Call Mr. Plow, that's the name..

Good Evening. Hope everyone had a great weekend. The last time I posted in the blog, we were lacking some power/Internet in the house, but alas, everything is back to normal, and we even have a no light fixture installed in the kitchen (to replace the one that shorted out). Friday, Mia had school. After I gave her a hug and kiss goodbye, I registered for 4K, so she'll be staying at Smarty Pants in the Fall, and going to Orchard Elementary for kindergarten in 2016 (which is across the street from us). It was a sort of conundrum for us at first. Smarty Pants can be pricy, but the class size is smaller and the teaching staff is really nice. Mia of course, loves it there anyways. She painted me a picture of myself in blue.

Saturday, Jill had to work the Pet Expo in West Allis most of the day, so Mia and I watched the Chelsea vs Man City game. Man, was I hoping we could get a bigger gap and win that one. Rey's goal was great off a nice pass from Hazard. Mia went nuts when he scored, but quickly before the end of the first half, Silva snuck one in when Courtois was vulnerable. Ugh. We finished with a draw at 1-1. I had a feeling it would end like that. It was nice that some of the crowd at Stamford Bridge was nice to Lamps when he came on in the 77' minute. So, we're still ahead on the table. Hopefully can get 3 more points this weekend at Aston Villa. I saw today they made it official that Andres Schurrle is going back to the German league at Wolfsburg. He had some good moments in his career at Chelsea, so hopefully he can get back to form in a more familiar league. Mohammed Sallah is also departing for Fiorentina. Another guy who rarely got on the pitch. Good luck guys.

After the game, Mia and I went to the Pet Expo. Met all kinds of different dogs. She enjoyed watching the agility test for some of the dogs. They raced some fire fighters. One even beat one of the guys. Mia liked the K-9 police dog demo as well. We loved this super soft husky named Sven. Mia and I went to my bro's hockey game later. They won in a real close game. We saw him net the final goal when they pulled their goalie. Nice to see his team win every once in a while :P Last few games we went to, they weren't so lucky.

Sunday, I worked, and spent a lot of time snow blowing between last night and this morning. The drive home was insane. The freeway was fine, but the exit ramp was super sketchy. So lucky I made it home after dropping a coworker off at her house since her call literally, fell completely apart.

Other then that, that's about it. Need to get some art accomplished soon. We also have a lot of different things coming up. Our Florida trip is in June, so I need to look for some flights as well as book some things. We're only spending a day at Disney and need to make the most of it. That's all for now. Thanks for reading :)

Week From Hell

Good Afternoon. I'm pretty behind on my blogging. I'll explain why shortly, but more importantly, last week's week from hell. Monday at work, I got a call from Jill's dad. Weird. He said that Jill wasn't feeling real well, and I should probably come home Luckily, there was coverage at work, and I booked it home. Jill was experiencing chest pains that lead to her back and it was hard to move. We waited to see if it would subside, but after about an hour, we headed to the hospital. We waited and waited. A hand full of tests later, and they had some results. About 1:30am, they said that Jill had gallstones, and gave us a name of a surgeon if we decide to go that route to remove the stones. Jill would prefer to go the more holistic way. She adjusted her diet and will be eating differently. As of lately, she's been doing real well. Not the best way to start the week, but Jill was real glad Mia and I stayed till the early hours with her. We all went to sleep around 3am.

Later in the week, we discovered we had some leaking issues with our kitchen sink, so that's in the process of getting fixed. Wednesday, Mia and I hung out with Birthday Boy and nephew/cousin Easton at the trampoline park. They had a lot of fun. Friday, Mia went to school. Before we left, I stuck some laundry in the wash machine. When I got back from dropping her off, I saw the floor was all soaked. A rag had got in the bin and plugged up the drain which lead to water over flooding everywhere. Lucking, I was able to clean up. And just when things couldn't get more frustrating, our circuit breaker fried when Jill was changing a lightbulb. Part of our house is without power including internet/wifi, the den, our entire kitchen and part of the basement as well as the garage, Cooking and cleaning the kitchen in the dark has been oh so fun. So that explains why I haven't been able to blog. I picked up Mia from school and she was crying. The boys in a 4k class were screaming very loudly in the gym and she got real upset. :( Saturday, we went to Easton's birthday party and she had a blast!

Chelsea's out of the FA cup, but we've got bigger hardware to worry about. Hoping the week improves. Off to work I go. Thanks for reading.

Do The Penguin Slide!

Good morning everyone. Hope you all enjoyed your week, and that if you're a Packers fan, you're feeling better today :) We'll get back to that later. It was a busy week, but we had a lot of fun. Earlier in the week, I took Mia sledding. I made the attempt at this golf course real close to our house. The fresh powder was too deep and we couldn't get good tracks to get her down the hill. So, before we gave up on the day, we tried a different hill. Mia LOVED this park's sledding hill! It was big enough to get some really nice speeds down, and she only fell out once but didn't care. Wednesday (later) I took her to this man-made ice rink in New Berlin to do some skating. It was getting dark, so it was a tad cold for skating, but she did skate a little while and ended up being the only person there. She's getting more confident on skates and is starting to really impress me. Friday she had school and got to finish her snow flake she's been talking about. She told me her favorite part at school was when her friend gave her a hug goodbye when I picked her up. Awww..:)

Saturday, I got up and watched the Chelsea vs Swansea game. Wow. Opening 50 seconds and Oscar got a goal. Perfect way to start. He would finish the game with two goals, Diego Costa secured two as well as Andres Schurrle. We finished 5-0 and took the 3 points easily. What made it even better, was that Sunday morning, Man City fell to Arsenal 2-0 giving us a 5 point lead. After the game Saturday, we went sledding again, and Jill came along. They had a lot of fun. Mia discovered sledding on your belly on the sled was a LOT of fun. The temps were upper 30s so it was real nice. A little TOO warm to skate, but we tried anyway.

We should have left it at that, but we tried skating (Me and Mia did at least) The ice was horrific. If I would have remembered, we could have gotten in for free at Eble Ice Arena near our house. They had free skating Saturday. UGHHHH!!!! Saturday night, we all were working on different projects. The girls were working on custom jewelry and I was hand-painting a Tegan and Sara shirt for Mia. I'm going to have to go over the yellow in "Sara" again. I should have done all of the lettering in White. The hot-pint blank shirt was too heavy of a color to paint on. The colors I used were bright neon ones, but they look quite muted on the shirt. Oh well. Mia loves it still.

Sunday I worked. I am so glad I'm not a Packers fan,  because if I was, and had any chance of watching it post-work, every single customer came in talking about it. From the moment they were winning, to the gut-wrenching loss. The moment I found out they lost, was when this guy came in with tears running down his face, in disbelief. HOW does a team blow a 16-point lead? Did they get cocky? Overly excited for what they thought was a sure-thing? Whatever the case is, everyone is going to be hurting today, except everyone in my house. :) That's one of the many things Jill and I came together on on our "date" the first time we hung out together. She didn't like the Packers or American Football, and I clearly don't either. She even made cupcakes and delivered them to my store before the game was over "to soak up the tears and to celebrate LAST DAY OF PACKERS PLAYING" as she was broadcasting.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

Ice and Snow

Good morning everyone. Hope you all survived that snow& wind crap we got walloped with last week. Driving home from work,  I had saw so many cars in the ditch. Couldn't believe it. Never have I seen so many in the woods, backwards on the freeway or into the barrier wall. It was so sketchy. Friday, Mia had school. It was her first day back since her holiday break. It was slightly difficult to get her motivated out the door because she's been so used to getting up whenever and taking her time. She had a good day though. They added some new things for the kids, and we also got the signup for 4k. We have to make the decision to either keep her there, or go elsewhere for 4k.

Saturday, I got up and watched the Chelsea vs Newcastle game. Awful first half, till Oscar netted a goal. Newcastle were playing real strong for a while keeping the ball off us. 2nd half, we came back in and dominated as much as we could. Diego Costa picked up the 2nd goal. Glad to get the 3 points, and even more happier that Man City drew giving us the lead for the table for now. Jill's parents came into visit as well. We drove around Muskego, a neighboring town, looking at houses they like on Shorwest as well as some in our area. Sunday, I worked and that's about it.

Over the weekend, we finally got our new mac set up. This thing is awesome! nice and bright, fast, sleek and updated. My project whenever I get the chance, is to clean up the desk with all of my art supplies on it in the 2nd bedroom, and make space for our old computer for Mia to use for games and such. I'm also looking forward to building Mia's playlist of her fav songs on my iPod.

This week, I hope to get some more work done on the dog portrait, and possibly get Mia on the ice as well. Our town temporarily built a small rink by a large park and they just opened it Friday afternoon, so I hope to take Mia this week.  Other then that, that's about it. Thanks for reading!!

Feelin' it in Your Bones

Good morning everyone. Hope everyone had a great New Years. Wednesday, Jill and Mia finally came home. We had made plans to do a dinner & a movie and have my Mom watch Mia but since she was coming home late on Weds, we decided to reschedule it for another day. Bummed, but we still had a good night. We watched Tinker Bell-Secret of the Wings for the 20th time with Mia and she threw confetti everywhere at 12am. The rest of Jill's time off, we relaxed and enjoyed as much as we could. New Years Day, I turned on the Chelsea vs Spurs game. Ughhh...It ended 5-3 with the Spurs beating us badly. I don't know what happened, but it was awful. We could blame it on the refs making or missing calls, or just overall a bad performance. It just wasn't a fun game to watch at all. Saturday, we went to visit my great Aunt and give her a belated Christmas gift. Mia chased her old dog around and it was a good time. At this point, the snow was flying ,but we still had fun. All day Saturday, Mia talked about wanting to ice skate. We tried to find this place in Waukesha, an outdoor rink by a huge sledding hill, but it wasn't there. So we drove to the Petit, woke up the Sleeping Beauty from her nap and skated. She had a blast and could keep her self going on her own. It was pretty impressive. She mostly held my hand, but every once in a while, she'd let go "Daddy, I can do this by myself". I love the confidence in her. She insisted she wanted to figure skate, so I would spin her once or twice and she loved it. Saturday night, I sliced my thumb pretty good on Jill's new Ninja fruit/veggie thingy. It's amazing how much you use your thumbs and since I'm lefty at 88% of everything, it's making daily tasks a lot harder.

Sunday, I attempted to find the FA Cup Chelsea vs Watford game (but it wasn't online/TV anywhere). We got even MORE snow, so Mia ran out and played in it. She made the attempt to ride her bike and discovered it just wasn't possible. She goes "why did I wish for snow....??" It was a cold walk this morning, but the moon was bright and beautiful. Nothing too exciting planned for the week. If it wasn't so cold, I'd love to take her sledding. That's all for now. Thanks for reading.

2014-A Year End Review

Good morning everyone. It's been a busy week. Holidays are just about coming to an end with New Years a few days away. Christmas Eve, Jill and I hosted dinner at our house. We decided to skip the traditional meal of turkey and sides and decided "to hell with it, let's get creative" and made a cornucopia of different items and everything was delicious. Jill really outdid herself. Next year if we do it again, we'll cut back on the excessive amount of food. Thank you Pintrest for sparking the creative juices in my culitary creative wifey. All the kids enjoyed the presents. Everything Mia opened, she really loved. All the excitement got her pretty worn out and we got her into bed at a mostly reasonable time. For the first time since she's been born, Jill and I put the presents under the tree together, and set up the food for Santa. She wanted to leave a cupcake with a ton of iced sugar she put on it earlier in the day and organic chocolate milk. Blah. Hahaha. She had a great Christmas morning opening everything, and give Jill and I our "gifts" she picked out for us. Later, we packed up and headed down to Illinois.

It was a pretty good drive down to Jill's family's house. For a short while, she'd pull the "ughhhhh this is taking SO long" but mostly, she did well. She opened all of the gifts Jill's family got and played with everything. For a few days, she practiced and practiced shooting her Merida bow and arrow (from Brave) It's hard, the coordination it takes to do it, but she's getting better. The next time I see her, she actually may be way better at it. Other then that, we just simply enjoyed the off-work time. I got up early on Boxing Day to watch Chelsea FC play. Great game. Great goals. Glad we could get the victory after the holiday.

Saturday, I drove back to Wisconsin. It was pretty hard leaving because Mia kept telling me while holding me tight "Don't let go of my hand Daddy. Please don't". As heartbreaking as that was, I had to split because I had work on Sunday. When I got home, I turned on the Pens/Caps game. I shouldn't have. 3-0 loss was terrible. Sunday, I got up early and watched the Chelsea vs Southhampton game. Not the best game, but the draw will have to do. The refs seemed to be making all the wrong calls at times. Next game is on New Years Day (that I'll actually get to watch in NBC in real time) Usually when I watch the game online, it's about 5 minutes off and starts and stops often. I was quite sad to miss two very awesome indoor soccer opportunities yesterday and today. Yesterday, they had a small tournament from 4-7 and today, they have an early afternoon game. Ughh.

Okay, time for the annual Year End Review. A lot of things happened this year, so let's look at the positives first. Mia, has truly developed into this smart little person. She FINALLY became potty trained. It took a lot of work and different techniques, but she eventually decided for herself to become potty trained. She can count to 20, knows the majority of the letters when written in front of her, and can write her own name out. She started school this year, which was awesome. Smarty Pants Learning Center 3k has developed her into being more social with kids and making new friends. She loves her teacher and always looks forward to telling me about her day after school. (most of the time). She sings ALL the time now. When she's playing with her dolls, sitting on the potty, or just playing in the bathtub, she's singing SOMETHING and it's adorable. Jill started an Etsy store Colorful Noise (the name seems familiar) where she was making jewery pieces from Mia's art and selling them. They looked awesome and we'll see if next year she'll do more. We took a trip to both Florida and Indiana this year. Both were enjoyable. Mia loved the ocean in Florida and hanging out with her friend Caleb in Indy. I got to go to a concert this year. My sister and I saw Tegan and Sara at Summerfest. I was torn between seeing The Lawrence Arms in Madison or T&S in Milwaukee. Ended up seeing Tegan and Sara. The wait was insane, but worth it. Still wish I would have seen TLA. In the Fall, I got to play a game of pick up at Brookfield Indoor. It was a lot of fun. No goals, but a few assists made me happy.

Now for some negatives (unfortunately). She's developed the attitude most kids get at this age. (hence why we call her a threenager) and is feisty about eating and what she doesn't want to eat. I swear, its like a hostage negotiation, but we're working on it, and haven't given up. Jill unfortunately lost her Grandma this year. She was a fun-spirited woman who always treated me like one of her own grand kids. Mia really liked her too.  Remi got to visit the vet emergency room twice this year. One injury while hiking (when he broke his toenail) and then recently, he got into a box of raisins.

Okay, let's look at the goals from last year and see how I did.
Another series of great photographs-Not quite. I need to brainstorm still and think of something truly awesome to do.
if the weather cooperates, make a snow-Minion- The weather didn't. Didn't have the best "snow-Minion" making weather sadly. And this winter has been peculiar since we haven't had snow since November.
Draw a portrait of a Chelsea player-DONE! My Didier Drogba picture turned out alright. I'm planning on doing another picture very soon.
Work on my endurance/get in better shape- It's a work in progress. I've been running more with Remi, and a few times, I've been able to get to the park to work on free kicks and overall, just running across the field.

2015 Goals
Create more art.
Continue working on getting in better shape.

That's it. I want these goals to be my focus all year. In 2015, we've got a trip in the spring to Florida, but this time, we'll be going to Disney for a day. Mia will be starting 4k in the Fall as well. Thanks for keeping up with the happenings in my life. See you next year!

Kris Kringle Crunch Time

Good Morning. I'm a bit late on the blogging. Totally forgot to write yesterday morning. Over the weekend, we spent Saturday in Illinois exchanging gifts with some of Jill's friends who were in town
for a short time. Mia played with her old pal Caleb like they've known each other forever (which they have) After playing at lunch and at Jill's parent's house, I came to the conclusion that Mia is full of crap. The whole "boys are yucky and gross, I don't like them" is a total bunch of BS, she had so much fun with Caleb. She did specify that she doesn't want to kiss them (which is fine) when Caleb went in for a smooch, but they had a great time. He was showing her all of his karate moves, and she'd try to imitate them. Maybe that's why she likes him. He could protect her :P

Sunday, we drove up, and I worked 2-10. This week, we've still got a lot to do. This morning we're going to make the effort to wrap Mia's presents (and hopefully not wake her). We were going to yesterday, but Jill had a pinched nerve in her shoulders and couldn't get her self moving. An acupuncture appointment helped with that.

Forgot to mention this: Thursday, I took Mia to her school's Christmas program. She got all dolled up, dress, tights, her red heels etc. She was invited to sing, but of course said "no thank you" but we went anyway to watch her classmates including longtime friend Hannah. She had a great time. She proudly walked to the gym showing me the different rooms and where she plays etc etc. She clapped for every song. She actually knew the lyrics to the 3k songs, but just was too shy to sing. After the concert, she got to hang a bit with her friends. Her teacher was so happy Mia came. Friday when I picked her up from school, she gave Jill and I the most beautiful ornament she made.It was a thumbprint with antlers like a reindeer. "THIS IS FOR YOU GUYS BECAUSE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH"

I finished my Didier Drogba portrait. At the time, I was quite stoked, but the more I look at it, the more I realize it could use some work. Overall, it's not bad. I'm probably going to move on to another player this weekend.

So the other week while listening to the Chelsea FanCast, I wrote in to the show about how Mia and I are big fans, blah blah blah, and last week, they read it on their show and showed a photo of Mia. (with her David Luiz tongue sticking out) Totally awesome. Mia loved it. "MOMMY THESE GUYS IN ENGLAND SAW MY CHELSEA PICTURE!" I sadly missed the Stoke game yesterday, but on my break, I saw we won 0-2. I'll watch the highlights after I post this blog. Doesn't feel like Christmas with the 40 degree temps and rain. Last day of work today. WOO! Thanks for reading :)