Volleyball, basketball, and an escape artist doggy

Apparently I haven't been taking pictures these last few weeks:-/. The one picture I did get was of our ridiculous doggy looking at me from from the OTHER side of our dog fence with the neighbours. At the time, I didn't realize how on earth he was getting out of our yard, but after a day or two we did learn that after almost FIVE years of not realizing he could clear the dog fence on the other side of the yard, he finally did it. At some point, he so badly wanted to get to the front yard that he actually tried to jump the fence - and the rest was history. Sigh. We quickly ordered a taller dog fence and started leashing him when we let him out in the back yard. He wasn't a big fan of his loss of freedom, but those are the consequences of your actions, doggy! We got the other fence set up and we are pretty confident he will never try and jump that 4 foot fence. 

Lots of volleyball the last few weeks! We had some bad weather here the week after our tournament in Eugene and a few days of school were called off due to ice. That also meant our Wednesday volleyball practice got rescheduled to Friday, and then we had a tournament Saturday, and practice on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday of this past week. It was a lot! The tournament went okay, we ended up winning only one match of the 4 we played, but all of our matches went to three sets and were very close. We are so close to being able to win these matches, we are just a few points away. It was a really long day, but a fun day! 

Brian has been busy with work and Nathan's basketball on Saturdays. Nathan is starting to get more intense and improving a lot, we have to remember he is only in 6th grade and I wasn't even playing basketball until 7th grade. I hope he sticks with it and keeps working hard, with any luck he will get as tall as Adam and that will be a big advantage for him.

No volleyball tournament this weekend so just catching up on a few things at home. What else has been happening . . . oh yeah - the Oilers are on a 16 GAME WINNING STREAK! Unbelievable! I don't remember ever watching the Oilers and feeling so certain that they would win. It feels like they are just completely unbeatable. Obviously they are beatable and they will lose at some point, but I hope not for a long time! They've got a long break now for the All Star weekend, but they play Vegas on the 6th - what a great game to make it 17 in a row!! Fingers crossed!

 

Hello 2024!

Happy New Year! We ended the year as we always do, celebrating Adam! It was a bit different this year as we were at home, we are almost always in Alberta over New Years. Adam was more than happy to celebrate here as long as he had his ice cream cake:-). I can't believe he's 14, and 6'1.5" tall! I wonder when he will stop growing, it was only about a month prior that I had him at 6'0.5". He's going to be a big boy for sure! Happy birthday Adam!

Lynsey had Arabella over for a sleepover that night and we let them have a little Champagne to ring in the new year (we actually stayed up until midnight, woohoo!). The kids went back to school on January 2nd so we got right back into the swing of things to start 2024. 

That following weekend, we took another big step in our renovation clean up and had the junk removal guys come get our junk pile, hurray! So nice to have all that garbage out of there! 

This past weekend, Lynsey and I went down to Eugene for a volleyball tournament that was supposed to go until Monday. The weather was pretty good for the drive down, but there was a big ice storm in Eugene that started Friday night - we woke up to some pretty terrible conditions! They delayed the tournament by one hour to give people more time to get there, and it was a bit of an ordeal to scrape off all the cars and get there. We only had two games that day (3 team pool because one team dropped out due to weather) and we lost quite badly. These were very well organized, skilled teams. We had moments where we were gathering some momentum and making some good plays but we ultimately just could not compete. We were in the morning wave so we had the afternoon to unwind at the hotel. Due to the terrible weather, the team dinner we were supposed to have at 6:30 got moved up to like 2:30 because the restaurant was going to be closing, so we had a very strange eating schedule that day. The tournament director announced that the next day they would be playing much shorter games to try and end early, as the ice storm was actually getting worse as the day went on. The next morning, they just cancelled the tournament altogether. Road conditions in town were just terrible, and they deemed it unsafe for everyone to travel to the different sites.

Sooo now what! We had a team and parent meeting after breakfast and everyone decided to brave the highway and head home instead of staying another day and having nothing to do. It took me about an hour and a half to chip all the ice off my van, and then off we went! It was really icy the first hour or so, and then it gradually started to get better. By the time we got to Portland, the roads were pretty good and it was smooth sailing all through Washington. I was sad that the tournament was cut short, but it was nice to be home Sunday night and have today to go to the gym and get things done. I went to a wand wash and washed the rest of the ice off my van (there was a solid 1.5 inches of ice built up on my roof) - it was more stubborn to get off than I was anticipating. Hopefully this is a one off and the next tournament we go to will be a lot smoother! Lynsey still had fun for the short time we were there and so did I, I get along pretty well with the head coach and feel like I got to know her better this weekend. Hopefully we continue to learn how to work together so the season just keeps getting better!

I am finally parking in the garage, woohoo! One good thing that happened this weekend, Brian cleared out the second parking space. We do still have some organizing to do but we are getting there. One not so great thing that happened this past week is that we learned that we need a new oven. We tried a few things to fix the problem and they just didn't fix it, so we bit the bullet and ordered a new oven. The joys of being a home owner, replacing appliances that bring you no extra joy - just cost you money. Sigh.