Last Days

Greetings everyone. Plenty to get through and I've got an early morning ahead of me so I'll try to move quickly. Most of the week, I've been carefully and painstakingly recovering from my tattoo a week ago. First few days is always difficult but the tegerderm helps keep it clean. The catch is that no matter what, it hurts badly peeling it off. It was super nice hearing sweet compliments at KT from guests of Mia's awesome drawing abilities. She totally likes hearing about it too. Throughout the week, I worked on a table with the talented Micah and Gigi. Tuesday after Mia's school picture, we went over and began to make some progress on the pieces. They even let Mia help with the bench and table. The bench is almost done and the table has a few more sessions left on it. I think it'll be great complete and I'm stoked to help. Thursday, I wanted to pack the day with lots of fun for the diva. She's running out of Summer and has been getting a bit stir crazy in the house. We first met up with Cecilia and her sister at the park and the girls played and played. Later while walking Remi, we stopped by Noelle's house and Mia played with her, Ellahrose, Katelyn and their sisters. On the walk back home, Mia said "today was a REALLY fun day". Always happy to hear that.  Thursday night was the coaches meeting. Mia met up with Cecilia and played at the school while her Dad and I went to the meeting. We have 5 girls from one school and another 4 from OL which are all friends. Mia, Cecilia, Ryan and Eliah. Hopefully, everyone bonds and things go great. We'll be missing a few players for our first team practice, but we'll make the most of it. Mia's stoked the shirts are blue.

Friday, Mia met up with Vida at the Zoo and the pair hung out for an hour and a half checking out all the animals. The major highlight was that Dash, the mail red panda was out and about. Talk about good timing. You basically can never see the red pandas out in the Summer due to the warm temps. Mia could have watched the cute fella for hours but we obviously couldn't stay very long. I was fortunate to get some cute pictures of him. All in all, awesome time hanging with her buddy and her friendly family.

Saturday, I got up real early to watch Chelsea beat Norwich. Tammy got two fantastic goals which helped secure the win. Great job Blues. Later, we ventured to Madison with my in-laws to visit Tommy and check out the Zoo. Due to the severe lack of parking, we ended up going to the gardens first for a while. Mia enjoyed snapping plenty of pictures of all the beautiful flowers. Later, we tried the zoo again but with an hour left before closing, not a lot of animals were out including her red pandas. She did get to see a capybara and some other fun animals. Later, Mia went swimming in the chilly pool at Tommy's place. Brave kid. Tommy and her Dad looked pretty cold :P

We grabbed a bite for dinner at Monty's before calling it a day. We'll have to hit up the zoo again earlier in the day. Sunday, I cut grass, we did some housework and it wasn't long before I had to head to work.

This week, Jill's got some long long nights ahead of her. The poor woman's going to work herself exhausted every night but luckily, she has family for support. I've got to help complete the art projects, maybe squeeze in a lesson or two. Mia meets her teacher on Wednesday and she's stoked. We may have a visitor coming up Saturday so we'll see what adventure awaits. That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Birthday Diva Turns 8

Good evening everyone! We closed out March with quite the busy week. Here we go. Jill and I took off Wednesday for Mia's 8th birthday. Hard to believe she turned 8. She's grown so much and made such an amazing amount of friends. I could go on and on, but yeah we took the day off to do a little celebration at night. Mia opened up her Uncle Bryan's gift he sent her before school which was an awesome #10 soccer necklace and she immediately put it on for school. Totally loves it! Anyways, she had made prior to her birthday some tasty birthday macarons for her entire class. She's bringing a couple tomorrow for her teacher who was ill on her actual birthday as a little surprise. They were super good and  Christina Tosi on Twitter liked how they turned out!

 I did my traditional "join Mia for lunch on her birthday" thing I've done since Kindergarten. She was pretty stoked as well as her friends. They obnoxiously fought to sit next to us. Why? WHY?? It was pretty funny but eventually everyone sit and we ate. The girls liked Mia's red velvet cake sketch and they discussed what they planned for recess. It always comes down to "we'll do whatever Mia and her Dad do" . Okay..
The kids played a bit, talked and eventually did some chalk drawing. I joined them drawing which strangely getting a lot of attention from other kids. The girls drew little "Happy Birthday Mia" messages on the blacktop. All in all, really fun time that I always love doing for her on her birthday.

Later, we met up with both sets of grandparents and went to StoneFire Pizza. Not the best day for a birthday dinner there. It was PACKED and very difficult to move about the place. Mia had fun and picked out some oh-so-90s gel pens that she totally has been enjoying. Thursday I was off as well, but nothing major to report. We did some cleaning in preparation for the epic party. Mia and Jill made some amazing cakes for her party.

Saturday came, and in the morning, we did some last minute cleaning and getting everything ready for Mia's 9 crazy friends to arrive. I picked up the pizza and wasn't long after I returned home, they started arriving. Kaitlyn, Tenley, Charlie, Cecilia, Vida, Scarlett, Ryan, Hayden and Noelle all joined in celebrating Mia's birthday with a unique Red Panda themed birthday party. My incredibly helpful in laws helped a ton with the event. My Mother in law did a bow-making station with a group of girls, my Father in law kept Remi out of trouble, Jill did a a Red Panda quiz/gummy necklace station and myself had girls throwing "rice balls" into a cardboard red panda box with holes as well as a guessing game. The kids had a great time. They later had some cake, popcorn, Mia opened gifts and ended the day with a custom piñata made by Mia Mother in law. All in all, great time and Mia loves all her amazing gifts. She truly has some really great friends and had the best time with all of them.

We watched Big Hero 6 and had some left over pizza to close out the evening. Today I got up early to watch Chelsea take on Cardiff. Once again, ugly match but somehow, Chelsea pulled off a 2-1 win. Cardiff honestly got robbed of at least a draw but in the end, we needed the points. The season is pretty close to over and if we even think the Blues will finish top 4. Liverpool unfortunately got a win today and are currently in 1st. Ugh. Chelsea are back in action Wed but I'm stuck working.

 Later I went to work. When I came home, I discovered a series of little pranks for April Fools Day from my dear Mia. She definitely has the Justman prank bone in her. there was an angry face on the milk carton with a note exclaiming 'I think the milk went bad" as well as "something is wrong with the eggs" with faces drawn on them. When I went upstairs to change, there was a cut out spider on my pillow and on our mac, was a silly face drawn in Photoshop. Good grief kid. This week is Mia's teacher's last week at OL for the year. She's going on Maternity leave so I'll be continuing my tradition of a one-day drawing with her class on Tuesday. I've drawn with her class every year for the last 3 years so it's totally going to be fun this year since Mia's in her class. Totally excited. Saturday is Mia's family birthday party so it should be pretty fun.