Best of luck to her.

Keep us posted!

Gramps, how exciting!  Let us know how she does.  The excitement when Laura was in the competition kept me awake at night for months. Fortunately, I had MANY close friends and a very close sister and her husband who just went nuts with me!  Every Thursday we started getting so nervous and excited knowing the weekend was coming. We just wanted her to do her best each show and shine like the star we think she is.  It was excruciatingly joyful!  What an oxymoron of words, but that describes it! I prayed, I talked a lot with people equally invested in Laura, and together we absolutely had the time of our lives! I can't imagine experiencing anything more intensely and agonizingly joyful over an extended period of time than that time was. Even if she had not won the competition I think we would have felt the exact same way through the process and just loved her to death for daring to go after her dreams in such an odds-defying way! And when she won????  Who could sleep?  Who could stop laughing?  Who could describe how ecstatic we all were who love her?  It was a magnificently fun journey. And we, like half of Minnesota, never noticed winter for the first time in our lives!

My daughter came in second. She says that she had a good clean ride and a better horse and rider won. She says, "It was a thrill to be there and a thrill to come in second. I have no regrets or saddness."

It has been a busy week for her. Just before the Championship meet she and her husband took their daughter to her first year of college at TrintyCollege in Texas and also helped their son get settled in his first apartment, this time as he started his second year at Georgia Tech. As she writes, "I didn't have much time to worry as the meet approached and now I find myself more concerned with living in an empty nest than not winning."

Thanks to everyone's good wishes in both public and private posts and for being tolerant of my bending the rules to make a personal post. I was led to do so as I was mindful of Laura's mother's reports of her reactions to Laura's competition. As her post on this topic shows, she understood my feelings and I certainly understand hers.

It is so great when one's children and grandchildren show their ability to do good things and do them essentially on their own with their own hard work and ability.

Stan/gramps


-- Edited by gramps3 at 16:38, 2007-08-26