Elise’s first dance recital

This weekend was one I’ve been looking forward to for a while. I know I’ve mentioned it in several blog posts, and now it has finally happened – yesterday Elise had her first dance recital! As you can probably imagine it was beyond adorable, and Jessica & I were both so proud of her. She did a great job, never got nervous, and you could tell she was having fun on stage. Her class danced to the song “This little light of mine” and they were all dressed in the poofiest pink tutus one could possibly imagine.

We wanted to celebrate her special day, so we decided to go out to a nice family dinner afterwards. Since we have all been studying Italian lately (more on that in a bit), Elise requested that we go to an Italian restaurant. Initially she thought we were going to Calabria because we’ve been there twice recently, but when we said we were trying a new Italian restaurant she asked “Do they have bread there?” We assured her they did, so she was happy to give it a shot.

We ended up having a really nice meal to celebrate her performance, which was capped off by a big piece of chocolate cake. Jessica and I barely got any bites though, as the plate was pretty much completely occupied by the 3 ravenous little monkeys. You’d almost think we barely fed them by the way they attacked dessert.

We got home to see our new front porch nearly complete, which was very exciting. They still needed to wrap and paint the columns, build the step, and finish the facia, but it was already totally usable. Last weekend we went to a lumber store to look at different railing systems and ended up finding something we really like. The only issue is that it’s not available until July, so our porch won’t have any railing for a few weeks. No big deal though. We’re already out enjoying it and will be all summer.

The same guy doing our porch (Jeff) is doing another project for us next week, which is to paint all the trim on our house. We really like him and the quality of his work is top notch, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we hired him for more jobs in the future.

Last week Ava lost one of her front teeth (insert hockey joke here), which felt like a milestone. This was her third time losing a tooth, and the first time I got to pull one. Grandpa Rick got the first one, then Mom got the second, so I guess it was my turn. She must have gotten a really cool Tooth Fairy because it left her a $5 bill and a guitar pick. No question she was more excited about the guitar pick than the money. Now she only has two more days of school until she finishes Kindergarten, and she’ll do so with perfect attendance, which I’m very proud of.

Last week was also a big week for Elise, as she graduated from preschool. I can’t believe she’s going into Kindergarten this Fall! I was just looking at her photo from the last day of school and it’s crazy how much she has grown up this year. I can’t help but be slightly concerned because she’s on the younger end of her class, and she isn’t quite as social as Ava, but she’s ready and is going to do great. I’m very proud of her.

As briefly mentioned in the intro, our family has been studying Italian for a few weeks now. It’s something I’ve done on and off for years, but I was recently thinking to myself how I wish my family would have forced it on me as a kid. Then I was thinking about how I wish our kids knew at least a little bit of another language – then I just decided to take on teaching them, even though I’m not fluent myself.

My thought was that although I’m not fluent, I know a decent amount, and if I take studying seriously myself, I’ll easily be able to stay a few steps ahead of the kids and pass down the things I’m learning to them. As of today I have a 31 day streak going on Duolingo and can’t believe how much I’ve learned. What’s even more impressive is how much the kids have already learned. At this age they are little sponges, and they soak up everything you tell them.

What I’ve found is that if you just do 10 minutes a day, your progress will be better than you would expect. Although I consider myself a very busy person, I’ve still had no problem finding 10 minutes a day to do this. What often happens is that I’ll get really into it and end up putting in much more time, but at the very least 10 minutes is totally doable. I already know that once the kids are old enough to have their own cell phones, I’m going to require them to do the same thing with Duolingo (or something similar) everyday that I’ve been doing this past month. The way I see it, even if you don’t use the language very often, the act of learning it teaches your brain to think differently, which will have other positive impacts.

Earlier this week my team at work had a fun day outing, meaning we all left work early and went to a Mariners afternoon game. One thing I love about my industry is that I get to meet and work with people from all around the world, so at this game I found myself in this group of people who had never even seen a baseball game before, let alone attended a game. There were 2 guys from India, 2 from Israel, 1 from Argentina, and me. They were all sports fans and were interested in learning about baseball, so I spent most of the time explaining the game to them, which was fun, but also made me realize baseball is more complicated than it appears.

During our conversations, I brought up the fact that my family had been studying Italian, which prompted one of them to tell a joke: “What do you call a person who speaks 2 languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who speaks 1 language? American.” They all got a chuckle from it, but for me, it was a bit different for me being the only American in the group. It’s pretty true though and I took it in the spirit with which it was intended. I don’t know exactly how far we’ll go with this, but it’s good for us, and I’ve already promised everyone that if we learn to speak Italian as a family, we will absolutely be taking a trip to Italy shortly thereafter.

Anyway, speaking of trips, we are now t-minus 8 days until we go to Las Vegas for Summer vacation at Nana’s house. We don’t have a lot of plans set in stone, but have talked about a lot of fun different things to do, so I know it’s going to be great. One thing we do have on the calendar for sure is a pool day at the Red Rocks Hotel. We rented a cabana for the whole day on Wednesday, meaning we will have a covered/shaded area to hang out in and room for plenty of people. We also have plans for Saturday night to go out to dinner with friends at a really cool new Italian restaurant at Aria called Carbone. Hopefully we’ll get out Friday night as well – I’m sure Nana would enjoy a little alone time with the kids.

This upcoming trip will give me my first days off work (other than weekends and holidays) since our last trip to Vegas, which was for Christmas. I can easily say this has been the most productive 6-month stretch of my career – projects like Microsoft for Startups, the Gaming Developers Conference, Microsoft Build Conference, and the new Azure menu, have been hugely rewarding, and it’s hard to believe they all happened in such a short time period.

I’ve come a long way this year, but I’ve got one more hurdle before going on vacation: starting tomorrow morning I’ll be on call for a week. Being on call is tough because you’re not in your normal workflow, the days are long, and you’re constantly getting surprised with problems popping up that you have to investigate/fix. The good news for me is that right as my on-call shift is ending, our plane will be taking off for Vegas, so I can put everything behind me and get ready for a fun relaxing week.

In addition to Elise’s recital, there is one other thing that makes this weekend particularly exciting – today is Father’s Day! Per our tradition, we met Uncle Jim, Aunt Brenda, and Kristy for the Father’s Day Car Show in Burien. We lucked out with beautiful weather this year, so the turnout of cars was excellent. I love this (relatively) new tradition we have with them and am thankful for the time we get together.

In addition to walking around and seeing tons of cool classic cars, we ended up finding a really cool little restaurant called Frankies B-Town Bistro. We were expecting to have a bunch of food trucks to choose from, but they weren’t there, so we ended up wandering into Frankies and ended up having an excellent lunch. It was a nice (delicious) surprise and made for a fun, memorable day.

Later in the afternoon I got to go play hockey with my buddies and had another great time. I scored 2 goals in the game and kept my consecutive scoring streak alive at 4 games. It’s funny how in such a short time hockey has become such a big part of our lives. Even though I’ve tried to put music at the center of my social life, it hasn’t really worked out that way. Between Ava’s involvement with it and the people I know through Washington Wild, then there’s my thing on Sunday’s in Everett, and there’s some crossover of people I know from both places. It’s been awesome.

Today even though Ava was absent from hockey (for the first time ever), my buddy Daniel who helps run Washington Wild text me with a photo of her skills evaluation, which said she had completed all of the skills for the hockey 2 program and was ready to join the 8U team in the fall! This was very exciting news that I was happy to share with her. She’s been working hard for over a year now and it really shows. I can’t wait to get her on a team and take things to the next level.

In addition to knowing Daniel through Washington Wild, he is also part of our Sunday group, so I get to play with him every week. We’re going to be attending a skating camp together at the end of July, and it turns out that our birthdays are only 3 days apart, so it will be both of our birthday weekends when we attend the camp. Like myself, Daniel is into blogging, and actually writes for a few different hockey websites. He recently started doing this column called “Geezers in Breezers” for a site called Beer League Talk. The purpose of his column is to tell the stories of all the different people you find playing adult recreational hockey, as well as to encourage new people to get into the game.

Daniel ended up asking me if I’d be willing to be interviewed for one installment of his column, and I was more than happy to oblige. At first I didn’t think there was much to tell on my end because I was so new to the game, but between the elbow injuries I’ve faced, and Ava’s involvement with it, it started to make a little more sense. So he emailed me a bunch of questions, and I wrote long answers (shocking) to all of them. The actual article turned out much shorter than the sum of all my long-winded responses, but it was really cool. I’m not sure if the link will always be active so I’ve pasted the whole article at the end of this post. Anyway, it was fun and is just another example of why I love our local hockey community.

Okay, sorry for the hockey tangent – back to Father’s Day. Jessica and the kids really went all out for me this year. Elise dressed up as a cowgirl at school, got some photos taken, then made this adorable soup can with her photos and drawings pasted onto it. She also made me a photo collage of various photos of her throughout these past 5 years.

Ava did something similar by making me a beautiful photo book at school, which I loved, then Mom made a fun video at home of the kids talking about why they love Daddy. Finally, after the video was over, Enzo presented me with a painted rock I had requested last year from Jessica. I’ve mentioned this before, but basically last year I requested two painted rocks from her – 1 with the Vancouver Canucks logo, and 1 with the Alice In Chains sun logo. I can’t remember if I wrote about it in the blog, but about a month ago she presented me with a Vancouver Canucks rock, and it was amazing. She didn’t paint it herself, but had someone she knew through the rock painting community do it. Well, the same guy who did the Canucks rock also did the Alice In Chains rock, and it’s amazing! Obviously these are things I’ll keep forever, and I appreciate them so much! See photos below for more details. Overall I just want to thank my family for showing me so much love and appreciation. Obviously they are everything to me, so it’s nice (and humbling) for them to go out of their way to show me how loved I am.

Okay I guess that’s about it for now. Obviously there will be a lot for us to write about after our vacation. To all the dad’s in our family, we are wishing you a happy Father’s Day! Thank you for being a part of our lives and thank you for everything you do.

Here’s the my installment of the Geezers in Breezers colum:

Geezers in Breezers – This Week Features Mike From Everett Washington

by @Sounder2thecore

What’s up Beer Leaguers?

OldManDan here to tell another story, so sit on down kids. You, yeah you, sit down! Back in my day people showed respect to their elders and the men that played hockey were tough, the women, even tougher!

If you ask around any rink, anywhere from Honolulu to Chelyabinsk why people play the greatest game you can name and the first two things that come up in every answer are that it’s fun and the people are great. Your fellow featured Beer Leaguer this week is no exception.

Meet Mike,

Mike is one of those folks that as soon as you sit on the bench or walk into the locker room is there to say hello and welcome you to the group.

He along with his young daughter is playing and learning the game. He plays with our Sunday evening crew at Angel of the Winds Arena in Everett, Washington home of the Silvertips. He started playing Jan. 2017 and is now wheeling and dealing. I asked him a few questions for the benefit of Beer Leaguers everywhere.

What do you think a new adult player needs to know:
Don’t be intimidated. I’ve seen people starting from absolute ground zero (like first or second time on ice skates), and after sticking with it for a bit, their progress was incredible. Everyone is out there for the right reasons, so you don’t need to worry about not being good enough or able to keep up. The people are great and all newcomers are welcome, you just need to find the right group.

What is the best part of playing the game:
There’s two parts to this for me, because not only do I play, but my 6 year old daughter has been playing for a year now as well, and she loves it! For me, I love learning the game and learning the athletic skills, I love the camaraderie I’ve formed with people I’ve met there, and I love the exercise. As a father watching my little girl get into it, I love the lessons she’s learning about teamwork and listening to coaches, I love the athletic skills she’s forming, and I love seeing the pure joy it brings her. Sorry if that’s too many answers, but they’re all true.

Best hockey memory:
After playing for 6 months I had a bone spur and I partially tore my right triceps. I had surgery two days before my birthday, and was expected to be out 4 months. I was back out on the ice in 2 months. In order to give my right side a bit of a break, I switched to playing left-handed for the first few months back (I’m back to right-handed now). In my first game back I scored a top-shelf goal as a leftie, and it felt amazing.

What stress or fears did you have when you started as an adult
I was worried about my skating ability, and the fact that I didn’t know the game very well. That stuff has all come in due time though, and today I’m slightly obsessed with skating and playing hockey. I watch every game I can and never miss a chance to get on the ice.

So for you newbies, get out there! Recruit your friends and hit the ice!

OldManDan

And of course it wouldn’t be a PellegriniPage post without some recent pics, so here you go!

The amazing painted rocks I requested. I can’t thank Jessica enough for these. I love them both.