March and April 2019 (excluding vacations)

Okay!  Where were we?  Ah yes, March 2019.  The first fun thing that happens every March is Arden's birthday!  Except this birthday, she officially became a teenager.  Yup.  She is thirTEEN.  Bummer.  She did a couple of things with her friends for fun, but I wasn't invited so I don't have pictures.  She allowed us to take her to Dave & Busters on her birthday, though, so here are some official birthdayish pictures.  Dave and Busters was fun!  Arden liked racing with Cora.

 She also liked cake! 

 Dax and Cora quickly jumped in and offered to help her finish it off. 

For presents she just wanted clothes, so we walked down to Abercrombie and Fitch and let her pick out some cute and pricey pieces for her wardrobe.  She had a gymnastics meet on her very birthday, and Cora had a play that day too (see later pictures), so her birthday was pretty busy.  We got her an official cake (ice cream cake from Coldstone, as requested) and ate it the day after her real birthday.  Make a wish baby! 

So Cora has been looking forward to being in the school play since forever.  She was a little disappointed that the play ended up being Shrek, Jr., but it was actually turned out really cute.  Cora was in the chorus, and here she is performing as a citizen of Far Far Away (she is on the far left).

 I wasn't very close to the stage, so most of the pictures were blurry, but here is another one. 

Cora was also one of the three blind mice.  Here she is on the back row...I only see one other blind mice but I swear there were three.

Here is a picture of (most of) the cast...Cora is on the bottom left.  She loved being in the play and didn't even mind too much getting up early for practices.

She liked being mice with her friends too (can't remember their names right now, but they had fun being mice together).

Arden had one of her last every gymnastics meets!  She is still smiling, but she was pretty burned out from gymnastics at this point and was thinking about quitting (which she ended up doing).  But she still is smiling!

After this we went to Hawaii (but that is its own post!) but sometime in here it started to look like Spring!  Here is the new view out my window at work:

 Then before we knew it, it was Cora's turn for a birthday.  Official double digits for her, with the big 1-0.  Seriously stop this nonsense.  Lamb pix (yes, I know, I forgot to post Arden's, sorry.  I can't find them!)

 Cutie patootie!

 Cora had a bunch of friends over to our house for a party, and we did pour paintings.  That is where you pour special paint onto canvases and it turns out all cool and funky.  Observe:

 This one was mine (I paid for it, so I wanted to play too):

After painting and cake and stuff there were presents!  I didn't do a good job of taking a picture of everyone, but here is one showing most of them at least:

On another note, my dog is weird.  Whenever she sits by me, she doesn't try to lay her head on my like most other dogs.  She usually shows her affection with the other end of her body.  I was laying on my bed watching TV one night and she jumped up and sat her rear end directly on my nose to show how much she loves me. 

After that it was Easter!  I took nearly zero pictures!  Here is one of Cora running out of the door to start her Easter Egg hunt:

Here is Dax, being Dax!

 After the egg hunt, we ate food!  Food is good!

We went out to the lake!  It was cold but still oh so beautiful.

And just to keep it real, here is an interesting picture for you.  One day Cora and Dax both had to go to the bathroom when they got home from school.  Dax, who weighs like twice as much as Cora, won the wrestling match into the bathroom.  Cora made her displeasure known by kicking the door, not realizing that it is HOLLOW. 

 She was in trouble. 

 We got season tickets to Lagoon!  Here are a couple of pix of me and Dax and Cora's first trip. 

Chrystie and Arden do San Diego February 2019

Arden had an out of state gymnastics meet!  It was in San Diego!  In February!  Yes, please, sign me up.  We didn't have the $$ to bring everyone, so it was just me and Arden.  Which was fun, since I hardly get to see Arden between school and gymnastics!  We flew in the day before the meet, and checked into our hotel (the StayPineapple hotel in downtown San Diego.  Arden loves pineapples due to Psych, so it was a perfect fit). 

We walked over to Harbor Village for dinner, and it was so nice to see the sunshine and the water.  Even though it wasn't super warm we wanted to eat outside by the harbor.  The sun was just setting and it was so pretty!

 The food was delicious also:

After dinner we walked around a little, but it was getting pretty dark so we didn't spend too much time.  But I talked Arden into doing this picture for me, isn't it cute?

We headed back to the hotel and I watched the Jazz game and Arden watched a show on her tablet because she is no fun.  We turned in early, so Arden could rest up for her meet, and I had a long run to do in the morning.

I got up super early and headed out for my run just as the sun was coming up.  I ran down by the water and it was glorious.  There was a homeless dude just waking up in the park across from the water, and I must admit that I considered joining him in his urban outdoorsman lifestyle.  Look at the view he wakes up to!  It's almost worth the lack of access to hot showers!  But not quite.

 I ran by the USS Midway aircraft carrier and saw the famous statue....

And I had to do like 16 miles and so I ran all the way around to Harbor Island and ran back and forth out there, which did. Not. Suck.

There were quite a few people running by the time I slogged my way back over to the hotel, and there were some faaaast people making me feel bad.  But overall it was a beautiful, warm, happy, sunny run, and I thought about it on every other long run that I did in the freezing cold the rest of the winter.

After my run and my shower, Arden and I wanted to go to the zoo.  We figured out that the hotel shuttle wasn't operating yet, so we took a brave step and did our very first Uber over to the zoo!  It was super easy, and the driver was nice and his car was clean and he didn't kidnap us and sell us into slavery, which was nice. 

It was a beautiful sunny day, and me and Arden liked this animal, which I can't remember the name of.

The big attraction at the zoo was the giant panda!  We waited in line to see it, so we were pretty happy she was awake! 

We walked around quite a lot (I got close to 40,000 steps in this day), and the day was perfect.   We saw pretty much everything, which takes a lot of work in a zoo that big!  And Arden is cute!

 It was so fun to run around the zoo with my Arden, she is so fun to hang out with.  We tried a selfie on the way out, but I am not good at selfies.  Plus, I hate them. 

By the time we were done zoo-ing, the hotel shuttle was operating, and so we arranged for it to pick us up.  It was an open air, giant golf cart kind of thing, and it was fun to ride in, though our hair did get messy.  (This picture was pre-ride).

After that we went back to the hotel and got Arden all ready for her meet.  This involves showering, and gymnastics hair.  Gymnastics hair is an arduous task, but I was getting pretty good at it.  Arden did just fine, and got some medals.

The meet was supposed to start at 6, but it started like an hour late.  It was a really big meet, and tons of girls were there, so the meet itself took a long time.  They were in the huuuge convention center and there were like three meets going on at the same hall at the same time.  One of the meets was actually a boys' meet.  There was like, a full hour between Arden's events, so I wandered over and watched the boys' meet for a while, and it was so interesting!  They do six events instead of just 4.  Arden did well on the meet itself, and it is always fun to watch her do her thing.  After the meet was over, there was the standard half hour wait between the meet and the awards.  We snuck out of the awards after Arden's age group was done, but by the time we got out of there it was like 10:30 p.m!

As we walked back to our hotel, which was in the "Gaslight" district, we figured out that we were smack-dab in the middle of nightclub central.  There were lines to get into every other building on the block, and crazy women in ridiculous heels and short skirts on a very cold night.  But it was a fun atmosphere.  Here is Arden under the "Gaslight District" sign.   

I promised Arden some ice cream after the meet, and luckily the huge Ghiradelli store downtown was open until MIDNIGHT!  I was cold so I got the fanciest hot chocolate ever (yum!), and Arden got a sundae that was huge.  It was the perfect end to a fun day!  I loves my Arden so much and I am so proud of her and how hard she works.

The next day we had some time before our flight, so after we checked out we walked over the top of the convention center and did a little shopping at Harbor Village again.  Here is Arden on the top:

From there we took another Uber (we are Uber pros by this time!) and headed out to Coronado Island, so we could see the ocean waves.  Here we are crossing the bridge we have been looking at all weekend:

We headed straight for the beach.  It was windy, and made it feel cold, but it was so beautiful!  I could watch the waves all day.

 We love to feel the sand beneath our feet!

I know you can't see it very well in the picture, but the sand here on this island actually looks like gold!  (I looked it up and it is due to a mineral deposit offshore that contains mica).  Just trust me. 

 We took a beach break and ate food at a cute little restaurant.  We of course had to eat outside in the warm sunshine, because we knew it was our last meal before heading back to the frigid north.  Look how fabulous!

We walked back over and said goodbye to the beach, and then we headed back to the hotel, picked up our luggage, and off to the airport we went.  It was a short trip, but so much fun!  We should make it an annual tradition. :)

January and February 2019

Back to January and February 2019. 

It was winter, and for some reason I didn't take a lot of pictures.  I don't have a lot of memories of exactly what was going on, but it probably involved a lot of us just plugging along. 

Every day, I would wake up early with Arden around 6:45, and get her breakfast and pack her lunch (she would never eat school lunch for some reason).  Dax usually woke up by himself while Arden was getting ready.  I would usually have to wake up Cora after Arden left around 7:30, and then work on getting her and Dax breakfast, sometimes lunch (Dax usually liked school lunch, and Cora would do about half and half.)  Then we would try and get out the door for elementary school around 8:35.  We were still car pooling with the Olsen's, our across the street neighbors, but now that Arden and Dan were in junior high, it was just us, and Luke (who was Cora's age), and Henry, who was in 1st grade.  Henry usually kept us entertained with his constant stream of talking/singing/yelling. 

After the kids were at school, I'd head to work.    Here is a winter view out my window.  I like where I sit at work, I have one wall that is pretty much this window, and I have windows on one other wall as well, and that one faces south, so I could soak up some sunshine even in winter. 

After school, generally we would be driving around to various practices.  Arden always had gymnastics, each and every day for hours and hours.  Dax did basketball, and was lucky enough to get Rudy Gobert's number.  

Dax didn't dribble often, but somehow I got a picture of one of the times he did.  It made me nervous, I am sure.  Dax was lucky to always have nice coaches who taught him a lot and did it in a fun way.

Arden's "meet season" started in January.  She competed as a "platinum" instead of a Level 6, since she never quite got her back handspring on the balance beam.  Here is a picture of her doing her bars routine.  This year was the first year they moved from the lower bar to the upper bar, which was fun to watch.

 I usually took videos of her, so I don't have very many pictures, but here is one. 

And here is a video of Arden's bar routine. Yay!

 

Arden's floor routine was to the music from "Beat It" from Michael Jackson, which I thought was a brilliant idea.  It is too long of a video to post here, but if you want to see it, let me know and I'll send you a link. :)  

Arden always likes getting medals too!

Cora played indoor soccer, and did art with Jodi, was in the play at school, was in the STEM club, and activity days (no pictures, sorry).  Dax also did scouts, and Arden did young women.  I was also training for the Boston marathon.  Between all of that and dinner and homework, there wasn't a lot of time to sit around.

In February, it was Valentines Day!  Which means Valentines boxes for elementary school kids.  Arden remarked about how Valentines is no fun in junior high.  Truth!  Cora's box was a pig, and Dax's was a alligator/dragon kind of thingie.  Cute!

We of course still go to the cabin in the winter time.  There is usually sledding, but when the snow was very deep we busted out the snow shoes and gave them a try.  Here is meeee (wearing Preston's shoes)!

Here is Cora (wearing mine).  Everyone tried them out a little, but me and Cora went for a little walk up the hill by our sledding run. 

She is so cute!  

And that is about it...Arden and I went on a trip to San Diego, so that is the next post!