The importance of singing Barney songs with the Judges...

I'm just as guilty as the next guy, if not more. I'm so consumed with work and making money all of the time that, by my own admission, I miss a lot of things that are so much more important in the grand scheme of things. This weekend I tried to correct that.

While my wife and our youngest were at my in-laws for the weekend, my oldest daughter, Emily, and I spent a great weekend together. She only caught me working two or three times on Saturday, a day that was mostly made up of doing everything from watching Caillou to making nachos to eating freezies, or "fweezies" as the three-and-a-half year-old, absolute light of my life calls them!

Things got even better for Emily and I on Sunday. We had a little breakfast with more cartoons and then cleaned ourselves and the house (which always seems to look more like an Afghani war zone than a house when my wife is away) up and made the peaceful, picturesque trip to Clinton Downs! My announcing services were needed for a few weeks before, much to the delight of the Clinton faithful, The Velvet Fog returns from Pompano.

Anyway, in no time at all, Emily was stealing the show. She had the Dora The Explorer puzzle that we brought with us completed in ten minutes or so and while I told the Judges et al that we just picked it up in Shakespeare that morning, the truth is that we're both well familiar with the puzzle. Yesterday's piecing together was number 4,398. I love Dora.

Before much longer, princess and I were in what we both believed to be the privacy of the Announcer's Booth, belting out our favorite Barney song (and don't pretend you don't know it): "It's a wonderful world of shapes, it's a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Take a look around from the sky to the ground at the shapes that you can see!" We were having a great time! Then, almost in unison, she and I both cocked our heads sideways to see that the entire population of the Judges Stand were watching, listening and laughing. She quickly did that shy thing that kids do when they feel, well, shy I guess. I felt like McLovin. Em and I looked at one another again and giggled and before long, I think we were singing our song again. This time, we had a little help from our friends.

All in all, it was a great weekend and my trip to Clinton yesterday reminded me of why I got involved in this game in the first place: good people, our beloved horses and free food and beverages in the Judges Stand.

More than anything, what I took away from my weekend away from life's regular routines is this: if one is going to get caught doing something by the Judges, one is far better off to have it be singing Barney songs than anything else.



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