Happy Holidaze

Good evening everyone. Going to bang this one out quickly because I'm barely keeping myself awake at the moment. It's been a crazy busy week but mainly a ton of fun. My brother and his family arrived last week via railway so I picked them up and brought them back to our house for pizza. My half brother Todd and our good friend Leanne also met up at our house for a few days of fun. It was great catching up and there was even more fun in store the next day. We went to StoneFire Pizza for lunch. The kids had so much fun playing all the games on Christmas Eve morning. We had a go at the VR game but Luke and Alex kept having issues walking so they ended up giving us credits. Mia and I attempted to do some rock climbing as well. Super fun and reminded me how much fun my friend Andy and I had at Adventure Rock a handful of years ago. The wall I climbed at StoneFire seemed to be more difficult since you had mainly window sills to pull yourself up on.

While I wait up top for Mia to try to catch up, I heard a girl crying from behind me. I turned around and saw a small child dangling from the rope climb. The entire staff looked confused so I repelled down the wall and switched clamps to carefully rescue her. I climbed the rope climb carefully and calmed her down. I released her foot and slowly we made our decent. The Mother was so relieved I jumped into rescue her and throughout the rest of our time at StoneFire Pizza, she would smile and thank me. Just happy she was okay. Later, Jill and I had a Christmas Party to attend to for her boss. Great food and fun times.
The next day, we had Christmas Eve dinner at my parents and everyone opened gifts. Lots of fun playing card games and having an all-out indoor snowball fight (soft balls). Christmas Day, Mia was SO happy we had a dusting of snow. She immediately got up and gave us our painted glassware she made on her own. "DO YOU KNOW HOW DIFFICULT IT WAS TO KEEP THESE A SECRET??!" She did great. She also gave me a pencil holder and Jill a clay giraffe. She loved all of our presents, especially her new snowboard and her Mia and Red Panda Adventures book. She always looks forward to reading them. Jill's family came over and gave out some gifts to us.  My family came over later and we had some delicious pasta as well as Jill's tiramisu (I assume is was good). Awesome evening. The kids decorated cookies which were super fun.

Boxing Day, I picked up Bryan and the family and we watched the first of two soccer games. Fiorentina unfortunately lost to Parma, but at least Chelsea got the win against Watford. Later, we suited up and did some much-needed snow tubing. Alex really wanted to have snow here after the long train ride so this was the closest thing we could deliver. Bryan joined us as well as we raced the iced tube trails. We had a blast racing and the highlight was Bryan slipping out of the tube and having to run down the tube run chasing after it. We didn't last too long as the kids were getting pretty tired but it was a fantastic time. We had some leftovers when we got home and called it a night. This whole week has gone by so quickly...

Today, Mia and Jill traveled to Ohio to visit Aunt Gail. It was an early and rainy drive to Midway Airport but Mia was excited to see her aunt that she sees about this time of the year. They'll return on New Years Eve so I'll work and try to get everything ready for my week off in a few weeks to lead art classes for the big school-wide art show coming in March. So much to do, so little time. For now, it's time for a shower and to hit the bed. That's all for now thanks for reading!

Snow Much Fun

Good evening everyone. First week of school of 2018 is in the books. Well, part of the week since the kids were off on Monday. Mia wasn't thrilled to go back, but had an easy week homework-wise and survived. The temps were pretty chilly so she had indoor recess all week. Not a bad thing since her good friend Cecilia taught her how to play checkers. Cool! Mia may have beat her one or two times. They didn't really keep score and just had fun, which is always really nice. The two wanted to hang out/do a sleepover on Saturday but Jill wasn't feeling good so that wasn't going to happen. We'll get back to that later.

Wednesday, I watched the exciting CFC/Arsenal game. Just really crazy end-to-end football the whole game. I had to split to go and get Mia and we ran back to see the last few minutes only to find out that two more goals happened and in the end, it was a draw 2-2. Wow. Morata blew a few major chances and it's too bad because we really need the win and many more to try and attempt to catch City and beat Man U. Oh well. We picked up Jill at the studio and had dinner before Mia crashed for the night.

Saturday I watched some of the FA Cup match Chelsea vs Norwich. An uninspiring draw 0-0 was the final score sadly. Mia did some science experiments with Jill while I watched some of the game and did some designing. Later, we went snow tubing. Mia's been looking forward to snow tubing at The Rock Snowpark all week so despite the cold temp, we did it. Jill watched as Mia and I tubed for 2 hours. Such a good time. I brought my GoPro and new stick to capture the first adventure of 2018. Love going there and Mia enjoyed watching the snowboarders and skiers perform jumps while we'd take the conveyor back up to the top. Next time we go, she'd like to go with friends. We tried to get a group or a couple kids together, but it just didn't happen. Later, we went home and made some dinner. Mia had planned to stay at my parents house for a sleepover, but it was just to cold for Jill and I to take her back out so she was content crashing at home for the night. The kid really really likes sleeping over at places these days and hopes to plan a sleepover at Cecilia's or have her come over here in the near future. The girls talk about it ALL the time at school. It's too funny.

Sunday, Mia and I hung out while Jill and her parents went to church. We went out to Panera before I went in to work.

This week, not much going on that's noteworthy. I have to send in my drone that doesn't work back to Amazon. I'm going to have to do some heavy research to find a better one that has little problems. This one was having issues connecting to the phone to shoot video/photos so tomorrow, I'll send back the faulty drone. Hopefully they won't give me any issues. That's all for now, thanks for reading!