Volleyball in full swing!

The last several weeks have been quite consumed by volleyball! Both Lynsey's team and my 16s team had their first Power League tournament the second weekend in January, Lynsey on Saturday and my team on Sunday. Lynsey's team was very low on players so they actually pulled up one of my players to play on their team for the day - she did great! Lynsey played really well as well, but unfortunately they didn't win any games that day:-/. They have the potential to be good but they need to gain a few more players, hopefully they can get stronger as the season goes on. Lynsey is enjoying playing with this team and honestly, at this point we just want her to have a fun, stress free experience.

My team played on Sunday, and we didn't have the best day unfortunately. First tournament, we definitely had some kinks to work out! Our first game especially, we looked stunned out there, like we didn't know what we were doing. We did wake up to win the second set and were super close in the third but ended up losing. That team we would definitely have beat if we had played them any other time of the day, but that's volleyball for you! We did beat a pretty good team, the team that ended up placing first in the pool, but unfortunately because of weird tie breaker rules we were still last in the pool because we lost our third game. I learned a lot of things from that tournament that were very useful to me this past weekend, when we had a three day tournament at the Seattle Convention Center. The girls did so much better! And on days 2 and 3, we did it without Alisha, one of our key players (the one we loaned to the 18s to give you an idea of her level!). Sadly she was sick:-(. The girls pulled together so well and ended up going 2-1 that second day, winning a crazy game at the end of the day where they were down 13-3 in the third set (that only goes to 15!). They ended up winning 16-14 which was just insane! I was so proud of them! We lost our first game in the gold bracket on Monday, but still such a good finish for our team - top 8 out of 32 teams. So proud!

What has everyone else been up to . . . Nathan has been playing basketball on Saturdays, their team won a few weeks back and did much better this past Saturday against a team they lost to quite badly at the beginning of the season. So they are improving! Brian seems to feel a bit more optimistic about the progress:-). Adam is Adam, still spending most of his days hanging out in the garage room listening to music. I haven't been taking any pictures the last few weeks, the only pictures I had were volleyball pictures of my team, so not even of Lynsey! Will try and make sure I take more pictures of regular life moments, so crazy how this changes as the kids get older. Pictures in everyday moments get fewer and fewer. 

 

Christmas traditions at home, holidays in Alberta!

I went from having almost no pictures to post to 55 pictures! That's Christmas time for you, always take a lot of pictures! I will start with our family Christmas, which we had on Christmas Eve. We went to church at 4 and came home and had our delicious rib roast dinner (thank goodness for our new oven which we could turn on remotely!). We did the kids' stockings and pajamas as always, it was a fun evening! Brian and I even got some gifts from the kids which was fun, and the kids exchanged gifts from each other. 

Christmas morning was fun, the kids all got something they were happy with (nothing really hit with Adam, but that's pretty much the story of our lives! He sort of liked a few things lol). We had fun figuring out how all the new things worked (Lynsey got a laptop and Nathan got a phone) and relaxed a bit as well. It was a lovely Christmas Day! 

On Boxing Day, Brian, Lynsey and I went to the gym early and then I had to drive Jasper over to Maggie Becker's place in Seattle. It was hectic as always getting ready for our flight, but we got everything ready and headed to the airport on time. The line at the WestJet counter didn't move for like 20 minutes after we arrived which was a bit stressful, but thankfully it didn't matter and we made it through security in plenty of time. Flight was smooth, got to Mark and Frances' house around 7pm. Always nice to settle in after a stressful travel day!

The next few days were spent with Mike and Annie, just hanging out, playing some games, doing some puzzles. One afternoon Brian took Lynsey and Nathan to the Calgary Climbing center while I hung out with Adam. We had a little birthday party for Adam on Monday with an ice cream cake, his favorite:-). 

Tuesday (New Year's Eve) we drove to Three Hills to hang out with my family. We had lunch with Mary and Dave and went over to Liz and Dave's for the supper gathering. It was a lot of fun catching up with everyone! Watched some hockey (Oilers won, yay!) and drove back to Calgary on some dicey roads. Thankfully we made it okay! We got back in time to ring in the New Year with Mark and Frances, here's to 2025!

We flew back home on New Years Day, everything was fairly smooth (just a one hour delay on take off). I was happy to get settled back in at home after the busy holidays! I held a practice for my volleyball team on Thursday afternoon which went pretty well, and yesterday we went to the Oilers Kraken game! It was so much fun, we won again! We really have the Kraken's number! Today we took down the Christmas tree, the holidays are truly over now (sigh). Time to get back at it! Kids go to school tomorrow, I have three practices this week in preparation for our first tournament this coming weekend. 

Looking forward to seeing what 2025 will bring us! Happy New Year!