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!