Wow, what a busy but great weekend. Last week did not go as I had expected, which isn't a bad thing just threw a wrench in my planning.

I went into work on Friday morning completely thinking that I would be done by work at 12:30 at the latest. Do you have any idea when I actually got off work?...

5:15!!!

I had a party starting at at 6:30 and I had finished decorating or anything else that was on my list. Thankfully Rob had cleaned up the yard enough that nobody was going to care and I had already cleaned the house so it was just the decorating that was stressing me out.

When the first people arrived I had pretty much finished what I could on the decorating and they helped me to start setting out the food.

A

Any way I'll get to the party in another post. Today is recap on the Tour DE Cookie race that was on Sunday and the Salon opening that I shot on Saturday afternoon.

I didn't know what to expect from the cookie race. This is only the third year that the promoters have put it on.

The object is to ride from cookie booth to cookie booth and then get to the  finish line.

Well, there were only 6 cookie booths and roughly 26 miles in the race. It was fun for me because I could drive from stop to stop ahead of the guys and take photos of them. This was very different from El Tour. The Tour is so huge that it shuts down roads and creates mayhem. This is a fun ride around town.

It starts and stops at the U of A and there are maybe 600 people riding.

The promoters don't use the chips to keep track of the riders so basically they are on their own. For the riders that completed the whole course, without cutting out parts of the course my guys are in the top 5.

We found out after the race that the course map given to each rider is basically a guideline and the safest route. What we didn't understand is that you could cut the course wherever you wanted as long as you hit every cookie booth and got marked off.

So instead of my guys getting in the top 5 they were in the top 15, still pretty awesome and we all had a lot of fun until we found out how lax the rules were. Now we are better prepared for next year. 

We have even talked about supporting a booth next year so that the riders we feel cheated the course will actually have to complete the whole thing because our booth will be in the area they skipped. Which is actually really close to our house anyway so we kill two birds with one big ol' stone. Riding the route with the guys was fun. Knowing what I know now I either needed someone else to drive so I could hang out the window or I need to have power windows so I can shoot from the drivers side out through the passenger.

With only me driving I missed the guys at the first booth and I missed them crossing the finish line. I had to deal with traffic and parking around the U of A. If the guys choose to do this next year we have already discussed having James' wife Lara at the start/finish line and I can get stuff in between. Sounds like a plan, huh?

Saturday Afternoon was spent with these lovely ladies at the official grand opening of Melissa's new salon, Beauty is.

I spent about four hours shooting everything I thought the girls would want to remember. I still have a little bit of editing to do but my wonderful children broke my track ball and now I can't right click and can barely scroll through a page. Once I can get this fixed I can get their photos done and on disc to give to Melissa.

So Rob just came home with a new trackball and it's completely different from our last so this is going to take some getting used to.

Any way now I can begin working on the photos.

*Carrie*