Mother of the Priest

How about a round of applause for Aunt Louise, the Hostess with the Most-ess . What a great job she did the whole week. Thanks for everything.

Thanks for keeping the Christmas tree up all year.
A good excuse for a party.


Do you remember the song...?


Mom, I'm going pro as a guitar player.
I'm gonna make it big right here in on the Boulder Hwy. in Fabulous Las Vegas.


SHURE...


I'll get back to the chores after just one more pretzel.

Slots, in Vegas ??

For sure she was there.
Looking for her? Check out the aisle seat of a row of the penny slots.


Jennifer checks in to ask what time Mass is (was).

Official participant in the Mass.


Only their hairdressers know for sure...


Relaxing in the Marilyn F. Young art gallery, with the artist.
Not long and they'll both be in the T. P. (Townsley Position)

Irish lasses looking fabulous !!!!

I'd Like to Make a Toast

Ashley got the champagne flowing. And then the toasts to Father JJ came, with an outpouring of love and memories. Oh, and a history lesson of the Holy Famliy parish. Thanks Monsignor.
But really, thank you Ash.

Uncle Herman

The Professor


Pria, the adoring niece

Joe, the childhood buddy

Ashley highly recommends the Napa bubbles
over the French stuff. We concurred.

Gina makes the rounds

Somehow Gina ended up in a lot of photos. Next time you'll know to sit next to her, for sure inclusion in the blog.
And you know she j u s t L U V S the attention. right.


The New Yawkers - Dyan, Herman and Gina



Gina and Dorothy looking sharp for Monday Mass.


Slots, Aunt Louise, and Gina are ready to hit the machines.


Cousin Mike and Gina. and some headless guy.


Wendy and Gina...
Wendy, you should have drunk all that OJ, ... and saved the slacks.

Family from Afar

Now that I've got the hang of multiple photos per posting I can do some more reunion stuff. Warning.... I have a full pot of coffee to work with. Here are some of the gang who travelled quite a distance to celebrate with JJ.


Ljoiussee, Patty and Dorothy enjoy
post dinner drinks, thanks to Slots who finally won some spending $.

Aunt Mary, Margaret, and Marilyn (Slots)
enjoy the post breakfast OJ.


The Scwhalls are plotting
how to get some more of that delish - ious egg dish.


Joe and Carrie appear to be
paying attention, but really they are checking out the photos
on their digital camera.


Settling in for
the big Monday Mass.

Lee was there

Did I mention that?

More photos

fotos are fighting me.
this only took 4 tries. Blogging is not coming easily tonight.

JJ's pal from seminary, Val, was ordained this week. I liked him immediately as he walked off the plane wearing a Packers shirt. He gave the sermon for JJ, and JJ will/did return the favor for him.

Gina rehearsed for her solo in the choir and performed admirably. With such a great back up band, how couldn't she?

We also held a white elephant xmas party (since Aunt Louise left up the tree it seemed the thing to do) Great gifts ! pencils ! wow! microwave egg cookers got Wendy all excited. Stuffed fish for the new fisher of men. (or whatever that saying is) Aussie gear... oy oy oy. a wig. Ichiro crap. Sam's Town candy and stuff. clocks that don't work. binoculars, in case you have a back row seat at Mass (and you know who you are) And a really cool PALOOZER SNOW GLOBE.

And now i see i can only add so many fotos per posting so let's finish up here and i'll add the rest from the party.

Vegas, Baby !!!!!!!!!!!

We are home from Vegas where we properly celebrated the ordination of cousin JJ. The 1st Mass, 1st Mass pizza, White Elephant Christmas in May, the 2nd Mass, 2nd Mass breakfast, Ordination dinner party, buffets, Fresh Harvest meals..... swimming pool activities, a couple cocktails, non-stop laser shows, a bit of gambling (Winners: Slots, of course, Aunt Louise, and Ljoiusee) and numerous eventful trips to the airport.


A reunion of the Schwall / Croghan families took place during the ordination festivities. What a fun time ! and a fun group. Folks from Canada, Australia, Washington, California, Florida, Michigan (the home base is Ypsi) New York, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada.

In Memory of ...

Verle, thanks for the breakfasts, the jokes, the insights, the sound of the trumpet in the Maui air, the puns, the "hi sweetie's".

The guy was funny, funny as a rubber crutch..

Training

Today was an indoor spin, doing some intervals, meaning sweat-city. Then later we swam 1800 yds. Mostly drills, which I'm gonna have to tell Coach Lesley to save for those that might actually benefit. Although it is nice to swim with fins. So much easier. I see why fish like it. Too bad it's not allowed in the races. oh well.

Tomorrow we get to go to the M's game. Thankfully it is an afternoon game so we won't freeze as badly as if it were a night game.

that's it.

Hall of Famer !

Jeez, the "hanging out with the superstars" scene is just non-stop for us. We are too cool.

Last night we had dinner with our buddies from California (really from here) , Traci, Denise and Annalise (the drummer extraordinaire) Anyway, on Saturday night Denise was inducted into the Washington State Soccer Hall of Fame. For lifetime achievements. I thought those awards went to old people but... you know, she did out-head Michelle Akers. I think that's soccer trash talk meaning Akers just has a lot of big hair and Denise has brains. Denise was the captain of the 1st USA women's World Cup team. Before Mia and the gang. The team that went to Italy for games but no one ever heard anything about it because, well, because it's soccer. And it happened before the internet was invented (by Al Gore).

The other photo is A.B.B. and me, swapping iPod earbuds. Yes, my 14 yr. old Godchild is now taller than me. Who cares? she's nice enough to not care (or say anything) that I don't know Coldplay from Black Eyed Peas, or hip hop from rap.

I won't bore you with details of the bike ride on Saturday, as most of you got it in an email. But yesterday I ran 4 miles and today 3. WOW ! back to back days of running !!

Congratulations, Denise Bender !

G L O R I A !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's MS. Steinem, to you. We had "dinner & a conversation" with Gloria Steinem last night. She was appearing at Central Washington Univ., and as a fund raiser for one of the departments, she mingled and then sat down to dinner with 30 of us, before the speech. She is 72, and smart and funny and nice and caring, and gives even the lone blowhard a tactful answer. She zinged him a bit later. :)

Unlike our crashing of the Al Franken party, we actually paid for this gig. I imagine Gina will be getting even more solicitations from her alma mater. If so it will be worth it. Gina said the evening was one of the highlights of her life.

In fact, let's hear from our guest Blogger Gina now:

Gloria talked about a lot of stuff. One item was the fact that the term feminism is sometimes used as a derogatory term. She said the definition of feminism is the pursuit of equality. Therefore if you deny feminism then in effect you are ok with inequality.

Thank you, Gina. Well said. And so succinct.

I'm sorry I forgot to ask Gloria what's the furthest she's ridden a bike. There was much discussion of her famous line "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle". Yes, I did have the T-shirt in college. Gloria did fess up at dinner that actually she heard that line from some Australian woman. Then later a 20-something year-old woman got up and said her mother told her that a fish might Want a bicycle, but the fish certainly did not Need a bicycle. That got a good laugh from the crowd.

Jeez, then some gal got up to ask "what is NOW?". That got a groan from the crowd. I felt I should speak to the admissions director about who's getting into Central these days. We did meet the Vice Prez. of the college. The prez had a board mtg, as this gig had been re-scheduled from the previous week. (Gloria had back spasms) Of course, we dropped the tidbit of dad being a college president.


And we rode 30 miles today.
And we'll ride 30 more tomorrow.

Bike Butt

We have a new all time high, for mileage on the bike.... 50. Actually, we rode our age, 51. Sunday we tooled around the city for 20 then rode the trail over to Redmond. And just for fun jogged for 20 minutes. For a while on the trail we were behind a couple, who were doing a nice easy 16 mph. But Gina wanted a bit more, so took the lead. I waited a while, biding my time. Then I passed the 2 and took the lead. And immediately saw the error of my ways. Too much work to be the leader. Now 16mph wasn't so easy. I guess that old drafting theory is true. But we maintained and the others dropped off after a while.

The biggest obstacle on the trail is the little guys who kind of zig zag along. And you can't really expect a 6 yr. old to understand "On your right".

Didn't have our camera or we could have taken photos of Val, who was at the velodrome in Redmond learning how to ride the track cycles. Looked cool. I wouldn't do it, of course, but looked cool.

Those 51 miles took just under 4 hours. ugggh. We had parked our car in Redmond the day before so we put the bikes on the rack and headed home. Realizing that we had put all water bottles in the trunk. Unaccessable after the rack is on. Talk about a dehydrated drive home.

Today was more swimming. I'm just waiting to see if the old sudafed will work today or not. We'll know when the breding tru da node stops.