This past weekend seemed to kick off a day early because instead of a normal work day on Friday, my team at work participated in United Way’s Day of Caring. For day of caring, almost 12,000 people in King County spent the day volunteering at various nonprofits in the area. My group chose Little Bit Therapudic Riding Center. Little Bit is a 17 acre ranch that houses 40 horses that provide life-changing physical benefits to disabled children (and adults) including strengthening muscles, preventing bone weakness and joint dislocation, improving balance, and enhancing hand/eye coordination. These benefits improve a rider’s overall health, which, in turn, can increase life expectancy. They also ripple into other aspects of daily living: promoting confidence and independence, improving communication skills and peer interaction, enhancing concentration and memory, stimulating problem-solving, and providing achievable goals. I spent most of the day there cleaning the office area (an office attached to a riding arena and barn gets really dusty really quick) which isn’t the sexiest volunteer job, but one of the perks was that I was able to watch some of the children on the horses. It was really inspiring to see the effect the horses have on their riders. It made me realize I should probably give back more of my time to awesome organizations like Little Bit.
We wrapped up our volunteering a little earlier than I would normally wrap up a day at the office, so I took the opportunity to head out of Seattle toward Hood River before traffic got too bad (some of my coworkers went back to the office – over achievers! ha).
I drove back to Hood River and immediately met up with Beth and Sarah for dinner. Beth never gets Friday nights off (she manages a really delicious and popular restaurant in White Salmon and Fridays are always busy) so I had to take full advantage of the fact that she was off on a night when I was in town. We had dinner then wandered out to grab drinks with friends.
Sarah was a grandma and went home to go to bed early(ish), but Beth and I stayed out later until we eventually wandered back to Josh and Sarah’s to crash in their spare bedroom instead of driving home #responsibledecisions
Saturday I grabbed a green smoothie (which I’m trying to drink more of) from the Juice Bros and then went to my parents’ house to snuggle with my cats for a bit. Everyone knows about Fluffy, but this is Fluffy’s Grandma, Socks. She is probably the oldest outdoor cat EVER (she is like 22), she is so sweet (except to Fluffy), she still hunts and until last year she had kittens every single year. I was convinced she was going to die when I went to college like 10 years ago, but she’s still going strong.
After cat time I headed to my BFF’s Grandma’s home for Grandma Bev’s birthday party. I spent a lot of time in Middle and High School at Katie’s Grandma’s house (Katie lived with her Grandma) and she knew both of my parents when they were kids too. She has always been really wonderful to me and I don’t get to see her nearly as much as I’d like, so it was nice to chat with her and hear all the things she’s grumpy about these days ;) hint: she hates the way downtown White Salmon has evolved haha.
I had to leave the party a little early because Beth, Sarah and I had tickets to see Heart perform at Edgefield!! We went a little early to wander around the gardens and have dinner and enjoy one of the last nice days of summer outside. There were a TON of people at the show so we ended up sitting pretty far back but we still had a great time.
^^Heart performing (thanks Sarah for the pic)^^
Sunday morning I had breakfast with Josh and Katie at Pioneer Pizza (their eggs benedict pizza is on point) before packing up and heading back to Seattle.
I think I mentioned that I’m on the go for the next million weekends in a row, but these busy weekends have been fun, so I’m hoping the trend will continue. I think I’m finally getting adjusted to being gone every weekend (I feel less overwhelmed this week), and I’m looking forward to lots of good things coming up like: Hops Fest, LAS VEGAS, and hunting season!
Cheers!!
