Elsie's Birthday

 My apologies for the lack of blog post last week.  We were traveling home from a basketball tournament at the coast and didn't get home until very late.  Truth be told, there is a lot of traveling in the next few weeks, so blogging might be a bit spotty for a bit.  I won't say much about our time at the beach, but it was a blast and here are a few pictures to prove it (oh, and we took 2nd in the tournament after a tough overtime loss by 1).

While we are on the subject of basketball, and before we move on to the good stuff this week, this weekend was the first of two state tournaments.  I won't get into all of it, but the tournament started out great and then took a turn yesterday afternoon.  The team we played brought in two very good club team players that hadn't played with their team the rest of the season. We still beat them, but then they worked their way back into contention and, when we played them today, they brough in a third club team kid and we just couldn't compete.  After that devastation, we just couldn't get it back together and we lost our second game too.  We ended up coming in 4th in the tournament.  We'll see what next week brings.

The big highlight of the last couple weeks was Elsie's birthday.  The celebration started with a friend birthday party.  We had 13 four- and five-year-olds running amuck in our house and Elsie had a blast.  We made homemade pizza, played with birthday cake playdough (made out of frosting), had a dance party, made necklaces, had a pinata, and of course cupcakes.  I was exhausted by the end, but Elsie was happy and that is what really matters.

A few days later we had her actual birthday.  We woke up that morning to a snowy surprise and a 2-hour delay for school.  That meant we had extra time in the morning for a few presents and homemade pancakes.  Eventually, we made it to school and celebrated there with cupcakes.  Unfortunately, C.C. got hurt pretty badly at school that day and had to come home early, but that meant that the girls had the afternoon together to play and take it a little easy with some extra tv.  That evening, we had my family over for cake and ice cream.  It was a little rushed because the snow started falling again and we wanted to get everyone home before it got too late, but I don't think Elsie noticed or cared. 

Everyone made it home before it got too bad, but we ended up having snow days the next two days. That just made for some extra birthday fun with sledding included.

 We wrapped up the birthday festivities yesterday with Elsie having an "Auntie Day" with my sister, Emily.  They went shopping, got mani/pedis, and went to the movies.

To say she is a loved and spoiled little girl is a huge understatement.  We were so surprised when she even got a birthday card in the mail from a woman who works at the bank that Elsie made friends with.  She makes friends everywhere she goes.  We are so blessed to have her as part of our family.

Valentine's Day 2023

This week was Valentine's Day and boy was it a good one.  We started the day with a little bit of snow, not enough to cancel school, but enough for the girls to make a teeny, tiny snowman before heading off to school, we had a party at preschool for Elsie and me.  We made friendship bracelets, ate treats and passed out valentines.  Carrigan also had a party at school.  Merrick didn't officially have a party but I think there was enough candy going around to make up for it.   Then, I came home from school to beautiful flowers from my hubby.

After everyone was home from school, I got working on a special Valentine's Day dinner.  Soft pretzels and cheese fondue is one of my kids' favorite meals, so I decided to give them a Valentine's Day twist.  Although they were far from perfect, to say it was a hit is an understatement.  The kids already asked if we could have it for dinner next Valentine's Day (and 100 more times before then).

After dinner we did our traditional "love hunt".  Carrigan was excited to read the clues this year and Merrick was a good sport about giving the girls time to figure out each clue.  This year, in the end, the kids were rewarded with gift cards to some of their favorite restaurants.  Elsie was not pleased that it wasn't toys, but this her birthday is coming next week, we are heading into major toy overload.

I was so wrapped up in making the day special for the kids, I almost forgot to give Jeremy his gift, a favorite things basket.

I also have to mention that Elsie's friend birthday party was also this week, but I think I will save it for next week when we fully celebrate her and her birthday.

Let's Craft

 This was a typical busy week with work, school, practice, church meetings and activities with a few extras thrown in.  Wednesday was Jason's birthday, so we got together on Wednesday evening to celebrate him.  In addition to all the regular jazz, with Valentine's Day right around the corner, we had lots of work to do on that front.

Carrigan had to complete "appreciation cards" for everyone in her class in addition to her regular Valentines.  She worked on those in the early part of the week, writing a note to each person with what she appreciated about them.  In the meantime, Elsie worked hard on her valentines, writing her name twelve times all on her own.  Once, they both finished, they worked together to complete Carrigan's regular valentines.  They created an assembly line, where C.C. did all the writing of the names, and Elsie attached the erasers.

Once all the cards were done, only one other thing was left to do, Carrigan also had to create a box for her valentines.  I thought maybe we could cut a hole in a shoebox and maybe add some stickers.  She had different plans.  She had a vision of a dog with a mouth that moved up and down to insert the valentines.  She needed some help to wrap the individual components in craft paper and to execute the moveable mouth, so we worked together to bring her vision to life.  She is pretty happy with it and has plans to keep it until Elsie is in 4th grade and needs to build her own Valentine's Day box.

Not to be outdone by my crafty girls, I did some needle felting this week at my youth activity.  Mostly I spent the time trying to help the girls with their projects, but I did bust out a quick little chick since Easter will be here before we know it.

Oh, before I forget, the other excitement of the week was that my parents got a dog.  Emily had heard from the breeder she got her last dog from that there was a Golden Doodle/Labradoodle mix that needed to be rehomed due to an allergy in the home.  After a little meet and greet my parents decided to step up.  Meet Theador P. Bear (Bear for short).

Forward

 This has been a good week with some positive forward progress.  Everyone is over Covid and we are back to our regularly scheduled programing.  For the most part it has been a pretty uneventful week, but the most exciting part has been the progress we have seen this week with Jeremy's business.  He got five new clients this week and it finally feels like he has some good momentum.  It is such an uphill battle.  I still don't know if we will be able to stick it out, but I am so proud of his hard work and the progress he had made. 

As for the girls, Carrigan started a new "supermarket science" enrichment class after school.  This week they made and tested paper airplanes.  She is super excited because this week they will be doing something "messy".  Elsie got to have a play date this week and we started planning for her upcoming birthday party.  She is definitely counting down the days.

Merrick, having rebounded very quickly from Covid, was very excited to get back to all of his sports.  He had a tournament this weekend and he was back with a vengeance.  While his team overall isn't as good this year as last, they have started playing up in the A team tournaments.  This weekend they had mixed success with 2 wins (it should have been 3 but they gave one game away in the last minute after leading the whole game and lost by 2) and 2 losses.  This has been a good season for Merrick though.  He is "the man" on his team and often plays the entire game, with the exception of maybe a one-minute water break.  Today he had some hard battles against some grown men, one of whom according to Merrick had a beard, but he more than held his own with two dominate wins.