Midwest Balloon Fest 8-11-12

Team Rodgers has a pretty exciting weekend.
On Saturday we packed up all our agility stuff and took it to Uncle Matt's house to practice.  He's got a bigger backyard than we do, and we wanted to practice some of the new commands we've been learning.  Well it ended up being a bit warmer that we anticipated, and Oliver was having none of it.
That night we went to the Midwest Balloon Fest out at the Great Mall of the Great Plains.

It was definitely something to see..if you didn't make it out this year, I suggest you go next year for sure.

I love hot air balloons.  I've always wanted to go up in one.  Hint hint husband. 

There were about a trillion people there, which surprised me, since I've never even heard of this thing before. 

They had tethered balloon rides for $5, and it seemed like everyone was in line for it.  It was sort of lame, they only went up about 15 feet or so. 

The festival took up one whole side of the mall.  They had military stuff, a rock wall, and helicopter rides.

As the sun began to set, they started filling up the shapes balloons.  

It's Nemo!

Actually this balloon's name is Wally..and most of our photos have him in them.

This dragon was huge compared to the other balloons. 

We got the watch them inflate this balloon.  You'd be surprised how quickly they fill them. 

Fire!!

They filled the Farmers balloon so quickly it was swaying a little before they got it under control, it kept bumping Wally. 

Jon and Wally.

Thumbs up for fire!

Once they got them all filled they started some music and the MC talked a little about the balloon pilots.  He told them all when and what type of burn they would be doing.  The audience got to participate in the count downs to the all burns or twinkle burns.  

That is some big fire. 

It's a all burn!

It was really neat as it got darker, you could see the entire balloon glow.

We watched them deflate Wally.  He was one of the bigger balloons, so it took some time.  It take a whole team of volunteers to get him folded up and put away. 

Me, Jon, and Wally.  Pretend the photo isn't grainy.  It was taken with the front camera on my phone..cut it some slack. 

We had a good time.  It's definitely worth a trip if you've never been.  

Everyone was so exhausted from our big day Saturday, we all slept until almost noon on Sunday.  It was wonderful!

Jessica

Lego Birthday Card

So, I'm back on the card wagon.

I had a request to make a birthday card for a little guy who is having a Lego birthday.

So, I made a Lego card.  It was going to be easy when I started..turned out to be a mathematical nightmare. I guess we all need a little fraction to decimal practice every now and then. 

I used my Cricut to cut out the letters for his name, and a teeny tiny stamp for the Happy Birthday.

 I also used the Cricut for the 9..he's going to be nine. Cool right?

I hope he likes it..he's 9, I'm sure he will :-)

Team Rodgers is gearing up for a little excitement this weekend, we're planning to go to the Midwest Balloon Fest..weather permitting.  

So look for hopefully some nice pictures of it.

Jessica

Springfield NADAC Agility Trial 7-22-12

Day 2 of the Trial.

We all slept much better than we did Friday night.  2 crates is better than 1 crate. 

We can get right to the footage!

We started the day off with Tunnelers.  I figured it was good, so he wasn't tired...turns out..it was good! We managed to get the Q!  I never think it happen for him!

We just need 1 more Q in Tunnelers to get our Novice title. 

Apparently I almost stepped on him..but if you watch..when he comes out of the orange tunnel, I was there at the same time..my running foot just startled him.  But he kept on going!  Going for the WIN!

I was ready for another shot at Regulars...too bad.  You can see our home base was right by the start line.  Oliver was focusing on his Dad from the get go. I thought we were OK, since he had a pretty good start..but as we came back around to take the weave poles, he stops to look for Jon. We had a series of unfortunate events at the end of the course..when he took the purple tunnel, he was suppose to take the dog walk.  I brought him back around to try again..well we decided to tunnel a second time.  Fine. So my plan was to just finish with the last hoop..Well Oliver had other plans.  He went half way up the dog walk, backwards.  The judge laughed.  Wonderful.  

I was excited to try Weavers again..since last time he ran off like a retard.  We had a pretty good run.  He had a little pause in the middle, I think someone barked or something.  We had a bit of trouble heading into the 3rd set of poles...it was my fault.  I was over too far..we're really lucky I didn't take the poles out myself.    We would have had the Q if it wasn't for the pause, and the wrong placement on my part.  I'm mostly just glad he's weaving in competition.  

Jumpers was the last event of the trial.  We had a great run.  It felt good.  The only hiccup was coming out the the tunnel into the serpentine pattern.  I was a little close to the jump and he paused just a bit.  Turns out, just a bit was the final nail in the coffin.  We were 0.06 over time!  I couldn't believe it.  I'm a little disappointed.  But we're still really new at this, and honestly we did pretty good considering where we are so far. 

Now for the break down. 

Novice Regular #1--NQ, 3rd place (yellow ribbon)

Novice Jumpers #1--NQ, 3rd place (yellow ribbon)

Novice Tunnelers #1--Q! (purple ribbon), 2nd place (red ribbon)

Novice Touch N Go--NQ, 3rd place (yellow ribbon)

Novice Tunnelers #2--Q!!, 3rd place (yellow ribbon)

Novice Regular #2--NQ, 3rd place (yellow ribbon)

Novice Weavers--NQ, 3rd place (yellow ribbon)

Novice Jumpers #2--NQ, 1st place (blue ribbon)

All in all it wasn't too bad.  We got 1 Q each day, and I'm happy with that.  We're on the lookout for more trials to attend.  We're for sure going to the U2 Kan Du trial in November.  We've got a lot of work to do before then.  

Bring it on!

Oliver is really lucky to have such a great Agility Dad!  We wouldn't have made it through the weekend without Jon..he's the best Agility Dad!

Jessica

Springfield NADAC Agility Trial 7-21-12

What a trip! This was our first whole weekend trip, and the most events we've entered at a time. We drove to Springfield Missouri on Friday afternoon. It's about a 3 hour drive. We stayed in a hotel, another first!

Oliver and Cora love hotels!

Cora REALLY loves hotels.

Oh, what's this? Let me tell you...THIS is the 70 dollar crate we had to buy Saturday afternoon because Cora is a turd. We only brought one crate for them to share at night. Friday night, about 1:30AM Coraline had a freaking meltdown. We think Oliver rolled on her and she flipped her freaking biscuit...snarling, snapping and the whole 9 yards. So Oliver had to sleep in the bed.  Which he's never done one night in his life.  I think he was happy, being in the bed is sort of a treat for him...but he was restless..moving around and keeping both of us up.

So nobody slept well Friday night. We didn't want to risk a repeat performance from our favorite tiny tot...so a second crate it is!

Team Rodgers home base for the weekend. The sheets are to help cut down on the barking. We were in the walkway..so I think it helped. We eventually had to put another sheet on the backside by the window..Cora couldn't stand the other dogs having fun.

Our first ribbon of the trial. Our first Regulars run..not too shabby for a first attempt!

On to the footage!!


 First time running regulars. Not too shabby. Regulars includes all of the possible obstacles.  I was most worried about the weaves, but we got them with only a tad of a problem. But instead NQ because we made a mistake, he took a hoop backwards because he passed it the first time. It would have been great except for that, we were way under time!


The still of this video is Jon's favorite..it's a pretty funny pose I suppose.  Our jumpers run was ok, we got off when I was too close to that 2nd jump out of the tunnel, and we had a few other problems as well.  He passed that jump in the back of the course, and spaced out and just stared at me...so needless to say, we were over time..



This Tunnelers run was wonderful!  If you remember our last 2 attempts, Oliver isn't in any sort of hurry.  Well when it's all tunnels, that's the name of the game, speed and control.  This was a TOUGH course, and I just wanted to get through it.  Well we flowed through this bad boy like pros!  We got our first Tunnelers Q, which was a huge surprise!  I was so happy!

If you notice, my hair is down in a pony tail instead of a bun...it's because I lost my hair tie on the course for Jumpers I think...agility is hard.

Touch N Go...this was a series of disasters.  I had high hopes because we had done so well last time we entered this.  (only 1.71 seconds over course time)  This was the meanest course I've seen yet.  We were going good in the beginning, I was able to call him off going up that A-frame when he wasn't supposed to.  After the pink tunnel, we were supposed to take the hoop at the end, which he did..but then we were supposed to turn completely around and go up the dog walk...which he did not.  He though we were done..you can see him looking at me...like, where's my treat mom?  When I finally get him turned around that little turn takes the tunnel again by mistake.  We finish with the dog walk and last hoop, but we had the mistake fault, as well as time faults because he thought we were done when we weren't. 

So that was Saturday.  I'll put Sunday's events in another post.  And look for the ribbon break down there as well. 

Back to work today, man I'm exhausted.  But we had a great time. 

Jessica

Baby Julia Card

So, a friend of mine had a very pretty baby girl 2 weeks ago.  The gender was a surprise and they kept their name ideas under wraps as well...making card production difficult. 

It was worth it in the end.

I love baby cards..and it's been a while since I've done a baby girl card.  It means I can use ribbon, and shiny things! 

Her name is Julia, which is adorable.  I tried to make the card match the pictures I've seen of her nursery.  

 I love owls, and this one from one of my Cricut cartridges was perfect!

 I left the inside blank, you know, for my nice message.

I've got a few other things I'm working on..so stay tuned. 

Team Rodgers is gearing up for the Agility event of the summer..well not really, it's just the longest trial we've been to, and we're entering more events than we ever have.  We're hoping Oliver will weave himself to victory, bringing much honor to his family...the footage shall be interesting anyway.

Jessica

NADAC Agility Trial 6-29-12

Agility Trial Today!!

Since I have to work this weekend, we were only able to go Friday night...but we'll take it where we can get it. 

New facility this time, indoors! 

Home base for the evening.

There were quite a few people.  We ended up by the exit door, Cora was most upset with the high traffic area.  We're going to pick a better spot next time. 

These trials always move so smoothly..

On to the footage!

Novice Hoopers.  Our first time in this event. It's all hoops...no jumps, no tunnels, just hoops. He was a little slow, but we pulled through and got the Q!  Standard Course Time(SCT) was 33.60 and Oliver's time was 32.93.  We made it by the skin of our teeth!  We also took 2nd place. 

Novice Touch N Go.  First time here too.  The main focus in this event is the contact obstacles, the A-frame and the Dog Walk.  I figured the hardest part would be #13, which is to take the A-frame and not the tunnel after coming out of a different tunnel.  I was wrong.  We had trouble choose the tunnel right in the beginning. We also passed the Dog Walk and had to come back.  The rest of the run was great, a smidge slow...SCT was 59.45 and Oliver's time was 61.16!  That's 1.71 seconds OVER time!  So NQ here..first place, and a clean run, and I'll take that any day. 

Novice Weavers.  A first time event, and a first time disaster.  It went WAY south here folks.  You can see he's not focused when we get to the line.  He had a great start and NAILED the first set of weaves.  We came out of tunnel #5 and he lost his marbles.  He ran off, back to the start, through the first tunnel to get to something he smelled on the ground.  Eliminated.  We can't win them all..we need more practice for sure.

It wasn't a total bust of a day for sure!  One of our good friends and agility mates got a new title today.  They had their 3rd Qualifying Novice Hoopers run today, so Dixie the 3 legged dog earned her Novice Hoopers Title.  Way to go Dixie and Tim! 

He says "I tried hard Mama!"

Here's the breakdown. 

Novice Hoopers--Q (purple ribbon), 2nd place (red ribbon)

Novice Touch N Go--NQ, 1st place (blue ribbon)

Novice Weavers--Eliminated (boo!)

We had a great day.  It was great practice for the next trial.  We head to Springfield for the entire weekend in mid-July.  I'm super stoked.  I was nervous about the events we did today, but he handled them well, so I've got high hopes for Springfield.  

I have to work (lame) but everyone else have a good weekend. 

Jessica

Oliver Turns 2!

Yesterday was Oliver's 2nd birthday.
We had a bath at Brookside Barkey, and they both got some pretty great treats!
We're up for agility practice tonight, to round out our weekend.

He's been such a good boy this year.  He's put up with a lot.  Coraline is enough to break anybody down.  

This next year is going to be his best yet, he is an agility star after all. 

Jessica