The Pacers & Purdue

"You do know that a Pacer is a horse, right?" I've been known to say that to my sports lovin' kids. And they do, but I like to tease  remind them about the fact that Indiana's two biggest professional sports teams, the Pacers and the Colts, are named after horses.

The placement of the nails in the Colts' logo has driven me crazy for years! But at least their logo reflects the horses they are named after.

The Pacers' logo does not. Not a horse in sight. But that doesn't bother Pacers fans.

Especially when they've made it to the NBA Finals playoffs.

Pony Pal Mila loves to face paint, and she has been offering to paint her family whenever Indiana and Oklahoma are playing a game in the finals. So far the Pacers lead the series, and if Mila paints my face for the next game, I am going to ask her to add something horsey, just because!

Purdue University, however, has no problems when it comes to horses - it has a team of them. A team that just won the Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association National Championship!  Read about the team itself here. 

The team's barn is located close to Rick and Leslie's farm in Brookston at Camp Tecumseh, a YMCA camp that draws kids from around the world every summer for a variety of camps and trainings. Pony Pals and Cowpokes Ian, Mila, Lukie, Julie, Kate, and Susie go to camp there every summer (and will be attending in just a few weeks. Can't wait to see them all!)

I used to take my students there for a program that Camp Tecumseh offers about early Indiana life. This blog post from 2016 has pictures of the horsey sides of Camp T and a look inside the barn that Purdue now uses for its equestrian team.

(And in a fun trivia bit, in the early days of Purdue's Equestrian Team, Tim was their faculty advisor at Purdue.)

I have to scoot as I have an early appointment today. There may or may not be a second post of the day. Stay 'tooned!

Counting the Kicks with the Colts

Sarah has been with us since Saturday, here on a work trip but staying with us instead of a motel to get some family time in.

Today she heads down to Indianapolis to the Indianapolis Colts practice facility where, sponsored by  Colts Wide Receiver Ryan Kelly, his wife Emma, and the Colts team itself, her organization, Healthy Birth Day, is holding an event for underserved pregnant mothers. 

Count the Kicks is part of Healthy Birth Day's stillbirth prevention program, and because Ryan and Emma's first daughter was stillborn, they are interested in educating other families about how counting a baby's kicks during the third trimester can help indicate possible problems with the pregnancy.

Sarah is passionate about maternal health care. Just this past September, President Biden signed a bill giving states more flexibility to use federal funding grants to help prevent stillbirth. Sarah worked on getting that bill passed.

She was working on the Colts' event while she was here and some of that included checking out billboards she'd contracted to advertise the event.

So, Sunday afternoon Lisa, Curt, and Vanessa drove her around town to help her find the three she'd had put up in the Lafayette area. 

Craig and I stayed home with Ian, Mila, and Lukie, playing Rudolph Bingo, watching Home Alone together, and grilling out burgers and hotdogs for a family dinner.

Sarah was only here for a short time, but Tammo absolutely fell in love with her.

He followed her like he was glued to her side, and even slept in her room with her, ignoring our calls to join us when we went to bed!

She left early this morning to head down to the Colts facility where she has several meetings and set-up to supervise before the event at 6:00 this evening. 

They had planned for 200 women to come, but far more than that signed up, so there is a bit of a scramble - making sure they have enough food for the dinner, swag bags for each expectant mom, and more. 

I can't wait to hear how it goes, but she has people to drive to the airport tonight and will just stay in a hotel there and drive home tomorrow morning. 

Best of luck today, Sarah!

Colts Fan??

Indianapolis is an hour south of where I live and the home of the NFL team, the Indianapolis Colts. That means that any time I wear this...

... I hear something along the lines of, "Oooo! You're a Colts fan!"

Not really. I am not much of a football fan. If I had to choose a team to follow it would be the Colts and the Denver Broncos because they have horsey symbols, but I don't follow either team.

The Indianapolis Colt's icon.

The Denver Broncos's icon. (Love the orange - my favorite color!)

So, I usually smile and then say something like, "No, it's just a horseshoe. I love horses"  And the person moves on because, after all, what do you say when you were hoping to talk football, right?

How ironic that horses can be a conversation stopper to Colts fans!