Day Trip

Good morning everyone. Hope you are able to stay warm on this SUPER cold day. We had a busy week, but it was pretty fun. I've been coming up with some fun and cool concepts for some Match Day posters for the Torrent games. I think it'll be great to get the word out. Last night I thought it'd e good that if someone was at the game, they kept the  FB page updated during the game. I'm going to be busy as it is pounding the drums and chanting with the supporters group. I may go to some of the games early to get some training photos snapped for everything and anything graphic design related. I started working on the pre-season schedule. So far it looks solid and I look forward to the league update and schedule release to get everything finalized. My brother got his Torrent kit in the mail recently and it looks really good. He said it's very light and fits like a glove. We have a supporters group meeting this weekend at the Nomad so we'll have a lot of different things to discuss. I hope to get some match day posters printed as mock ups to share my vision.

Wednesday, Mia and I watched the Chelsea game at our house. It was a draw, but a close one. Would have been nice to get the win, but what can you do? They tied this weekend against Everton (missed the game) but it went right down to the wire. Speaking of which, the weekend. We left Saturday morning for Indy and stayed at a super nice hotel in Merrillville. The place was very cool. Own kitchen was great, but Mia really liked the TV in the bedroom. She was reunited with long-lost pal Caleb. Jill's friends met us there for a weekend of fun, laughs and food. We had a great time. The kids got along well and even got to swim in the indoor pool. Mia's favorite part was probably the pie-in-your-face game. You know, the game where they put creme on the hand, you crank it and get pie flung at you when you least suspect it. I won, but the kids loved watching others get pied.  Sunday, we said our goodbyes and drove home. Great weekend with her friends who have always been very nice to me.

It was a cold morning today. Too cold to take Remi out, but we made it to the park and he didn't even mind a bit. BRRRR..Mia shivered her way to school on this frigid MLK day. She'll be learning once again about him and his dream. This week, meeting Saturday, Jill and Mia will be going to nephew Easton's birthday party Sunday. That's about it for now. Thanks for reading!!

Faintly Falling Ashes

Good evening everyone. Hope the weekend was good and if you're experiencing the frigid temps currently, that you're not frozen solid. Mia had her first week back at school, as well as Jill to work. Both didn't seem that excited to get "back to normal" after their time off in Ohio. Mia had a good week at school, and seems to be doing well with everything. This week, she's got the letter "M" for Show and Tell so she's stoked and wants to bring Mommy, Marie..etc. Sorry kid, but how about a picture of them together? Wednesday after school Mia and her BFF Olivia went sledding at "Pickle Pond" hill. Perfect day for it. Temps were good and the ladies had a blast. A couple falls here and there but overall, it was fun. Her Dad and I always enjoy spending time with the girls. Olivia even gave Mia a belated X-Mas gift of a Minnie Mouse picture with "MIA" in it, pink frame and everything. Mia loves it. "Daddy, this is SO cool!"

Saturday was mostly enjoyable. Mia picked out some patterns to make a pillow case and blanket with her Grandma Missyshell (for Sunday). I came home tonight and she's got both of them in bed. Looks like they finished them with no problem. Of course it's Monster High, Mia's big obsession. Later, we had my parents over for dinner. Jill made the most delicious teriyaki turkey burgers with pineapple and onion. What Jill was REALLY excited about, was her Hawaiian bread she made with her brand new bread maker. It took quite a while to complete but it was well worth the wait. Even this morning, still super tasty with lots of amazing flavor. I've got a feeling we'll be eating lots of homemade bread.

This morning, I got up and watched the FA Cup game between Chelsea FC vs Scunthorpe. I hate that I have to look high and low all over the web for a solid stream of the game just because I don't get Fox Sports 1. I was tempted to go to my Dad's to watch, but luckily found a decent stream on youtube. Solid game. Great to see Costa scoring again and especially a good day for Ruben Loftus-Cheek who got his FIRST goal on the team (he previously played on the youth CFC team). Hope to see many more goals from the youngster. They play this Wednesday (My Dad says he doesn't get the channel) so hopefully I can watch it at home on the computer.

This week, not a lot planned. I've got some Torrent projects to work on and other freelance stuff. Speaking of Torrent, The Flood supporters scarves came in and they look great. We've got a supporters group meeting next week so I'll get to see one in person soon. We're leaving Saturday though for a day-trip to a town in Indiana with Jill's friends. Should be a lot of fun. Mia gets to play with her long-distance friend Caleb.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading.

ADA Walk

Good morning everyone. It was once again, a very eventful week over here with lots to discuss. Early in the week, my Dad went in for eye surgery. His retina was detached so they had to place a gas bubble in, and four hours later, he was out of surgery and on his road to recovery. It means no PS3, and watching TV with his face down looking at a mirror. All kind of fun for my poor Mom who has to help put in multiple drops a day in that eye. When I picked up Mia from school on Wednesday, she was excited to go over by him and bring him a surprise milkshake to help him feel better. We watched the Champions League game between Chelsea and Tel Aviv. Great game. 4-0. Great to see Chelsea back in a winning form. They were the only English club to have one the first game in the UCL. Mia especially loves it when they score because I toss her up in the air. Just like I did when they WON the UCL when she was a much smaller diva.


Thursday, she was off from school, so I had promised that we'd check out M&M Gymnastics in New Berlin. Her friend Olivia goes there and had strongly recommended it. Thursdays for one hour, it's $4 and you have total freedom to the massive place. The first floor had a wide variety of gymnastic equipment including pummel horses, rings and foam pits. Mia mostly enjoyed the semi-trampoline that she jump across to the crash pad. We ventured upstairs to the balance beams and kid-sized rings. Overall, she really liked the place and could probably handle gymnastics. She gets very defeated when she can't do something first try. *Ahem* soccer, ballet...The other day, she was talking about how much she misses swim class. So I don't know yet if we'll sign up for gymnastics. Possibly.

Friday, we packed the car and made the 4 hour, 45 min trip to Indiana for the ADA walk in the city. Mia did pretty decent on the way down. Slept part of the way, drew some pictures. The next day, it rained and rained and rained. Great day for rain in Indianapolis. :( Luckily, most of the 5K the rain had stopped or was just a cool mist. I had carried Mia 85% of the time, the other percent, she was chasing Caleb or walking on her own. It was a great turn out and a lot of fun. I've always wanted to do some sort of walk before and since this was going to a cause close and personal to Jill's friends, I was more than happy to do it :) It was a really nice weekend, and most of the drive home, Mia slept. Well, at least 2 hours. She'd wake up every once in a while and ask if we were still in Indy. No, we're still 3 hours from home...Okay back to sleep. Saturday, Chelsea played Arsenal and won! 2-0! I watched the highlights last night and it looked like they were back to their same old winning ways. Costa was a target for his antics and Arsenal fans were throwing a fit. Back to normal as usual :)


Today, she's on a field trip with her Grandpa Chicago at the Elegant Farmer for school. I'm hoping she has a lot of fun. She's always loved field trips and has a very special bond with her Grandpa. That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Say "Cheese!"

Good Evening. I'm eating a big bowl of mac and cheese with extra mozzarella as I type this blog posting tonight. SO....hungry. It was a pretty good week. Mia's doing great with school and even had homework. Well, tracing letters and coloring in what the word that it spells. What is supposed to be fun homework but it sort of frustrates her. She had picture day on Tuesday and swears she smiled. She's been meeting new people and even was invited to a little girl's birthday party. I don't know if that was a real invite, but at least she's meeting new kids to play with at recess. When we came home, Mia rocked on my drums. I swear the kid loves my kit. It's been a while since she's played, but she did a great job.

Saturday, I got up nice and early to watch the Chelsea vs Everton game. Last season, the won 6-3. It was the highest scoring game of the season, and easily one of my favorites to watch. This game was pure garbage. We lost 3-1. WHY? Why is Chelsea performing so poorly. I think some of the mistakes were starting Mikel and the holes that the forwards were getting through on defense. Ivanovic was so bad. Begovic, the backup keeper who will be starting every game since Courtois got sidelined with a knee injury did his best. It's his uninspired defense that left him stranded at times. I sincerely home we can win this first Champions League game Wednesday. We're sitting in 15th or 16th place of the Premier League table, 11 points behind Man City which is just unheard of. Hazard needs to find his magic, and Costa needs to show that he wants the win.

So it was a very frustrating rest of the Saturday for me. Just thinking "what is going on with the team? How do we win the whole thing last year, and this season we can barely win"? We went to the Farmer's Market as well. Didn't get too much this around. I got a very lackluster caramel cashew muffin. Later, we took Mia to the Imagination Station in Oconomowoc. I've heard from countless people that this place is purely amazing. It was. It's a massive park with a ton of different things kinds of all ages can play on. Ran into some old friends too. Tons of kids everywhere. Mia didn't want to leave. She also wanted to join a birthday party that was going on near the park as well.

Later, we made a nice dinner. We had plans to go out for dinner, Jill and I and have my parents watch Mia. We haven't gone out on a date since the Winter, so I was looking forward to this. Her head felt a little cloudy and I wasn't feeling that great, so we stayed home. Hopefully, we'll have a chance to do it  some day. This week Friday, we'll be Indiana-bound for the Step Out for Diabetes event. Jill's excited to see her best pals again. Mia will get to play with long distance friend Caleb as well.

I finally completed the dog portrait. It turned out pretty good. She was happy with it and I was too. Now, onto other projects. Mia wants me to paint a sea turtle in her room on a blue wall. We'll see if I can do it. I also want to do some water colour work too.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

Roadtrip

Didn't realize it's been several weeks since I've written. One week we were out of state, but I'll get to that later plus all kinds of other things. Hey, how's everyone doing? So the last time I wrote, we were taking Mia to the Wisconsin State Fair. It was very very busy, but she had a lot of fun. She ended up spending a lot of time on the rides. That's right. RIDES. If we would have had more money, she would have ridden them all. She ended up going on roughy 5 or more rides including my fav one, a small Harley that popped a wheelie. I sat in the side car and it was hilarious watching her pop a wheelie yelling "AHHHHHHHHHHHHH" in pure excitement. She also rode a ferris wheel too. Probably the biggest ride she's ever been on. It was a great time, and we all had fun.

So last week Wednesday, we packed up the car and headed down to Indiana (first stopping in Illinois to  drop off Remi). I was slightly concerned leaving Illinois later then hoped since it's a 5 hour drive, but Mia was able to squeeze in a much-needed nap in that time frame allowing us some quiet driving. When she woke up, she was hungry and had to go potty, which was perfect because we could stop at some McDonalds in the middle of nowhere in Indiana. Showed Mia what a corn field looks like (exciting right??) and explained that's where corn comes from. Corn is probably her all-time favourite veggie. Anyways, after dinner we headed back on the road to Greenwood. She was good the rest of the way, and had to make yet another potty stop, except we didn't see any places to stop. We got off the freeway and got her out to pee in a field. Bladder shy, and didn't even have to go. Crap. Oh well. Got back on and made it to Jill's friend's house (Jacqui, Rick and their kiddo Caleb) Jill's got 3 really close friends and this week was about them getting to spend the time together. Leanne came in too from Illinois, and her friend Nicole also lived in Indiana. One of the days, they went out and shopped and I watched the kids. Gave me a reality check on what it would be like having twins. Yikes. One wants to watch shows about firefighters, one wants to watch Tinkerbell. Sounds fun right? We went to the park and they had fun running around.

The next day we took the kids to the Indiana Children's Museum. Mia was crabby part of the trip, but she had fun in the China exhibit. Specifically the Chinese restaurant. The kids could make pretend food in woks and bring it out to the parents sitting at the tables. She bad a blast doing this. She got her name written in Chinese too but a calligraphy writer. We rode the Great Wall of China slide before heading home for the day. One of the last things we did was go to the Indiana State Fair. Jill's aunt drove in from Ohio and was here for that day adventure. Mia went on a few rides, but just didn't seem as excited as she was for the Wisco fair. She really enjoyed watching this small marching band group playing songs. They all dressed silly and one of them let her play on the buttons of his sax. Easily her new fav instrument. She had a wonderful time swimming in the pool at Aunt Gail's hotel. The day of our departure, she was being all cute and fun with Caleb, then surprisingly kissed him. When I show her the photo of her kissing him, she goes " I DONT KNOW WHY I KISSED THAT BOY! BOYS ARE GROSS" The ride home was long, but we made it. Mia had a great time. Sadly, I brought back a congestion and cold and have been stuck with it since Monday :( Now Mia's stuffed up. Poor girl.

After work Monday I received the devastating news about Robin Williams's suicide. A tragic loss for his family and the film industry. His depression got the best of him and it's heartbreaking. I remember getting up on Saturday mornings as a kid, my dad would have Good Morning Vietnam on. Classic movie. I laughed my ass off watching the Birdcage a few years ago with my and I saw Jumanji in theatres. I've always admired Williams. His comedy was spot on, he really got into every role he did, but I never realized what inner-demons he was dealing with. I knew he had substance abuse problems but didn't know he had depression. A friend of mine worked with him once and said how nice of a guy he truly was.
inlaws

What's frustrating is the "he chose suicide, so it's hard to feel bad for him" comments. When you're depressed it's not like being simply sad. You're stuck in this "I can't think of a good reason to live" thought in your head every single moment. Everything hurts, moving is a pain, going out is bad. So when you're depressed, you need help, and a lot of times people go through depression without looking for help and eventually it can catch up to you and end your life. It's really awful. I hope more people can seek help instead of taking their own life.

Took Mia to the park with my brother and his kids. It was a long nice walk. The kids had fun for a short while before we headed back. Tonight, I'm off! Took the day off for Zoo Ala Carte with Jill, Mia, Grandma and my sister. Should be fun. This pounding headache needs to go away though. 4 DAYS TILL THE PREMIER LEAGUE SEASON STARTS! LETS GO CHELSEA!! Thanks for reading!

Indiana Trip 2013 or..Road to Chelsea vs Inter Milan

How's it going? Missed a week on the blog because we took a family trip down to Indiana. I'll get back to that in a bit. So my 30th birthday was the 26th. Jill's family came up for the weekend. After I got home from work, Everyone was waiting for me with a banana creme pie. Mia said "Daddy, blow out your candles!" Awesome evening. Next day, my brother n law and I went to go see Despicable Me 2 (which was HILARIOUS). When we got back, there were a quite a few cars in the driveway. I figured "okay my family is here". Opened the door, and a TON of people were here. Friends and family came for mine and my sister's surprise birthday. Couldn't believe it. It was a great time. Jill & her friend Leanne made Minion cupcakes. They looked so rad.  I got some great gifts including the last Big Bang Theory season, some HIMYM seasons, an awesome Chelsea ball, and much more. A few days later, we packed the car up and drove down to Illinois (after work) First time EVER Mia was super happy driving down to Illinois after 10:30pm. Way cool.

Wednesday, we left Jill's family's house, and made the 4.5 hour drive to Greenwood Indiana. Mia did mostly well, but I'd like not to do any more long car rides for a while. Jill's got some friends down in Indiana, so it was great to be able to stay with them. Mia enjoyed playing their little boy Caleb. Thursday morning, we hit up the Indianapolis Zoo. Very cool zoo. Fun to walk around. Mia's favourite part was the butterfly exhibit. She walked around the little area with her arms straight out trying to get butterflies to land on her. It was really cute. So after the zoo, both kids passed out in the car, and Jill and her buddy dropped me off at Lucas Oil Stadium for the game. Man, what an exciting place to be. Indianapolis had a LOT of Chelsea fans roaming around the city. Everyone excited about the game. So I got there, picked up my ticket and my FREE Chelsea flag. They didn't allow anyone in thrill 6:30 so I had to wait outside for a while. Ended up talking to some guys for a while, killing time. Easy to make friends when everyone supports the same team :) So after I got inside, and grabbed some beer and dinner.

After eating dinner, I grabbed a program, a free sample of Guinness Black (with a souvenir cup) and headed to my seat. Met a family in front of my seat from Eau Claire (for real!) and the guys/girls who had seats next to me were from Chicago. They were super nice. The game was fantastic. Chelsea won 2-0. Both goals were amazing. Most of the people in my section were Blues fans. which was awesome. Took a lot of great pictures with the DSLR. Not an easy task, but I was happy with what I shot. So after the victory, we walked down to the area where we were supposed to be escorted to the pitch and meet the players (for an hour). Well, we
made it down, and waited. Security immediately told me and my new buddies that "NO PLAYERS ARE COMING OUT!" and they kicked us out after 30 minutes. I don't know who's more to blame here. The promoters on Living Social for false advertising that I'd get an hour on the pitch with photo opportunity (except it didn't "say" that they'd come out) just "a rare and exciting opportunity". Totally bummed about it. The seat was worth the money (thanks again Mom/Dad/Tom/Michelle/Jill) but it would have been amazing to have met the players like the ticket had said. Total BS. Oh well, not much I can do about it now. The game was amazing, met some great people and The Blues won. All in all, great evening.


Next day, we went to the fair. Jill's aunt drove in from Columbus Ohio to spend some time with Mia. She hasn't seen her since Mia was a newborn. I was quite happy that Mia really enjoyed their time together. The fair was fun. Very similar to the Wisco one (except no vendors) Mia liked the animals, but NOT the rides. She wanted to go on this slow 5mph train ride. As soon as she sat down, she FLIPPED OUT! No more rides till she's older. Way too traumatic.

She mostly survived the long drive back to Illinois. The next day we drove back to Wisconsin, and she slept the whole time :) Great little family trip. Awesome seeing some friends and family, and of course Chelsea play. Nothing too eventful going on this weekend. I probably should cut the grass since it's been a while. hope to play some soccer Sunday. We'll see. Thanks for reading!