Sunday, August 19, 2012

Wonderful Weekend!

This weekend was Fred & Jana Bartlit's annual fundraiser for the Dumb Friends League which is held at their home at the Castle Pines Golf Course.  This year we had a housesitter that could watch our boys for the whole weekend, so we arranged to be there on Friday to attend the Friday night "pre-event" dinner at the Country Club. The entertainment for Saturday was going to be Willie Nelson.
On the way there, we stopped to visit the motorcycle and one more section has been completed:
This is on the top of the "trunk."  The eagle has his talons in a map of the United States
and his wings surrounding the United States in a protective mode.
We arrived at the golf course around 3:30 and the Bartlits put us up in one of Castle Pines Golf Course's cottages on the fairway. 

So we checked in and oohed and aahed over this room and then went over to the Country Club for dinner. Jana and Fred had brought in a guy from a bird rescue organization called HawkQuest.  He had 4 of his rescued birds along with their handlers. Two bald eagles, one golden eagle and one turkey vulture. He explained to our group a lot of facts about these birds that was absolutely FASCINATING. And we were invited to take pictures.



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Turkey vulture.  Ken explained that the reason the turkey vulture doesn't have any feathers on his head is because when he is eating a carcass he literally sticks his head into the body of whatever he is eating and the feathers would be hard to clean.
The golden eagle started to get stressed so they put the hood on him.  Ken told us that these hoods are
very expensive because each one has to be custom made for each bird.
And then Ken asked if anyone wanted to have their photo taken with one of the eagles and Marshall and I each did.  You saw his picture on yesterday's blog -- here's mine.  I actually cried looking directly into the face of a bald eagle. How majestic. How gorgeous.
Ken was asked if any of these birds showed affection.  He said for the most part, the bald eagles do not show affection, but the golden eagle can show a bit of affection.  He showed us what happened when he rubbed the tummy of the golden eagle. You can't really tell, but the eagle kind of nuzzled him.

So after this presentation, we had a great dinner and went back to our cottage.

Saturday was breakfast at the Country Club sitting on the 9th hole green (I think that's how it's referred to). We went to the Bartlits at 1:30 for a pool party/lunch. Then back to the cottage for a little rest and then back to the Bartlits for the fundraiser. Cocktail hour we browsed through the silent auctions and I bid on a few things.  Ended up winning one of my bids -- a basket filled with cat goodies.
Then we had an awesome dinner prepared by a chef from Buffalo Gap, Texas, who donated his time and all the food. It was delicious.
Then Fred got up and we thought he was going to introduce Willie Nelson but instead he told us that Willie was just taken to the hospital with breathing difficulties. Evidently he has emphysema and the altitude was too much for him.  We are still waiting to hear how he is doing.  However, I did get a picture of his bus, as well as some of the darling animals up for adoption at this fundraiser.
Willie's bus.

The good news, though, is that I think the fundraiser still raised a TON of money for animals. And more good news -- the crowd of close to probably 500 people who paid $500 a plate to see Willie Nelson, was unbelievably understanding and more concerned with the animals and with Willie's well-being than anything else. That was nice to see. Fred and Jana did an awesome job of organizing this event.
So this morning we had breakfast again at the Country Club and now we are back home with our boys.
This was one awesome weekend. It did wonders to get out of the house and do something so totally different. Cancer went to the background. Marshall had to temper everything he did with rest periods -- and he was inexplicably plagued with hot flashes all through Saturday evening -- but all in all, he did wonderfully well. He was exhausted but he had a good time.

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