s just started crawling and pulling up on things (and toppling them if he can) so he requires constant supervision.

He’s a happy baby… as long as Momma Adrian can get him in bed by 8 p.m. She’s a good momma and really works at it. That meant no late nights at the Picnic… for Adrian and Van.

He recognizes his name. As he was crawling from the hall into my office, I said, “Hi, Van.” He looked up and gave me a big smile. I’ve got videos on my 1¢ Samsung Tablet. (Yes, it was on sale.)

Hope you got to see him. I know Adrian visited with some of her school buddies.

No. 2 – I shot almost 100% of the games and contests photos. Wednesday night, we had our Eagles burger then went down to the Street Dance. Kimball shot the dance contest winners.

Thursday, I took a hundred-year-old-plus stool to the games on the former tennis courts and camped out for almost three hours to get all the winners. I took a lighter (and more comfortable) folding chair at Kimball’s suggestion on Friday.

Precautionary note: my camera normally keeps pics organized in the order I shoot them. For some unknown reason the camera decided to mix up the pictures. Kimball and I spent about three hours at the Studio computer Monday evening trying to match the photos of winners to the cutlines. I’m not sure we got them all correct but it wasn’t for lack of effort. Next year I’m going to ask the contest winners to hold their contest object: hula-hoop, tennis shoe, etc. Water balloon may be a tough one – throwing or catching?

Saturday morning, I shot the blast off of the Run For A Reason expecting to add to it all of the age category winners on the podium. Travis Farran and Kevin McCollough, who organize the event, were totally thrown off their game plan by a computer glitch when it refused to organize the winners by age, IQ, etc. So, I only took photos of the overall men and women winners. Actually, they were the young athletes we’ve watched win everything lately.

Maybe we’d better scratch the IQ category. I know it wouldn’t be bright of me to try to run in this heat. I can barely walk.

Kimball shot the Great Golf Cart Race winners. Gwen shot the sidewalk art winners.

-I really laid off the feedbag for the Picnic. I ate one Kim Laine corndog, one Optimist corndog and two Christopher Stephen’s sweet rolls.

I had dreaded the anticipated heat for the Picnic. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

I may have more Picnic news but that story is embargoed at this point. Meet me here for the next few weeks and we’ll see when Sarah Huckabee Sanders will release it. That will be my No. 3 Picnic story. KL