The Triple Crown

When I was a little girl, I was in love with horses.  I would read this fictional book series called "Thoroughbred" and the books were all about raising, training and racing Thoroughbred horses.  I was in third grade, maybe fourth grade when I started reading the series and I couldn't put the books down.  Thank goodness the author kept writing more!

Now that I'm older, I look forward to watching the horse races every year.  More specifically, I love to watch the Triple Crown races.  This year, California Chrome became my favorite to win, right along with a lot of other viewers.  When Chrome won the Preakness, I was convinced that this beautiful Thoroughbred was going to take it all.  The last horse to have won the Triple Crown was Affirmed in 1978.

Unfortunately, Chrome fell short.  I was devastated, but I quickly moved onto the next thing on my to do list.  But California Chrome's owner obviously took it harder.  When he should've taken the high road and kept comments to himself, Steve Coburn started to speak his mind saying that the same horses should only be allowed to race in the Triple Crown races.  Coburn said that training for and racing the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes is such wear and tear on the horses that it is unfair to them to put in a freshly trained, hardly worked horse into one of the races.

I see where Coburn is coming from, it does make sense.  But the whole beauty of the Triple Crown and winning the Triple Crown is overcoming all of the challenges the races bring.  Winning the Crown is prestigious because the horses that have won are fit enough to run faster than those horses that haven't raced in one or two legs of the Crown.

Coburn has a right to speak his mind, but I think he could have handled his loss with better sportsmanship than he did.  The winner of the Belmont Stakes, Tonalist, had a fantastic race and it's a shame that this scandal has overtook the Tonalist's spotlight.

I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason.  Maybe you'll have the right horse next year, Steve Coburn.

"Your Friends Are The Family That You Choose."

Don't get me wrong, I love my family and I would do absolutely anything for them.  I would not be the woman I am today without the unconditional love and support from my mom, dad, brother, sister and extended family.  I owe them everything in the world and more.

But, the title of this post could not be more true.  These three young women in the picture with me are my best friends of six years.  We've all gone our separate ways.  Carolyn lives in New York City working in the fashion industry, Sam went to school in Georgia and is looking to move to Southern California, and once Jenna gets married, she's moving to Texas.  But even though we are all miles apart, we're never that far away from each other.

This past weekend, we kicked off the first of many celebrations for Jenna's wedding to her high school sweetheart, Mason.  As we spent as much time as humanly possible together on Saturday, we realized how much the four of us mean to one another.  Our moms and our friend's moms kept coming up to us at the bridal shower saying how amazing it is to see the four of us together and smiling.  We literally could not stop smiling.  

It's The Little Things, like when your friends and family collide into one.

-xo

#YOMO

This picture was taken about 17 weeks ago and the 33 of us students barely knew one another.  This was my RPL 333 class.  More specifically, the class that plans and puts on the Gus Macker Basketball Festival.  The Mount Pleasant festival is the only one that is put on by college students in the country.  The 33 of us are all a part of Central Michigan University's Recreation, Parks and Leisure department and are either Event Management majors or minors.  Our majors and minors and the fact that we wanted to put on the best Macker Festival Mount Pleasant, our professors, and the Gus Macker staff has ever seen are basically the only things that we all had in common.

In 16 weeks, in one semester, we were able to raise over $10,000 that was donated back to CMU for the Dick Parfait Auditorium, plan and run the Mount Pleasant Gus Macker Festival.  From the moment we started set up on Thursday, May 1, the 33 strangers in class all of a sudden became a family.  And this Finch Fanatic Family is a group of humans I will cherish forever.

It's The Little Things, like when you form a bond with 32 other individuals in the matter of four days.  It's The Little Things, like when you finally realize that it's not what you know, it's who you know.  It's The Little Things, like when you know that you have 32 friends that will be your Finch Fanatic Family for life.

#YOMO ...You Only Macker Once

-xo