So I have to admit I was seriously thinking about taking the month of April off from the ol’ family blog. Jessica’s post earlier this month describing her and Enzo’s recent trip to Iowa took care of keeping our monthly streak alive (93 now, I believe), but the reality is there’s been too much good stuff going on recently that needs to be captured. So my loss of a Saturday evening becomes the blog’s gain.
First and foremost, I think we need to talk about our recent family trip to Canada for Ava’s first hockey tournament (an international one at that). A couple weeks ago, late in the afternoon on a Thursday, we all headed north in the van, destination Richmond, B.C., which is a suburb about 20 minutes south of Vancouver. We had no traffic heading up, beautiful weather (which lasted all weekend), and very little wait at the border.
This was the travel team’s final tournament of the year, and although Ava wasn’t a member of the travel team this year, they allowed us to join them and get a taste of tournament life before calling it a season. We’ve already been considering signing her up for the travel team next year, so we wanted to get a taste of it this year. We’ve heard nothing but good things from all the different parents we’ve spoken to. Whether it be the bonding the kids form from spending time together off the ice, or the light bulb coming on in terms of on-ice understanding, we were confident a lot of good would come out of this trip. And most certainly it did.
The somewhat embarrassing reality for our family was that this was our first time staying together, just the 5 of us, in a hotel. It was actually Elise that called it on the way up. She asked where we were staying and when we said the name of the hotel, she said “You mean we’re not staying with family!?” So yeah, this was our first time going on any type of vacation or trip where we stayed at a hotel on our own and didn’t visit any family members. Kinda sad, but not a big deal, we just knew we wanted to make the most of it and have a really fun weekend.
Before I go further I want to give a big shout out and thank you to Jessica’s Dad Rick, who used his Holiday Inn status and points to get us a room. We tried on our own to get a room for 5 and were unsuccessful because it was already sold out. The ice arena is literally next door, and there’s no other hotel around, but Rick called and was able to get a room just for Jessica and I. When we arrived, we asked for a fold out bed to be delivered, which is what the girls shared, meanwhile Jessica, Enzo, and I slept in the main bed. It was studio apartment living for a few days, but everyone enjoyed the change of pace. So thank you Rick, we had a great time and greatly appreciate the room.
While most of the families kinda laid low and didn’t stray too far from the hotel, we decided to make the most of the trip and do a bunch of exploring during our off time. On our first night we made our way down to the water and had dinner in an area called Steveston, which was a touristy area with lots of restaurants, shopping, and beautiful views. We enjoyed the area so much that we ended up going back the next day to hang out some more.
The other main getaway for us was when we spent most of the day Saturday in Vancouver. Ava’s game was in the morning and we had the rest of the day free, so we started off at a beautiful little beach park and hung out there for a while, then ended up chillin in Stanley Park for a bit. After that we took the kids down to Granville Island for some sight seeing and ice cream. Later that evening we got back in time to join the whole team for dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, which was a blast. The kids were all really well behaved and it was fun getting to know some different parents.
As far as the hockey side of things goes, there’s no question this was a turning point for Ava. Just as so many other parents have said about their girls, I felt like I saw something click with her. I’m not sure if it was the tournament format, or the new competition, but something was different with her and she really elevated her game. I’d say it was the best she’s played all year. I was talking to her before the first game, trying to hype her up a bit, and she told me she was about to step it up and play her best hockey because we were in Canada. She definitely followed through with that, so my challenge next season (when I’m one of the coaches on her team) will be to bring that out of her for each game.
I think based on the experience we had on this first trip that it’s fair to say Ava will be a member of the tournament team next season. We may not be able to make it to every trip (they do 4 or 5 travel tournaments per season) but we’ll do our best. Overall I’m just glad this trip was such a success. Jessica and I are always more than happy to visit Vancouver, as it’s easily one of our favorite cities on the planet, and with Ava getting more involved with the travel team in the future, it looks like we’ll get plenty of chances to get up there.
Another recent family milestone worth sharing was our 9th wedding anniversary, which came on April 3rd. We didn’t do anything too big to celebrate, but we’d been telling the kids for a while that we wanted to take them to a nice pizza restaurant, so we all ended up going down to Via Tribunali in Georgetown for some amazing traditional Italian style pizza. I needed to pick up my license plates from the dealership in Seattle anyway, so Jessica and the kids picked me up from work that day and we all headed downtown together.
There were too many delicious sounding options to choose from, so we treated ourselves by ordering way too much for one sitting, already looking forward to the leftovers we’d be enjoying the following day. The kids love going to restaurants and had no problem declaring this their favorite pizza ever!
We’ll be stepping it up in terms of restaurants later this month when we celebrate Jessica’s birthday via a family dinner at El Gaucho. The girls love getting dressed up and going to ‘fancy places’, so Mom’s birthday dinner will certainly be a big occasion.
It’s crazy that we’re now inside of ten years of marriage. As always, on one hand it feels like time has flown by, but on the other hand, when I stop and think about not only the literal lives we’ve created, but also the figurative ones, it seems like we’ve been hard at work with our heads down for a long time. I feel like we’re in our best place ever these days, and that we’ve earned it. Although 9 years isn’t considered a major anniversary, 10 most certainly is, and although I don’t want to give anything away just yet, for now I’ll just say Jessica and I have been talking about it and may have come up with a pretty awesome way to celebrate. More on this to come over the next year.
Another exciting development for me is related to the Japan trip my buddies and I have been talking about. We were originally hoping to go in May, but Devin ended up needing to postpone the trip. I wasn’t worried about us eventually going, I just had no idea when that would be, but somewhat unexpectedly Devin recently resumed the conversation, picked out a time that we all agreed to, and purchased tickets! I’m lucking out (on multiple levels) in the sense that I get a direct flight both ways on the trip. On Saturday, September 28th I’m meeting a few of my friends at SeaTac airport and we’re flying directly to Osaka, Japan. We’re going to travel around Japan via Bullet Train, eventually ending up in Tokyo, where we’ll spend the final 3 nights of the trip. Devin’s brother Brian, who lives in Berlin, will be meeting us in Osaka, but the rest of us are traveling there together. We’ll be home on October 6, which is 6 days before Kristy and Beto’s wedding. That should be enough for me to fully recover from the jetlag and be back to normal for the wedding. I wouldn’t cut it any closer than that, but this was the week Devin wanted to go and I didn’t feel like it was a problem. There’s still a lot of planning to do, but the fact that tickets are purchased means it’s on, and I’m obviously super excited!
We’ve also been planning a wedding party Labor Day weekend getaway in Lake Chelan. There’s a big group of 13 people, so we rented a house on Airbnb for the weekend. Jessica and I love Lake Chelan, and surprisingly Kristy has never been there, so it should be a blast. So as it’s shaping up, late summer and early fall are looking really good…
Today was a good day for Jessica and I, as we dedicated ourselves to cleaning out and reorganizing our garage, with an ultimate goal of being able to park both of our cars in the garage full-time. I’ve been feeling guilty about leaving my beautiful BMW parked outside in our driveway, so to facilitate all of this, over the past week I ended up building more heavy-duty shelving in our garage. I did basically the same thing I’d done years ago by building elevated shelving into the frame of the garage, but this time I did it on the opposite wall, so the shelves sit directly above the garage door tracks. It added a bunch of storage space for us, so after several hours this morning of cleaning out every corner of the garage, going through all our stuff, and getting things organized, we were easily able to open up a parking spot for my car. Even with both of our cars in there it doesn’t feel cluttered or messy, so we’re really happy with how it turned out. It’s important to me that we take excellent care of both of our new cars, and keeping them both parked inside is a big part of that.
Overall we’ve all just been keeping really busy lately. The end of Ava’s hockey season did open up some free time for us, but that will soon be occupied with various other activities. We expect to do a lot of swimming again this summer, so it probably won’t be long before the kids are back in lessons. Jessica has been doing so much volunteer work at the girls’ school, and she’s been working a bit extra lately, so the upcoming summer will be nice for everyone.
The kids are all doing well in school, but we recently made the decision to have the girls go to summer school this year. It’s certainly not meant to be some type of punishment or anything negative like that, we just felt like it would benefit both of them, for separate reasons. In Ava’s case, she’s consistently at the top of her class in geometry (an advanced subject), yet is struggling (and in some cases regressing) in other areas that aren’t supposed to be as hard. We’re doing some more specialized work with her at home in these areas, but felt that the extra attention she’d get in the summer would go a long way.
In Elise’s case, it’s more about getting comfortable and building self-confidence. There are scenarios where Elise knows the answer to something but doesn’t want to speak up. It’s just a classic case of being shy in the classroom, but we want to break that for her now, otherwise our worry is that she just kinda blends into the classroom, coasts along, and never gets any type of specialized attention.
The other big thing for them is that the girls are going to a new elementary school next year, as our district has been re-zoned. Since summer school is being held in our new school, we thought it made a lot of sense to get the girls in there early and start getting comfortable. By the time school resumes in the fall they’ll be totally comfortable in their environment. There’s going to be no class on Fridays, and they get out early Mon-Thurs, so it’s really no big deal. It’s only 16 total days of school (and they’re going to miss one of them for their road trip with Grandma and Grandpa Martin), they’ll take the bus just like they do now, and it should be good. Hopefully they both get something positive out of it.
That’s pretty much it for now. Tomorrow morning we’re going down to Kristy and Beto’s for Madi’s birthday brunch. Should be a good time. Looking forward to celebrating Jessica’s birthday in a couple weeks, then getting into gear for a summer of fun, adventure, and learning.
