Kaylee's 1st Season of Basketball

Kaylee just completed her first season of basketball and Trevor and I were her coaches. I'm not sure if it is good to coach your own kids. I say this because whenever Trevor and I attempted to offer our expertise, it wasn't highly regarded. If asked she would say that she really likes basketball, but I think that is more because 5 of her classmates were on her team and she enjoyed being with them socially. As for her basketball skills, they are very elementary at the moment. She has a hard time catching the ball, as she closes her eyes when attempting to do so. She is still very young, so I'm sure there will be tons of improvement over the years. I kept reminding myself that I didn't even start playing basketball until I was 10 years old, so she has plenty of time to improve.

We are very proud of her though, because she is a very unselfish player. We tried to teach our players the importance of passing the ball to their teammates. However, it was a coed team and as kindergartener's this was quite a challenge, especially for the boys. I can't say that I completely blame them, as most of the girls were at Kaylee's level and had difficulty catching the ball. However, when it was Kaylee's turn to dribble down the court she instinctively passed to her wide open teammate. This was especially unselfish, because Kaylee was the only one on her team not to have scored a basket all season. Her last game, she really wanted to make a basket and so we were trying to get her the ball as much as possible. In the end, she remained scoreless and shed some tears towards the end of the game. It was one of those moments as a parent, where you know there is a valuable lesson in there, but given the chance you would immediately take their pain away if you could...

Trevor's Early Birthday Surprise

I surprised Trevor with tickets to the Iowa vs Michigan State basketball game in Lansing, MI. Prior to the game we had dinner at PF Changs, which we both decided would have been worth the 1.5 hour drive on its own. We had a fun time at the game, even though our seats were about as high up as one can get. It is a large arena and we were literally 2 of about 12 Hawekeye fans in the place. There was pretty much complete silence all around us as we cheered our team on. Unfortunately, they didn't get a "W", but nevertheless we had a fun evening!

Another Project Completed

I got motivated again and painted the trim, door, and cabinets in our half bathroom white.

Before:

After:

Ice Storm

What a CRAZY week we have had!!! Last Sunday, Feb 20th it began raining in the early afternoon and didn't stop for a very long time. Our electricity flickered off and on throughout the evening and went completely off at 11:30 PM. We awoke the next morning to a major ice storm. Both of our neighbors had huge tree branches that had fallen during the night, as did many people throughout Adrian. As we later drove through town, we were amazed at the sheer number of branches on the ground. It seemed everywhere we looked branches had fallen due to the heaviness of the ice.

The kids and I spent part of Monday morning pretending that we were living like the Ingalls family in "Little House on the Prairie", that is until Daddy came home from work to rescue us from our cold house. We spent the week living with our friends. They have three girls ages 4-9. The kids had a great time playing together. The adults had fun playing our favorite game, Settlers of Catan, each night after the kids went to bed. I really enjoyed my afternoons chatting with Christi. Our electricity finally came back on Thursday, Feb 24th around 4:30 PM. When our furnace came back on the thermostat read 41 degrees. We gave our house another night to warm back up and returned home Friday afternoon. It was a crazy week, in which fun memories were made. Our friends were very gracious hosts! We feel so blessed to have stayed with them all week. Although we had a great time with our friends, it feels great to have our WARM house back. Man are we thankful for electricity!!!

Ice Skating

Kianna was invited to her friend, Hailey's birthday party at an indoor ice skating rink. Parents and siblings were invited too, so Kaylee and I tagged along. It was both of the girls' first time skating. They were able to hold onto the back of a chair while they learned how to skate. By the end of our time, they both were starting to learn to skate without holding onto anything. What a fun birthday party!!!

Double Date...

So we invited our friends, The Miller's, over for dinner and games and THIS is how we found our kids...

Healthy AND Motivated...

After several weeks of battling the stomach flu, strep throat, colds, and an ear infection, we are finally all healthy again. I have had some major cabin fever lately. With all the snow days and sick days, I have been anxious to begin checking things off of our "to do list" again. My first Project Cabin Fever task was tackling the garage entryway. The before picture doesn't do it justice. It was a BIG job, as we had six doors to paint plus the trim. One door was yellow, one door was dark burgandy, and the other four doors were dark wood.

After three to four coats of white paint and about 18 hours of labor, here is the finished product.

Hopefully this motivation will continue a while longer, as I have a few more projects up my sleeve...