Skip Day

The last few weeks of Quinn and Dec's mite seasons were crazy busy. One might even say too busy. Most of the upper levels were done for the season, so there was plenty of ice time available. Which meant 4-5 nights of practice each week. The players, the coach, and the support crew of the house were feeling the pressure.

Mike and I woke up on the Sunday (the 13th) and both said that we just wished there wasn't practice that day. It was supposed to be really nice out and we were all craving a family day. I got up, headed to the bathroom to get ready, and by the time I got downstairs, Mike had marked everyone out of practice for the day and declared we were doing something together. 

After a very low key morning [thank you, daylight savings time] and a scrapped bike ride because Mike's front bike tire was popped, we decided to hike down to Spring Lake. Ironically this was the same trail that the kids and I hiked on the last Daylight Savings day when Mike was up north hunting. 

This time, the trail was very wet from all the melting snow. Some nameless 7yo boy in our group made poor choices about stomping in the puddles with his tennis shoes. Some nameless 9yo girl saved the day by pulling out extra socks for everyone from her pockets - because she had planned ahead! I feel like my parenting is basically done at this point.

The lake was really fun because although the snow was melting and the weather was beautiful, there was still a ton of ice. So out we went to run around on it. There was lots of rock skipping and ice sliding - and best of all, lots of giggles. It was the perfect end of winter/early spring day where it was chilly, but not freezing. The sun was warm. The air was crisp. And there were plenty of puddles to jump over ... or in ...

It wasn't anything fancy, but saying "no" to the schedule and spending the day together was exactly what we all needed!

Dec's Out of Town Jamboree

Dec had been anxiously awaiting his own out of town hockey jamboree and was super excited when the first weekend of March arrived. We were thrilled because it was just a day long jamboree and would not require either the full weekend or a hotel room.

Mike and Dec headed south to Le Sueur around 8am. D was nervous, tired, and not quite onboard with the early departure. We loaded a giant tote of snack bags into Mike's car and he knew that his buddy A's mom was bringing donuts for after the first game ... so he was moderately placated. 

Around 8:45, Fiona and I headed to her play practice and Quinn walked over to a neighbor's house.I had volunteered to help paint sets for Fiona's play while she was in rehearsal, but I needed a landing spot for Q. So she went to a neighbor's and entertained their 5 and 3 year old - and I was thrilled she was supervised. Win win! 

Then a sweet mom on her hockey team picked her up for hockey practice because I was still elbow deep in set paint. It truly takes a village - especially when you are out-numbered and need to get three people to three different activities. 

Set painting was a lot of fun and F was thrilled that I was helping out. My friend Aaron and I ended up on the marbling team - and spent the morning creating marbled pillars. They turned out well and we were quite proud of ourselves! We were also extremely tired. Marbling giant pillars is a lot of work!

While I was painting, my phone buzzed with a text from Mike. It was a picture of Dec, wearing the Hardest Worker hardhat from the first game. Apparently somewhere between the "not into it" of the departure and game time, the boy got into it! He played goalie for the first game and made some good in-game adjustments to keep the score close. Based on the picture, I'm not sure if he was more excited about the honor or the donut (I lie. It was the donut. Clearly). 

After set painting, F's rehearsal, and Q's practice, the girls and I got a few things done at home and then got ready to head south to catch D's final game of the day. We also picked up A's sister, so I had two giggly girls in the back seat (Lo and Fiona) and a happy Q in the front with me. It was a pretty quick 45 minute trip down Hwy 169 and we were ready to cheer on the boys.

In a super fun twist, Dec's team ended up playing the team of one of Mike's high school friends. Eric's son plays and E coaches in Bloomington and we'd been hoping for a match up against them all year - but no such luck (our other M3 team had played them). Until we both ended up at a tournament! Both Eric's wife and I insisted on a post-game father-son photo op!

Since we had three cars between our family and A's family, it was quite the car jockeying by the kids for the drive home. I got Lo and Fiona, the B's got A and Dec, and Mike and Quinn went together. It was terribly rainy weather, but at least it was warm enough to not be ice. Dec was exhausted, but thrilled with a very fun tournament day.

[Fewer details because I wasn't there - but they had several hours between games 2 and 3, so went to a bowling alley in a nearby town. Dec and his teammates lived their best lives in the arcade. Mike's friend Eric and some of his team also showed up, so they got to hang out and catch up too. I was told I didn't want to ask how many additional donuts/treats Dec ate during the day. I followed that advice. Sounds like it was everything an out-of-town hockey day should be!]

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.