Happy Birthday!

Happy Seventh Birthday Mr. Joe!

Fun End to a Long Day

Today seemed to go on forever, starting at 6 am  and ending around 9 pm! I didn’t have 2 minutes to collect my thought all day, but the day ended with a party with a bunch of young hockey players and a holiday party/gift exchange.

This will be a picture heavy post, with little in the way of words, as it’s nearly midnight and I am to tired to provide a monologue! 

 

These two were sneaking about hiding from the camera!

 

 

Christmas 2011 and Other Stuff

I hope all had a very Merry Christmas and remembered the True reason for the season. The wondrous birth of our Saviour!

I kept meaning to put together a post, but it never seems like I never have the time. We have been so busy with work, school and hockey, that I rarely have ”spare” time. The last 4 months seem like they flew by! We were in Cleveland in September, we had a tournament at home in early November, and we were in Pittsburgh over Thanksgiving weekend. I think Erin has had at least one game every weekend since late October and she is playing so well! She is loving having her own net and has managed 5 shut outs this season, two of them in the last 3 games.

My birthday was on Thanksgiving this year, and since we were going to be in Pittsburgh anyway, the one thing I REALLY wanted was to go see a Penguins game. I was rather disappointed when I saw the cost of the tickets, but at the last minute we were offered tickets at a very discounted price. The tournament organizers had purchased blocks of tickets, then randomly drew teams to offer the tickets to at cost. We were one of the teams chosen, so all the girls and their families were able to go to the game that Saturday night. We were in the oxygen seats, but it was awesome!!! The last day we were in Pittsburgh, Sarah and I got up early and went for a drive around the area. I think I have found the place I really, truly want to live…someday!

Just before Thanksgiving I got a phone call from my boss (I work per diem at a local hospital) asking me if I would be interested in another job. She told me it was another per diem position, but with regular hours. The hours wouldn’t exactly be ideal, but I could make it work. She told me she thought of me because they needed someone who could learn quickly and would be okay to work without much supervision. Apparently my boss thinks very highly of me. I was flattered that she would think of me since I have only worked for her for about 6 months. I never heard anything more about the position, until a week or so ago. I received a call asking if I could come in to talk to the manager about it. I scheduled an “interview” for the next day. About 5 minutes into our conversation she was on the phone scheduling me for training. I guess she liked me and wanted me for the position! I’m starting soon and as I understand it, this could turn into a more permanent position down the road.

We had a fairly relaxed and enjoyable Christmas this year. Poor Erin has a nasty cold, so she spent much of the day wrapped up in a blanket laying on the couch. I worked the night before, so when I got home around 6:30 I mixed up  some buttermilk pancake batter. I was about to make the pancakes when Jeff decided that the girls needed to open their presents (they were getting antsy he said). I think the truth is that Jeff couldn’t wait to see them open their presents! By the time I got back to the pancakes, the batter was VERY bubbly and the end result was some super fluffy, yummy pancakes!

We had a very Dr. Who Christmas. Erin got a bobble Tardis and a Tardis t-shirt. Sarah got a sonic screwdriver that  is a pen that can write with regular ink, or ink that only shows up under UV light. The glowy part of the sonic screwdriver is UV, so the ink shows when you shine the light on it. Now Sarah writes messages on Erin’s hands and then “reveals” them to us with her sonic screwdriver! Yes, we are all Dr. Who geeks!

At about 7:45 pm on Christmas Eve, Jeff declared that the girls needed stockings! I hadn’t purchased a single stocking stuffer, so I was at a loss. I explained to him that everything closes early on Christmas Eve, so we were probably out of luck. I also told him that we have no stockings. He suggested socks, I told him that was weird, he agreed and pointed out that WE are weird, lol! I looked around online and found that one local CVS store was open. So guess where we went? While we were there, I found some really cute (and cheap) Christmas hats, so I got one for each of the girls along with some silly putty, fruit slices, a (4 piece)Whitmans sampler, a little notepad with a weiner dog on it, and a Sally (Peanuts) ornament. We had also gotten Jammie Dodgers (British biscuits…er cookies…that Dr. Who likes to eat) for Sarah and a marzipan log for Erin earlier in the day. I put their gifts in the hats, tied pretty plaid Christmas ribbon to close them, then looped a lanyard through each one to hang them from their door knobs. Jeff thought they were pretty nifty and I thought they were stranger than socks, but more creative, and most importantly, the girls loved them!

Here are a few pictures from our Christmas morning.

This is some really cool ribbon that has led lights inside of it. I was admiring some that my mom had hung at her house, when she handed me a roll of it. Thanks Mom!

I know the train doesn’t really go with the nativity, but there it is anyway!

Yup, she was definitely excited! I think this and a t-shirt we got her with a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference were her favorite gifts.

Doesn’t she look like she’s up to no good?

Erin wearing her Christmas stocking hat.

Last, but not least, this is the wreath that Erin and I made. We got the wreath part at Price Rite for $4. Then we went to Michaels and bought about $4 worth of 50% off decorations and put it all together. I was very excited at how nice it looks and how cheap it was!!!

Perhaps I will keep up a little better with my blogging, but don’t hold your breath…

 

Turkey Dinner

Since we won’t be able to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, the girls and I decided to make a turkey dinner today. We made turkey, stuffing, smashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, brussels sprouts, and gravy. Here are some pictures of the major players.

Here is the whole spread on the table for dinner. The rolls are teh only thing we didn’t make from scratch.

While at Wegmans, I saw some beautiful autumn flowers that I decided to buy. When I got them home and put them into a vase, they looked so tiny. At $8 a bunch, I wasn’t keen on going back and buying another bouquet or two. Then I went to Price Rite this afternoon and they had bunches for $4, so I bought a couple.

Here is the end result of my 3 bunches of flowers.

We had a great time together and the food was super tasty!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving Day!

Happy Anniversary

Even though our anniversary is not actually until tomorrow, Jeff and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary last night. Erin has a hockey game in the middle of the afternoon today and tomorrow is nutty as most Mondays are, so the kids suggested Jeff and I should go out on a “date” last night. After looking around a bit on the Internet, I determined that I’d rather go to Niagara Falls and check out the Festival of Lights. So we all hopped in the Jeep and headed out around 7 pm. Our favorite steak house, Montana’s, closed in the US, has a location in Niagra Falls, so we headed there first. After a yummy dinner, we decided to take a ride on the 175 feet tall Sky Wheel. It is a ferris wheel with enclosed “gondolas” that give one a fantastic view of the falls!  We never did make it to see the lights, but we got a glimpse of them from the sky wheel.

Unfortunately, the pictures I took from atop this wheel did not turn out but I thought these two pictures of the wheel itself were pretty cool!

Both of us had a wonderful time and the girls made it even more enjoyable.  We didn’t get home until nearly 1 am, but it was a great night!

Team Silliness!

The girls had team pictures before practice a couple of days ago. While they were waiting for the photographer for their team picture, they did some silly things poses for me.

As the girls finished their individual pictures, they gathered to wait for a team picture. Here are a few of the girls.

Erin decided to be a turtle. Glad she doesn’t tend goal that way!

 

Then some of the girls piled on top of her…goalie sandwich!

Soon afterwards, Coach Morgan decided to show her own silliness.

Finally, I got the whole team, still being rather silly!

This afternoon they played a great game, coming back to tie the game at 4 after being down by 2 goals.

GO EDGE!!!

 

Hockey and College

The last weekend in October we went to visit SUNY Cortland with Erin’s hockey team. The plan was to tour the Cortland women’s hockey team locker room, have a team lunch, watch a Cortland women’s hockey game, see a bit of the campus, and then have a clinic at a nearby ice rink with some of the girls from the Cortland hockey team.

While there, the girls had a blast!

The girls got to go into the Cortland Women’s locker room and meet the coach and hear a little about the program. The little brother of one of the girls decided that he should be in the picture. He’s quite a ham! I spent a good portion of the day trying to capture another picture of him, but he is quick, so many of my pictures of him were fuzzy!

After the locker room tour, we had a while before the game, so we went to a local restaurant where we had a party room to ourselves. The girls made posters to cheer on the team and Coach Morgan painted their faces.

Coach Morgan did not paint her own face, but here she is smiling for me.

This is Blaze. He posed for me, then a short while later disappeared. I think the girls scared him away…

During the game I stood along the top rail with Morgan. It was pretty awesome to see the girls turn around to her and point out things in the game that Morgan had been working with them on in practice!

We invited a couple of the U10 girls to join us as well. They are in this picture. I love Erin’s wide open mouth in this picture, lol! She’ll probably have a heart-attack when she sees that I posted it.

Several people were convinced that this was her real hair!!! The Cortland girls noticed it while they were on the ice and said afterwards that they loved it!

Between the game and our practice, we toured the Cortland campus a bit. We didn’t get too far because this vending machine caught the girls’ attention. A couple of them even announced that they were going to go to school there because of this vending machine. I imagine that may change in the next 5 or so years…I hope.

Three Cortland ladies came out to practice with the girls at a nearby ice rink. The girls (all of them) had a great time. The Cortland girls told our girls that they were so happy to have them at the game. They loved all the cheering and celebration every time they scored. Erin had brought a small blanket into the game with her and each time Cortland scored, one of our girls would tie on the blanket like a cape and run around the walkway at the top of the rink with the rest of our girls chasing behind. It was quite a sight and the Cortland girls loved it!

It was quite a long day but all of the girls had a great time. Some of them told me they want to do it again. Good thing we have more college visits planned!

Yummy Supper

At the recommendation of my mom, I purchased Slow Cooker Revolution and boy is my family happy that I did!

For dinner, I made this yummy stuff.

It is a yummy sauce with chicken and broccoli that I served over Ronzoni garden veggie  rotini. It was declared DE-licious by my family!

I have made 3 or 4 dishes now, from this cookbook and everyone my family has raved over! I would definitely recommend this cookbook to anyone with a slow cooker!!!

Erin’s 12th Birthday

For  Erin’s 12th birthday, we took her and Sarah to a rock climbing place. She had spent the day at hockey camp and we weren’t sure she’d be up to rock climbing afterwards, but she was psyched to go try it out. Thanks to a Groupon, both girls got a lesson and two climbing sessions for a great price. Since Erin is not old enough to belay, Jeff also joined the lesson. He looked great wearing the silly bright blue helmet that they required him to wear for the lesson! He let me take his picture, but I promised not to post it.

Erin was paying close attention to her lesson, but she looks very worried instead of attentive.

After a fairly brief lesson, she began climbing. Check out those crazy socks!

Apparently going straight up the wall wasn’t enough of a challenge. She soon decided to try her hand at climbing in a corner, backwards.

Eventually, she decided to try bouldering. She discovered that it’s a little more difficult than it looks, so she gave me a silly pose instead…

She and Sarah both had a lot of fun. Jeff even seemed to enjoy himself as he belayed for the girls. He even thought he might like to try climbing sometime.

Kyle’s 18th Birthday

Kyle turned 18 today, technically at 9:05 PM. His birth was quite an adventure! I was living with my grandparents in Florida and hurricane Andrew was threatening the Florida coast. Since my grandparents lived in Ormond Beach, very near the coast, on a little peninsula that sits between the Halifax River and the Atlantic Ocean, they were more than a little nervous about the situation. I was nearly a week past my due date and Andrew’s exact heading was still somewhat uncertain, but it was clear it would hit somewhere between Daytona and Miami. Once I went into labor, my grandparents both breathed a sigh of relief and off to the hospital we went. Twenty-two hours I labored, and then finally, at 9:05 Kyle made his entrance into the world. All 8 lbs, 8oz of him!

The nervousness of the whole situation was compounded, for my grandparents, by the fact that there are only 4 bridges from the peninsula to the mainland and the hospital was on the mainland. If there was a mandatory evacuation, my grandparents had decided that they could pack all of my possessions in the 2 cars they owned and they just wouldn’t worry about their own stuff. We would head to the mainland and wait for me to go into labor. I think they figured a mandatory evacuation would trigger it. Having spent my entire life prior to that in upstate New York, the worst “weather” I had experienced was a snowstorm that dropped about 6 feet on the college campus where I spent my freshman year. This hurricane business was exciting! Looking back, I think I was insane at the time!

Since Kyle’s birth, my grandparents have moved to a retirement center in the middle of Florida. While spending time with them this summer, in Daytona Beach Shores, we reminisced about some of the crazy things from over the years, including Kyle’s crazy entrance into the world. My grandma, who was 70 at the time, was thrilled to pieces to be in the delivery room with me. She wasn’t awake when her kids were born. She was amazed at how different things were! It was a crazy time in my life and my grandparents were instrumental in keeping me sane through a crazy time.

We celebrated Kyle’s birthday, this year, on Saturday. We went to his favorite Japanese restaurant, then to my in-laws for cake and to open presents. Since he will be starting college in a couple of weeks, Jeff and I got him mostly college related things. It was a fairly low-key celebration. I did get some nice pictures of the birthday boy and his siblings though.

Last time Kyle had an adjustment to his braces, he opted for a red wire on his top teeth.

Kyle tried on his new sweatshirt, but Erin thought the tag should come off before I took his picture, so she tried to help.

A thoughtful pose? Not sure what he was thinking about, but he sure looks like a student.

Erin looked on and helped by handing him presents to open.

Sarah sat by and sipped coffee with her grandpa.

Since Sarah is allergic to legumes, it is nearly impossible to buy baked goods that she can eat. I managed to find some soy-free chocolate chips, legume-free cream cheese, and decided to make Kyle a mint flavored, chocolate chip cookie cake with cream cheese frosting. It was awesome, if I do say so myself.

I think he had a good birthday. He spent the night at his grandparents on Saturday night, and today we took him to set up some banking and had a fairly low-key day otherwise.