Breaking and entering

It's been an interesting day and it's barely 3 p.m. The entire goal of today, other than packing, is to absolutely exhaust Lucy so that she's completely worn out by the time we drive home tonight.
I took Chad into work this morning and managed to lock myself out of the house. So I MacGyvered my way into the back yard over the fence and through the dog door to let us in. I was feeling quite proud of myself until I realized I must have landed in a pile of dog poop because I tracked it all over the living room.

Then we went to the local dog park. She loves the creek and playing with all the other dogs. She ran around for an hour and a half. Lucy's "Missouri Mom," the woman who originally found her in Missouri and sent her out here to a friend so that she could be adopted, was in town and wanted to see how much Lucy had grown. We met her and her friend, who Lucy stayed with for three weeks when she first came out to DC. They kept remarking that Lucy was really well-behaved. (I didn't tell them that we got to the dog park 45 minutes early so she wouldn't be hyper!)

Then we drove downtown and had a picnic with Chad. That was fun.

Presently, Lucy is absolutely pooped. When it looks like she's falling asleep, I'll wake her back up. She keeps looking at me like, "Woman, what is wrong with you?"

From the look of the picture below, I'd say that I'm succeeding.

Sports center

It's about that time to fill people in on Chad's sports schedule. Here's our current itinerary:

Sunday: Flag Football
Monday: Men's basketball (playing here the other night)
Tuesday: Men's softball
Wednesday: Alabama softball on the Mall
Thursday: Co-ed softball against other Hill staff
Friday: OFF (!)
Saturday: Co-ed softball

Needless to say, if I didn't go to the games, I would never see my own husband.

Bad hair day

It's irritating to me that the day before I'm scheduled to get my haircut, I'm asked to appear live on Fox Business. Couldn't they have waited until tomorrow afternoon to talk about something that's a week away?

If you can get past my bad hair day, this wasn't a horrible piece.

Rainbow hunting

We had an odd storm last night where the rain just came and went for about a half-hour. And when I noticed that it was raining on one side of our house and sunny on another, I immediately went searching for a rainbow. (I know I frustrated poor Chad with this wild goose chase because he had just finished making dinner and I was not paying one bit of attention to it. But he knows me well enough to know that all things stop when you're rainbow hunting.)

Needless to say, the rainbow didn't take long to find. Here's what was outside of our front window. If you look really closely, you can see the double rainbow a ways up from the really bright one:

This made me think about my best rainbow memories. What comes to mind:

• Mom giving in to the pleas of her four kids, letting us all hop in the car on a summer night in search of the end of a rainbow. We drove for awhile and then it just disappeared--which is too bad because, at the time, I was sure that it was going to make us rich. Or that we'd at least see a leprechaun.

• Driving over to Grandma Marge's house when I was in high school to show her a rainbow that was outside. This was before cell phones and I was on Henderson Street heading home from work. I knew she'd want to see it because she's the biggest rainbow-lover I know.

• A little over two years ago, when we found out that Chad's grandmother had just a few months to live, both of us were feeling very melancholy. It was the first irreversible sickness of one of our grandparents and neither of us knew exactly how to handle it. That night, the most subdued, you-can-barely-see-it rainbow appeared in the sky across the street from our house. And just a few days after we returned to DC from her funeral, another rainbow appeared in the exact same spot. I equated it to a little pep talk from God: "Hey, just wanted to let you know it's all good up here..." So I also think of Grandma Rhodes now when I see them.

• The most gorgeous rainbow I have ever seen: Outside of Cumberland, Maryland when we were driving home for Rachel's wedding. The sun was peeking out from the other side of the mountains and hitting the rain clouds perfectly to reveal the most sensational colors right from a Crayola box. We pulled over to take a picture, but couldn't capture its brilliance. I told Rachel that it was a sign that she picked the right guy. As if she didn't already know that!

Buried treasure

Lucy has never been the slightest bit interested in the empty flower beds in our backyard (empty because I have been waiting to figure out what on earth to do with them since they get so much direct sunlight the flowers I plant always die). At any rate, on Friday night Chad tilled the soil and we unknowingly unleashed a demon.

We have come to find out that Lucy is gathering walnuts that have fallen from our tree and lining them up side-by-side before burying them. Something tells me that our squirrels will not be too happy!

I ain't scared of no ghosts

Congrats to the Galloping Ghosts, who took fourth place in the Arlington County men's spring flag football league. They lost tonight 19-10, but they played well and gave the #1 team a real run for their money!

Here are the guys, in good spirits despite their loss. Note our team screwball Ted (far right), who is just seconds away from pouring the rest of his water on Bob.


And the season could not end propertly without a shout-out to the Spirit Squad, who attended every game faithfully (except for the one during a monsoon). Even Lucy was a full-fledged attendee. We had a good time, watching most plays and keeping up on current gossip when we weren't.

Summer nights

Janice and Nick made us BLTs last night and there is just really nothing better to eat in the summertime (especially if you add sweet corn!). My dinner was so good that I almost had a hard time eating it. Almost.