Saturday is still a blur - it was so busy in the non-horsey part of my life, I had to attend BreyerFest in small increments.
It was after 11:00 by the time Emily and the Pony Pals were able to get back on the road for Tennessee, so we missed Ian's soccer scrimmage. Since it was a very last minute decision to meet by the two coaches (24 hours' notice) and Curt knew that Emily would be leaving during the same window of time, he told us to not worry.
Then I had the conflict between Jayci's bridal shower in Las Vegas and Liz Cory's appearance on the BreyerFest Live Feed. I solved that this way:
I ran both at once while I waited for the bridal shower to begin. The start of the shower was delayed which allowed me to catch a little more of the Live Feed.
Liz's segment turned out to be very short, which also worked out well - I was able to multitask them both. However, since the Zoom shower attendees were chatting as we waited, I turned the volume off on the BreyerFest Live Stream and didn't hear anything that Liz said. (I'm still wondering why her segment was so short but I haven't talked to her since Friday to find out.)
The shower was really fun and was almost like two showers because Hawkeye Sarah made sure that the virtual attendees felt like they were a part of the shower, too.
When they were playing games that we could not participate in, she had virtual games for us.
And Jayci, her mom, and several other guests came over and chatted with us, too.
When the shower was over, I had a quick switch into the Breyer auction. Its start was delayed for almost 15 minutes. I heard later that someone in attendance had shouted, "No more online auctions!" and that the crowd had booed him or her. But finally it was underway.
There were two big ticket items:
The Rearing Lipizzaner Pegasus sold for $32,500 to an online bidder,
and the Alborozo was the top seller at $37,500, also to an online bidder.
At times the bidding was so fast that the posted bid (in green) could not keep up and there were concerns that the online bidders would not know where the bidding was. The auctioneer would pause at those times to let it catch up. We were told that the slowness was due to the internet connection out at the park.
Here are my notes along with a running total that I did for every three lots.
If I heard right and then did the math correctly (this teacher would be HIGHLY embarrassed if she did not, LOL) then the auction brought in $243,500 this year.
When the auction closed, Craig and I headed out to accomplish another BreyerFest tradition.
We've been going to dinner at Bob Evans during BreyerFest since 2019!
It's down home cooking and quiet - a good place to decompress and catch up on each other's days.
And that concludes my 2024 BreyerFest with the exception of one thing - Andrea Gurdon's 50th anniversary cake. Today I am going to head to church and then come home and bake that cake. I'll rest and recoup from a very busy week, have some cake, and do a little reading in a now quiet home.
It's been a week!
