The In-Between March Moments

A LOT happened in March. Or more accurately, a lot of really big events happened in March. I'll tell you about all of them (eventually). But first, a quick look at the rest of our March, which was actually quite a fun time. [Disclaimer: March is why the blog fell off the rails. It was sooooo busy. May is calling March and raising it soccer and baseball seasons on top of hockey. So ... yeah. Low expectations, everyone. Looooow expectations!]

It has been the weirdest weather here in the last two months. It's either crazy cold (I think we are on fourth winter) or raining (the lakes will be in much better shape this summer!) - and we swear it is always insanely windy. Minnesotans are known for our love of discussing the weather, but you guys, we can't quit talking about the wind. No one remembers it ever being this constantly windy. But ... occasionally a beautiful day will sneak in there, and when it does, we are OUT.SIDE. Watching the neighbor kids emerge on those lovely days is the best. All the cul-de-sacs are full of bikes and scooters and rollerblades ... and hoverboards. 

Dec's buddy A got a hoverboard and a go-cart attachment for Christmas, and could not wait for the roads to clear up enough to use it. Let's just say, once he got the hang of it, Dec was in love. It is possible that he's already written his letter to Santa for the year. [He has]

After a busy hockey day on Saturday, we changed it up on a Sunday and headed to the middle school's performance of Cinderella. With Fiona starting middle school in the fall (that one hurt to write ... a flashback to her kindergarten round up for anyone else who is nostalgic like me), she will be able to join in the production next year - so we wanted her to see what it was all about. Several of her friends, plus several of the kids in her Pirates play, (details coming eventually to a blog near you) were in it and we wanted to support them too. 

Fiona, Dec, and I spent a couple days listening to the soundtrack - and the kids have all seen the Brandy/Whitney version of the movie. I tell you this knowing that he does not perform on command anymore ... but if you can trick Dec into singing The Prince Is Giving a Ball for you, it is worth both the price of admission and the price of the bribe. Declan for the role of Herald some day! And yes, he does know ALL the names in the song.

After a lovely hoverboard weekend, there was a return to second winter. But at least it was sunny! Q decided to pretend to take notes on where we should put our spring flowers, using an ice chunk tablet and an icicle pen. This girl cracks me up!

Quinn has [maybe] committed to playing goalie next season [she thinks. unless she changes her mind. again. sigh.], so Mike bought a goalie bag for all her gear. This was going to happen anyway as she is currently playing on two summer teams - one as a player and one as goalie. And the switching of equipment was starting to be both inefficient and fraught with risk. I've made many a run home to try to find equipment that didn't make it back into the bag. 

The new bag arrived and Q and Mike were so excited. You guys, I was worried they were trying to dispose of a body. It.was.so.big. Like Quinn and her equipment could probably fit in it. They assured me that it was the size that all the cool goalies used. I rolled my eyes and said fine. Until later that day when Q and my Team Lift to get that sucker in my car was trickier than expected - because IT WAS TOO BIG FOR MY CAR. Q's solution was "get a new car, mom." My solutions - which was the one we went with - was to get a smaller goalie bag.

In the winter, Mike doesn't like to keep the hockey gear in the garage because it's cold in the garage and then they are all putting on freezing cold pads. So the bags tend to get piled up in the corner of the living room. As we were working on the goalie bag, I took a quick picture of the amount of hockey gear that lives in my living room all winter (Mike's player bag, Mike's coaching bag, Q's player bag, Q's goalie bag, Dec's player bag, and a spare bag of goalie equipment). Thank goodness for candles!

Near the end of March, the weather improved enough that if you squinted your eyes and ignored the wind, it was almost like spring. So the kids got really excited and asked if they could bike to school. YES - was the answer, and then we realized that several heads had grown and new bike helmets were needed. Don't worry - new helmets are procured and all V heads are safe again!

So you know that I am not joking about how windy it is, I sent this picture to Mike at work. He had put his big fish house in our backyard as the warming house for the rink. I was working at my desk one day and a flash of red caught my eye. The wind had ripped the stakes out of the ground and the ice house was flopping around our yard. He promptly came home and took it down for the season.

In anticipations of Bugs' Lady Pirates of the Caribbean debut, we squeezed in a family movie (over several nights - because that is one LONG movie) and watched the original Pirates of the Caribbean. It had a lot of twists and turns for Declan, but he enjoyed it. Fiona LOVED the humor. It's so fun to watch more complex plots with them and see what they pick up on. 

I was able to sneak away for an evening and had dinner with one of my oldest friends. Bryan and I have been friends since 7th grade, when we were the bookends of the very long row of Johnsons. It's a special friendship, because we are both high school AND college friends. It's been a couple years since we've seen each other in person and I loved how easy it was to just fall right back into our groove. We've promised not to let two years go by again with a hug!

And finally, we ended the month by constructing a marble run on the wall. Dec had read about it in a magazine, carefully saved all his supplies, and then took advantage of Gpa J being in town for some height and execution help. It ended up working pretty well - very impressed!

Big Games and a Visiting Cheering Squad

The big games continued at the end of Presidents' Day week. Quinn's team had only lost one game so far in the season and the big rematch was coming up on Saturday. Because of this - and Uncle Kyle being out of town, Auntie Tracey and Nate came down to spend the weekend with us. We were so excited to have them, show off our new house, and have some company in the bleachers!

Before Auntie and Nate arrived, however, we had games on Friday night. Mike and Dec headed up to Eden Prairie for Dec's game while I took Quinn to the rink in Shako. Her team was playing Minnetonka, who they had handily beat earlier in the season. Of note: in the prior Tonka game, Quinn was in net. This game, we had a pretty inexperienced goalie playing and Tonka showed up to play. Q's team came out flying, grabbed an early 6-2 lead, and then thought they would coast for the final period. 

Minnetonka took advantage and tied it up about halfway through the third. Having won (by a lot!) most of their games, Q's team was pretty unaccustomed to having to gut it out. Lucky for them, Quinn is a grinder. She never got into coast mode during the game and played like a beast! The best part, Mike and Dec walked into the rink about 20 seconds before she chipped in the winning goal on an awesome shot. Quinn is normally the steady, non-showy player. But in this game, she stood out big time. Super fun to watch! [Dec's team did not win, but he scored a goal, played well, and was happy as a clam!]

On Saturday, Auntie and Nate got to experience the full range of weekend activities. They got to make a trip to our favorite local donut shop, Auntie ran lines with Fiona after morning play practice, and off we went to the rink to catch the end of Dec's practice and snag good seats for the BIG Edina game.

Last time Q's team played Edina, we had one of our best skaters in net (she did fine, but she's one of our best defensive players and is a top scorer) and were missing another one of our best players. So the team was confident with Quinn in net and Ariya and Kate on the ice, they had a good chance to win. And they did ... have a good chance, that is. Win, they did not. It was a very close game (until the end when the defense gave up). The girls were devastated after it and the locker room had a lot of tears. The coaches (the next day) used it as an opportunity to highlight why you have to play to the very end of the game.

In case you are worried about Q after a tough game like that, don't. I asked her how she felt about the loss and she looked me right in the eye and said, "I'm fine. I did my job." Way to call out your defense, Quinn! Auntie Tracey was more worried about one of her two favorite nieces, so she and Nate grabbed a DQ cake on their way to our house. It is the continuation of a tradition they had with Ben when he was a swimmer on the HS team. Whenever he got DQed (or had a really bad race), there was a family DQ cake. We all happily ate the consolation prize!

[Side note: I was really excited to have company, so made my homemade enchiladas - that my whole family loves. Nate doesn't eat enchiladas, so Tracey grabbed him a frozen pizza at the gas station. Because my enchiladas required the oven, Mike popped Nate's pizza on our Traeger grill. And then when it was dinner time, everyone drooled over how delicious that dang pizza looked and my enchiladas felt like the consolation prize. Nate kindly shared a few slices with his cousins and apparently smoked pizza is delicious!

Presidents' Day Top Dog 3v3 Bash

We came back from the hunting shack on Sunday even though the kids had the day off on Monday because Quinn was playing in a 3-on-3 tournament with several of her hockey teammates. The girls were excited because Q had agreed to play between the pipes, so they knew they had a stonewall behind them. 3v3 games are usually played on half ice, and typically have a lot of scoring chances because of the compressed area.

The girls played four games and handily won all four. Although to be fair, they won game 2 handily because their goalie showed up when the rest of them got a little too confident and forgot to play hard. They didn't make that mistake again when they played that same team in the championship game. It was a blow out! [Game scores... #1: 17-2, #2: 8-5, #3: 13-5, #4: 14-2]

They played two games (back-to-back) in the morning and then the whole crew ... players, parents, and siblings ... headed to a local restaurant where we took up several tables and booths to fit our very large group (we had reservations!). The team piled into one booth (all nine of them!) and then the eight siblings split between two other booths. The little sisters loooooooove Fiona, so they were very excited to hang out with her. One of the little sisters and Dec have the cutest little crushes on each other, so he spent most of lunch with a very red face and a goofy grin. 

I let F and D off the hook for the two afternoon games and we dropped them off at home to chill. Then Mike and I headed back to the rink. Quinn played really well all day, but my favorite save was in the championship game. Quinn is a very precise goalie. She has amazing form and is in the right position most of the time. Therefore, she looks unimpressive as a goalie because she makes it seem easy. 

However, there was one rebound that took a crazy bounce and she dove across the crease and knocked it out of the air. It was beautiful and dramatic and not the saves she normally makes (because she doesn't have to). Mike told her "great desperation save!" I may have had my fingers over my eyes!

The girls were super proud and had a great time. And it was fun for Q to play goalie for an entire tournament. For the record, she had the lowest goals allowed total in the tournament - boys or girls. 

Presidents' Weekend Northern Adventure

Earlier this week, we had dinner aptly named "Choose Your Own Adventure." Between piano lessons, hockey practice, and the final submission of the school yearbook (yay!), we ate dinner in three different shifts. We've noticed in the last year that this is becoming more and more common. It used to be the exception when we weren't all together for dinner. Now, I'm pretty excited if we are together for five nights in a week. I know it will only get worse - so I'm trying to both enjoy the days we are together ... and learn how to reconfigure my meal planning to accommodate this new reality.

There is a lot of reconfiguration needed right now. Between activities, homework, my new job, generally later bedtimes, and other various factors, we are struggling to slot in Adult Responsibilities. It's possible you've noticed the blog has been neglected. This is one of the current casualties of general life balance. I [mostly] promise it's not dead. Hang in there as I figure out the best way to share all the great stories that are written in my brain - but haven't quite made it to the blog.

With that, we'll travel way back in time to mid-February when we headed north for Presidents' Day weekend. But before we talk about the fun of that, we'll make one more jump backwards to New Year's Eve - when Mike and I closed on the purchase of the hunting shack and accompanying nine acres of woods. The owner of the shack had reached out to Mike right before hunting season to see if we would be interested in buying it as she was planning to sell. She offered us a very fair, below market value price, and we went for it. Both Mike and Gpa V are beyond thrilled.

Since the kids had a four-day weekend, we decided to use Presidents' Day as our inaugural weekend at the shack. We had planned to go up on Friday but because of the aforementioned issues with Adult Responsibilities, we took the day to catch up on some things and headed north first thing Saturday morning. The weather on Friday ended up being pretty crummy, so the plan worked out perfectly!

Saturday morning, we headed out bright and early and were at the shack by lunch time. Gpa was already there and had the fires roaring inside. Facts about the shack: there is no running water. There is a very nice outhouse. There is electric heat, but we supplement it with wood fire stoves in the kitchen and living room. There is a bunk room. It is rustic, but nice - and we love it. 

There was so much snow up there. Holy smokes! It was over waist-deep in spots (for the kids). Our neighbor (Mike's old neighbor when he was a kid) had taken the snowblower to a path between the properties to create a sledding hill for the kids. So we spent most of the afternoon outside - sledding, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, digging the snowmobile out from where Mike and Dec got it stuck ... and generally enjoying the sun and the snow. We also headed over for some hot cocoa with Jim and Diane (the neighbors). 

Gpa made steaks for dinner, we discovered that the girls were allergic to the animal pelts on the wall (I was not sad to see them removed), and it was off to bed. Sunday was more of the same - lots of sledding, some snowshoeing, a bit more snowmobiling. And a visit from Gma and Gpa J, who wanted to check out the new place! Gpa made roast for a late lunch and then we packed up and headed back toward the cities. It was a quick, but really fun trip. Just the break from city life that we needed!

We have several ideas to update the shack to better align with how we plan to use it. But are reminding ourselves that it is functional now and we can take our time and do it when it makes sense. We have a lot we want to do here at the new house too, so it's been easy to feel overwhelmed. Instead, one thing at a time is the game plan. It's exciting to have a place in the woods that is ours - and can be used for the family time that is becoming rarer and more important.