A Busy February 2023

Between school, sports, and various family outings, February 2023 has been a busy month for our family. I’d say the activity keeping us the busiest this month has been preparing and raising funds for the “Apex Fun Run” at school. To everyone who helped them out with a donation, thank you so much for your support; they surpassed their goals and ended up raising a total of $600 for their school! Today the kids will be working on thank you notes and pictures, so you can expect to receive those sometime soon.

The final step in their fundraising efforts took place on President’s Day when we set up a family lemonade stand at the park across the street from our neighborhood. They had done the same thing last year for a school fundraiser and did quite well, so we decided to give it another shot. We were all off that day for the holiday, so I decided to help out. We offered cookies and glasses of lemonade for $1 each. 

The first hour was slow, but things picked up between noon and 1:00. Several neighbors stopped by, and we were even lucky enough to be paid a visit by 3 Henderson motorcycle police officers. I couldn’t believe the generosity of these officers; they each had a cookie and a glass of lemonade, but the first one gave us a $5 bill and said to keep the change, then the next one gave us a $10, and the final one gave us a $20! None of them would accept any change, and they were so friendly. We thanked them not only for their donations but for everything they do to keep us safe. In fact, I just saw this week that Henderson once again ranked as one of the top five safest cities in the United States. The only cities ranked ahead of us were Virginia Beach and Honolulu. I like to think of us as the safest non-beach city in the country 🙂

Again, thank you to everyone for your support. Whether you donated or not, the fact that you’re reading this indicates that you probably care about our family, and we thank you for that! Each of the kids ran around 30 laps, and even though the laps were about half the length of a standard lap on a track, they still got a lot of activity and exercise that day. They were all very proud of their fundraising achievements, and I have to admit it was a lot of fun helping out with the lemonade stand. We were all holding up signs and waving at cars. It felt good to help them out, and I was really impressed with how much they raised. I never came anywhere close to that for my own fundraisers as a kid. Here are a few photos from the whole experience.

In addition to our lemonade stand, President’s Day weekend was really fun and busy for us. That Friday night, we took the kids to the theater to see the new Ant-Man movie, then on Saturday morning, Ava had her softball tryouts. She was nervous but did great, especially in her batting evaluation. You get five pitches, and she hit solid line drives on the first four. She missed the fifth one, but it was a terrible pitch. She also did really well when fielding grounders and left excited for the upcoming season.

After that, we all headed down to the Bellagio to check out this year’s Lunar New Year display. As usual, it was beautiful and so intricately laid out. I made a video of it for the Vegas Showbiz YouTube channel, which you can see below.

After the Bellagio, we checked out a new vegan restaurant, then went on a little appliance shopping spree. Several of the appliances at our house are pretty old (perhaps even original), so we decided to upgrade our washing machine and dishwasher with brand-new, top-of-the-line G.E. appliances. Eventually, we would like to replace others as well, but these two were the most in need of a replacement for now. 

As a homeowner, there are always new projects in mind, but the biggest one I’m looking at next is a cool pool deck surface out back. Currently, it’s all concrete which is painted dark brown, and it gets insanely hot during the Summer. It’s way too hot to walk around without shoes or sandals. I’ve been to people’s houses who had an epoxy pool decking surface applied, and the difference is incredible. It reduces the temperature by about 35 degrees, making it no problem to walk around barefoot. As swimming season approaches, I’m hoping to have someone out for an estimate sometime soon.

For now, however, the water is still freezing, and it feels like swimming season is a ways off. February tends to be our coldest month of the year here in Southern Nevada, but I’ll refrain from complaining because I know almost everyone else has it way worse during the winter. Our house gets really cold during the daytime, but I don’t turn on the furnace until Jessica and the kids are about to get home from school. It doesn’t make sense for me to heat the whole house, or even the whole first floor, when I’m spending almost the entire day in the office. My Mom gave me a heat lamp a few months ago, so I just have that thing pointing at me all day. The cats have fallen in love with it, and it seems like one or both of them is always lying on my lap while I’m working.

The most extreme type of weather we get during the Winter and Spring is wind. Most people don’t realize how windy it gets here. Earlier this week, we were getting warnings on our phones about 70mph winds, and it was no joke. I thought our house was going to blow away! The next morning I came out to the backyard to assess the damage, and it looked like someone had taken a wheelbarrow full of dirt and leaves and dumped it all into our pool. As you can imagine, getting it cleaned up was not fun, but welcome to life as an outdoor pool owner.

Earlier this month, we had a fun little house guest for the weekend. Jessica’s classroom was due for a new class pet, so we went and picked up a cute fancy-tailed Gecko named Mochi. I have wanted a pet lizard since our first year of marriage, but it was always a hard no for Jessica. She’s not into reptiles and couldn’t stand the thought of feeding them live insects. I totally get it and haven’t pushed the issue, but to my surprise, she really gravitated toward Mochi. Spencer was somewhat interested, but it didn’t last long. Peach, on the other hand, was totally infatuated with Mochi and sat next to the tank staring at her for at least two hours. It sounds like Mochi will be coming back to stay with us during school breaks, and I have regained hope that maybe someday I’ll finally get my bearded dragon.

On the night before the Superbowl, Jessica and I met up with friends for dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant, then we all went to the Black Crowes concert at the Palms. I’ve been a fan of theirs for a long time but didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to see them live due to their breakup many years ago. Luckily, the Robinson brothers seem to have worked out their issues and started touring again last year. The show was outstanding, and the video I made for Vegas Showbiz was our quickest to reach 2,000 views.

Speaking of Vegas Showbiz, we are now just shy of 500 subscribers. The only remaining requirement for us to qualify for the YouTube partner program is to have 1,000 subscribers. I never thought it would be so difficult to get 1,000 subscribers, but the good news is that our videos are getting plenty of views and hours watched. The channel turned a year old earlier this month, and during that time, our videos have gotten over 5,600 hours of view time!

You only need 4,000 hours of view time during the previous 12 months to qualify for the partner program, so we’re looking good on that end. I’m hoping it won’t take another year to get to 1,000 subscribers, but even if it does, I’m fine with it because I know we will get there eventually, and there’s a market for the content we produce. Once we get into the partner program, we will finally be able to start profiting from our videos. At this point, I have a good idea of what’s going to get views and what won’t, so I look forward to using the money we make from the channel to go out and do more fun stuff to document.

Regarding school, the kids have all been staying busy. Ava and Elise have been especially busy, however; they’re still doing choir before school every Tuesday morning, and now they’re both involved in the sign language club. “Girls on the Run” is about to get started for the second time this school year, which they’re excited about, and Elise is enjoying being a part of the school drama club. I always loved doing school drama as a kid, so it makes me proud and excited to see her doing the same thing.

As I write this, it’s the final weekend of February, and it’s a relatively quiet one for us. The main highlight was yesterday when I took the kids to the women’s UNLV basketball game versus San Diego State. It’s funny because we used to live less than 10 minutes from the SDSU campus when Ava was a baby, and now we’re so close to UNLV. It was the first time Ava or Elise attended a basketball game, and we all had a nice time. Jessica was able to get four free tickets through the school district, and this was the final home game of the season. UNLV ended up winning by 6 points, and everyone left happy. I’m hoping to take the kids to see our WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces play this season, as well as check out the NBA Summer Hoops, which happens every Summer here in Vegas. We still love hockey, but watching and going to basketball games has been a nice addition for us this year. Here’s a photo of the kids at the game.

I guess that’s about it for now. As you can tell, February has been a busy month for us. Combine that with the fact that everyone in our house except Enzo has had a cold this month. It seems like there’s always something going on or something to deal with. Spring Break is coming up next month, and we’ve talked about making a trip to the Grand Canyon, but so far, no planning has taken place, so I’m not sure how that’s going to turn out. I’m sure we’ll do something one way or the other.

As always, thanks for checking in on us! If anyone wants to make a visit this Spring or Summer and soak up some hot weather and sunshine, just let us know. I’ll have the pool ready for you 😉