Photoessay #981 - 10 years at Parent Group

Last night, my fellow reps put on a small celebration recognizing my 10 years at Parent Group. I knew about it sort of, Curtis asked me what type of cake I liked; I knew he had sent out an email. I was scheduled to give 'my story' that night. Being comprehensive, Curtis also sent a note to previous members inviting them to come. And some did!

We had 58 people there, excellent! We don't want to fall into the trap of measuring the success of the Seattle Chapter by attendance alone, though our attendance is generally much higher than the others. However I did hear that the Redmond Chapter had 26 last week. Our attendance has been slowly declining from a year ago, mainly because we have a lot of parents with adult children over 18 and, after awhile, they don't come any more. It's an open group with all welcome. So great to see some familiar faces that I hadn't seen for awhile.

All in all, the event was fine, what's important is not my 10 years, that's just an excuse for a party. We timed it so it didn't overwhelm the meeting, everything still ran on schedule. Great energy and fun. Plus Dennis came too and contributed.

Shot taken during break after my talk. Curtis had presented me some gifts; some flowers, some azure socks and everybody got a bracelet. The azure socks represent the gift that we always encourage parents to give for birthdays and xmas. Azure because, well, if you are reading this blog, you know.

At the bottom, is a somewhat doctored shot of the bracelets that Curtis gave out. WWSS which stands for 'What Would Sandy Say?' Too funny!

By the time I got to the cake, Theresa was just serving up the last slices, so great that it all got eaten! Plus notice the shot. We do have a lot of dads in the Seattle group, usually around 1/3 of the attenders are men. But, in this shot, all of the people in the background are men.