Big Blue Father Daughter Date

On Tuesday night Sarah and Lawrence headed to Lexington for the UK versus Alabama game.  It was Senior Night, and they had fun saying goodbye to Kentucky boys Jon Hood and Jarrod Polson.  I asked Sarah if they took any pictures, and the answer was "no" (whose daughter is she?!), but no worries, because the next day they were on the sports page of the Lexington Herald Leader (our friend Jerry Psimer let us know).  I think it's funny they are the only ones not cheering in the picture,  even though they swear they cheered the whole game.  Sarah does love her Cats, and I bet she was loving her dad too for scoring those sweet seats.

Something New for John

This spring John has decided to try his hand at the game of lacrosse.  Despite its popularity and its rapid growth in our city, neither of our kids have ever shown much interest in it, but something sparked in John a few weeks ago and he has decided to give it a try.  He had his first games on Saturday (a three game play day at South Oldham High School), and he loved it.  He was all ready to play defense (apparently height plays a big factor in being a defender at his age), but toward the middle of the first game they asked him if he would take over the goal for a while.  I was surprised he agreed to this because he had already stated that there was no way he was going to play goalie, because he's heard they basically get the snot beat out of them the entire game, especially when you get to the high school level.  He ended up having a blast and making some great saves.  I don't think it's where he wants to stay, but he had fun trying it out. CAL's A team won 2 of the three games, and their B team only lost 6-5, so I think all in all it was a good first outing.  Now if only the weather would cooperate, we can get going with all these "spring" sports!

Copper Mountain

We returned on Monday from our "winter break" in Copper Mountain, Colorado.  The Donovan and Jessee families put together a trip back in the fall and asked us to come along, and of course we are always up for skiing!  Our kids all go to school together, so it was a good mix of teenagers, with John and Caroline being the youngest.  We were originally supposed to be off school on Monday for President's Day, but all the snow days made it a make up day, but the Young, Donovan and Jessee families were all absent - oops!  The make up work was worth the fun we had.

The weather in Copper was fantastic...it snowed every day we were there, but not so much that it made you want to go in for day.  The temps were in the thirties, which is perfect skiing weather for me.  We spent three days on the slopes, and had some laid back nights in the condo, watching the Olympics and UK play Florida, as well as some fun in the village.  I only took pictures with my phone, and Lawrence took a few with his outdoor camera so the quality isn't great, but I'm still glad to have captured these images of our trip.

Ready to ski!

An all ladies chair lift ride

Around every turn is another beautiful scene

Sarah's ready to go

 John and Jackson were thick as thieves, skiing together all day every day

It was fun having so many people to ski with - always more fun with a group

Taking a break with my girl

 Sarah and Lawrence met his friend Holly and her family in the village for some fun

 

Look how much snow there was!

 Enjoying the village

Love the giant chair!

Snuggling up by the fire pit while the kids ice skated

Lawrence and John's favorite store. Fun fact: the girl who owns it is from Lexington...her brother is a para-Olympic snowboarder and moved to Colorado to train

The kids had fun skating - Robert was the human zamboni, shoveling snow off the rink the whole time so the others could skate!

We returned to some warmer weather in Louisville, but I'm afraid it's short lived.  We are ready to leave this winter behind in exchange for some sunshine!  

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!