My brother in law Jeff invited Jay to be his partner in his golf club's annual raucous tournament known as the Stampede.  From what I can tell, it's several days of golfing, drinking,eating and dancing. 

It's always fun to hang out with Jeff and Margy and this is the first time Jay and I have ever done it without all the kids.  Even Margy's youngest is away on a trip with friends.  The famous Cary and Logan are here but since they're pretty much grown up, they stay out of our way and we stay out of theirs.  I've talked to all my kids almost every day that I've been here.  Everyone is having a fun summer, leading up to the wedding of Bill and Jen, making it 9 for 9 of my parents kids (we never thought we'd reach 100%) married.

Having little kids is a blast.  Having grown up kids is even more fun.

Getting away from them all for a little while is even better and getting back together with them is the most fun of all.

For now, we're golfing.

That's right; I golfed for only the second time in 37 years.  The last time I held a club, I had to ask Josie to play in for me, my arms were too sore after seven holes.  She did and was quite good.

Yesterday, I didn't have that option but I didn't need it because of the unique scoring rules of the Ladies Day of the Stampede.

Who are we kidding here?  We gals don't give a rat's ass about golf.

Those of us who are good at it play all the time, yada yada but the Stampede is just trying to get the wives of the members and guests to get involved and have some fun and maybe develop a little understanding of why their husbands like to spend so much time on the course.

(I've never minded.  I'm not the sort of wife who whines that her hubby doesn't spend enough time at home; I'm the sort who whines that he's in the way and if he's not cooking me dinner, what the heck is he doing here, anyway?  Go play golf! Go to a game!  Go ice fishing!  Get the heck out of my way!  Wait.  What's for dinner?)

Turns out I'm great at golf.


HAHAHAHAHAAAAAA.

Yeah, if I can play barefoot, only count my tee shots and my putts, can ignore lost balls, missed swings and can drop my ball anywhere on the green I feel like, then I'm ready for the tour.

Like all my siblings, I took golf lessons at our club growing up, so I know the rules and I have a fairly decent swing.  If I relax and don't try to kill the ball, I can actually connect with it occasionally.  I do keep my head down.

I hit several very nice tee shots and managed to hit the fairway three out of sixteen tries.  (Margy and I had no partners so we hit two tee shots a piece)..  Mine usually pulled waaay right, which is either a hook or a slice but I can't remember which and really couldn't care less.  After that, I have no idea what I'm doing so Margy just told me which club to use and I did what she told me.  Sometimes it worked and most often I blasted the ball over the green.

Even when I knew how fast the greens were I was incapable of not smacking the ball so hard that it rifled from the fringe on one side of the green to the other several times before I could finally sink it.  And here, I thought I'd lost all my upper body strength!

Margy's short game is a million times better than mine.  She never did have any strength in those skinny little arms.

Long before we hit the course, we had gotten together with a handful of ladies whose hubbies were playing in the stamped to play some silly games and pretend to gamble a little bit.  It was really fun.  Margy knew a few of the gals but not very many.  Margy golfs, but she and her friends frequent the public courses so a lot of the ladies were new to her, too.  They were all very fun to hang out with.

After our round (the scoring was so strange that our final score for nine holes was 14.  We finished in the middle of the pack.)  We met the guys for brunch in the club house.  We stuffed ourselves, wished them luck in the afternoon and headed to Golden, where we took a long hot walk up the creek  from which Coors beer is made.  After that, we wandered down the main street of Golden and found a clothing shop we really liked.  We are planning to return today, because we'd like to try some things on and we were way too sweaty for that yesterday.

For dinner last night, there was a big party at the club.  They've recently built a new club house and it is spectacular.  I mean that in the literal sense; the course is in the foothills of the Rockies and the new club house takes full advantage of the views.  We ate dinner with a dozen good friends on a large stone deck with a 180 degree view of the lights of Denver and the Rocky Mountains.  It was seriously beautiful.

The food was good, the company was fun, the wine was delicious and we danced.

We're having a lot of fun, we've met some really cool people and eaten a lot of great food.

So far, this is shaping up to be one of the funnest summer's since....

last summer!