Super Bowl, a Birthday and Disney!

As I type this I am sitting in the Orlando airport with Sarah waiting to board our flight home from a fantastic five days at the Disney Field Hockey Showcase. Sarah played on IFHCK's U16 Pegasus Elite team, and they had such a great showing. They won their first five games and tied their last one in pool play to advance to the medal round today. They lost against two tough Pennsylvania teams and ended up with a fourth place medal. We are sunburned (after four rainy days the sun came out today!), completely exhausted and dreading school and work tomorrow,  but as I told Sarah, "you play, you pay!" Totally worth it. Highlights were...

Meeting in front of the globe each morning

All the field hockey shopping - we passed on the giant stick

Defending corner shots

Watching the giant big screen between games (all kinds of sports featured!)

The sun finally appeared!

Watching my #99

Tired but happy!

Lots of mother/daughter time

Listening to Coach Yassar give really long, motivating speeches

Medal winners!  Way to go IFHCK!

The weekend before we left for Florida was Super Bowl weekend, and we had a busy weekend of field hockey practices, John's basketball banquet (pictures coming soon!) and of course watching the Seahawks crush the Broncos in the 48th Super Bowl.  We watched the first half up at the club before heading home to watch the end.

The next day was Lawrence's 48th birthday (so THAT'S why his hair is turning so grey!), and the kids were off school for yet another snow day.  Andrew Weis and Lawrence share the same birthday, so we decided to all celebrate together that night with a big dinner at Pat's Steakhouse.  Lawrence and Andrew say that one day we're going to celebrate their birthdays at the Super Bowl (it's always around their birthdays) but until we can all afford that, we'll have to be happy with a fun night out.  Great food with great friends was a perfect way to celebrate!

I can't get over how busy February has become...we leave town on Thursday for a long ski weekend at Copper Mountain.  The next couple of days will be spent getting organized and trying to fit in some school and work before we leave.  Can't complain - too blessed to be stressed!

January Reads

The cold weather has been the perfect excuse to curl up with a good read, and I've logged some serious hours on the Kindle this month. My first read was our January book club selection, The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan.

This was a good book...I wouldn't say great, but good. It was very long (around 600 pages), and it spans around 50 years in early 20th century China, telling the story of an American madam of a courtesan house and her relationship with her half Chinese daughter. Everyone at our book club meeting agreed that it had some good parts and kept you engaged, but that they probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Right after that I jumped into our February selection, Me Before You by Jojo Moyers. This only took me four or five days to finish because I couldn't put it down. I loved the characters, the story and the writing, and I can't wait to discuss it at our February meeting.

Now I'm skimming through Hands Free Mama. This is a short, easy read about living a less distracted life and being more present and intentional with those you love. Nothing revolutionary,  but a good gut check and shot in the arm.

John and I still read every night before bed, and we've been rereading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. He is way past these, but we still laugh out loud every time we read them.

We are traveling quite a bit this month so I need to download some new titles. Can't wait to get engrossed in a new plot!

Winter Weekend

I will never be warm again.  At least it has felt that way for the last few weeks.  We are on round 3 of the "Polar Vortex", and all I want to do is curl up with my heating pad until spring!  Lawrence spent the weekend in Vail with Mike, and they had a ball skiing.  I think it was actually warmer there than here.

While he was gone, the kids and I woke up on Saturday to a snowy morning, which meant cancelled ball games and field hockey practices.

That's okay though...we watched movies, napped, watched lots of Big Bang Theory episodes and were just all around lazy. The kids did get a little bit of sledding in, so all in all it was a good weekend.  

But I'm definitely ready to say adios to the Polar Vortex!  

Fun in Cincinnati

Lawrence and I had a great 24 hour getaway in Cincinnati this past weekend. My mom and dad stayed with the kids, and Lawrence and I headed north late Saturday morning with no real plan in mind. We had a reservation to stay at the 21c Hotel (thanks to our friend, Brad Wilcox), and we planned to go to the Pottery Barn outlet and IKEA, but other than that our plans were wide open.

First stop was the PB Outlet to hopefully score a leather recliner.

No recliner to be found (at least not the one we wanted), but we enjoyed wandering around the outlet and a few other stores before heading to 21c.  The hotel was very similar to the one in Louisville...lots of modern art with a very hip and funky feel.  Our room even had one of the signature penguins you see at the one in Louisville (it sort of freaked me out when I woke up in the middle of the night and saw its shadow).

On the way up to Cincy, Lawrence remarked that he should have checked to see if any good shows were showing while we were there.  He had been wanting to see the Book of Mormon, and we couldn't believe when we spotted a billboard that advertised it was actually showing there right now (it comes to Louisville this summer).  Then, when we pulled up in front of the hotel we saw that the theatre was directly across the street.  

Even though the show was sold out he decided to walk across the street to the box office to see if any tickets were available.  He came back with two box seats with "limited viewing" for a few scenes of the show (I barely noticed!).  This was such a fun, unexpected part of our trip. When I told John we sat in a box at the theatre, he asked, "Like where President Lincoln was shot?"  That made me laugh.  No drama at our show, just laughs.

Directly across from our hotel room was the spa, so on Sunday morning we had an 80 minute couples  massage - heaven!  

Our last stop before heading home was the IKEA store. 

We had never been and wanted to see this super structure of home goods and furnishings.  WOW.  At first I couldn't get over the size and selection of everything they carried...then about 15 minutes in I was experiencing sensory overload...too many choices, too many people, too MUCH!  We finally reached an exit, and Lawrence said, "We left our massages at IKEA!"  Oh well, now we can say we've been.

What a fun 24 hours we had...we weren't gone long but it felt like we did a lot - a perfect mini-vacation in the middle of these cold, grey winter days!

Birchbox

My sister gave me the greatest gift for Christmas this year...a subscription to Birchbox, which is a monthly delivery of cosmetic, lifestyle and fitness samples. I've seen it online for years but never splurged on it myself. I love make up and fragrance so this is the perfect gift for me. I went online to customize my interests and this tells Birchbox what type of samples I'm most likely to try and buy full size versions of. My January box arrived this week and I felt like a little kid because I was so excited to open my box and see all my miniature samples. They hit the nail on the head and sent me all things I can't wait to try: dry shampoo, yummy smelling body butter, lip and cheek stain and an Under Armour headband. Can't wait to see what comes next month!

One Little Word Revisited

The other night when I gave everyone in the family their One Little Word swag, Lawrence said to me, "Great minds think alike." I didn't understand what he meant at the time, but unbeknownst to me he had ordered T-shirts from Cafe Press with our OLWs on them (he had done this before he knew I had ordered our bracelets and keychains). Of course I loved this! Anything to keep us pointing toward our goals!

Brad Paisley Concert

On Saturday we headed downtown to the Yum! Center for a fun night of country music.  Despite how many times he's come through our area, we had never seen Brad Paisley in concert, so we made sure to get tickets this time around.  All the Youngs are big fans, and we had a great time with the kids, Mary Taylor, Sydney, Tanner and Lori.  

First we had dinner at Bearno's (thanks, MT, for snagging us tables!).  Such good pizza, and I hadn't been there in almost 20 years (fun fact, this is where Lawrence and I met for the first time, when it was Anthony's by the Bridge).  

Cousins!

The two opening acts were great...Danielle Bradbury (season 4 winner of The Voice), and Chris Young (I didn't realize how many of his songs I knew).  Brad himself was fantastic, and we all knew every single song.  John got his first taste of a country concert, with this cowboy seated in front of us.  This guy danced the entire show, and he had John put his hat on for a quick pic at the end of the night.  The funny part is that the guy was actually a really good dancer!

There's one in every crowd

Tanner had surprised his mom with this "date", and she had a ball.

Thanks Brad, for a super fun night!

My favorite concert date