Fondu and Sunburns

Alison's boo had a bachelor party in Wilmington last weekend so we decided to have an impromptu girls weekend to relax on the beach after club season.

I drove down on Friday after our high school practice and we dined at Flaming Amy's...the BEST burritos in Wilmington. It's where we always went after playing all day on Saturday at the Wilmington frisbee tournament. No better way to start off a girls weekend than queso and photo boards.

On Saturday we hit up the Limited outlet so Alison could get some professor clothes. I only left with one thing! That's pretty unheard of for me at the Limited. Derrick was shocked.

The beach was gorgeous!! The forecast predicted rain all day so I think it scared off the out of town beach crowd. In reality it was 85 degrees and breezy. AKA perfect beach weather. Unfortunately we both got roasted though. We wore sunscreen but I think the perfect temperature lured us into forgetting to apply enough. 

Guess what we did on the way home?? I bet you won't guess because it is so random. 

Yep...batting cage! I used to play softball but I haven't played in probably 15 years so I was very rusty.

Alison was very Mark McGuire-esk. You know...without the roids. She doesn't need roids.

Saturday night we had the most amazing fondu dinner at the Little Dipper. We were cold from our sunburns and the host overheard us saying that she asked if we'd like to sit on the patio. The magical, totally empty patio.  There was a wedding venue directly behind us so we had fondu and music and it was perfect. 

Bottom line this was an awesome weekend and I have the sunburn to prove it. I'm thankful for Alison making all the plans and inviting me along!

2 Year House-iversary!

We've been in our house for two years! Two years of mortgage payments, and lawn mowing, and problem solving, and being as loud as we want without worrying about bothering our neighbors. 

This year we hosted both of our families for Thanksgiving, had all our highschoolers and their families over for the end of year party, hosted the whole family for college nationals, had Jack live with use for the summer, and had countless friends use our guest rooms. 

I'm sure our neighbors think we're crazy that we moved into such a big house without kids but we've used every inch of this house and it's crazy how often all 3 extra bedrooms are full. I've loved having the space to have people over comfortably and maybe we'll grow into it eventually.

The biggest house-related highlight of this year was definitely painting the outside. Holy smokes it looks so good!! I still love the color we chose and I still get giddy looking at it.  Maybe I'm biased but I think we now have the best looking house in the neighborhood and I love turning onto our street and seeing it waving from the end of the cul-de-sac.

We also just recently found a 2 mile running route to our climbing gym so we can run to the gym, climb, and either walk or drive back if we drop a car off. The location is so perfect for us and we are so happy to have snagged this house when we did. Here's to many more years!!

Surprise Dog Days in D.C.

The Friday before Labor Day Derrick texted me in the middle of the day and told me to clear my schedule for the weekend. He wouldn't tell me anything else except that Crosby could also be excited. Friday afternoon he came home, told me to pack, and we hit the road to some secret place. It was awesome!

Finally, after we'd been driving for over 3 hours, he filled me in that we were heading to D.C. for a dog friendly weekend with the Cros. It was such a sweet surprise. We stayed in the Carlyle Dupont Circle hotel. It was pretty nice but it raves about how dog friendly it is online. I don't think the hotel experience actually lived up to the dog friendlyness the website said.. When I asked for two dog bowls the front desk lady looked at me like I was crazy and had to get the manager. It was still a good hotel though and a great location!

This was Crosby's first time staying in a hotel and it took a while for her to settle down and realize we were here to stay.

She eventually managed to relax though.

Saturday we got over 35,000 steps. We walked EVERYWHERE and it was awesome. Derrick found a canoe rental that allowed dogs so that was our first stop of the day. Our hotel was on embassy row so it was pretty neat walking past all of the various embassies and seeing which ones got shafted compared to Canada! Canada's embassy is amazing!!!! 

We settled on canoeing since we could both do it together and we thought it would be most comfortable for Crosby. There were tons of other boats on the water but not many motorized ones so it was so serene while we were out there.

I wish I'd taken my phone and gotten a picture of Crosby on the canoe but we weren't sure if we'd be at risk for dropping it in the Potomac. Turns out we could have easily taken our phones or even my big camera. I at least snagged a picture of Crosby in her lift jacket before getting in. How cute is she!?

After canoeing Derrick found an online scavenger hunt right around the area we were already in. It had us hunting down all sorts of answers to clues including the artist of this giant mural on the side of a building.

And this other mural where we were instructed to get a photo under the painted arch.

This was about the time when Crosby tuckered out. We decided to head back to the hotel and drop her off before our next adventure at the Smithsonian.

All of the escape rooms were kind of far away and we knew we'd have Crosby with us on our way out of town so Derrick did some research and found another, better, scavenger hunt for us in downtown DC. It was so good....there were actual puzzles to solve, ciphers, and logic.  The average team finished in 3 hours and we were gunning to beat that time.

It was about 3 miles of walking and took us everywhere from monuments, to museums, to the home Lincoln died in.

Everything was submitted over their website and once we submitted a correct answer we were given directions to find the next clue.

We finished 6th all-time and we'd argue it could have been better! It keeps rolling stats as people complete the hunt. We stopped to chat with some friends, which hurt our time, and one monument was under construction so it was required that we use a hint, which hurt our point total. We finished in just over an hour and 55 minutes which I think is pretty good!

Derrick found a nice restaurant only  a 10 minute walk away. We headed back to the hotel to get Crosby and head to dinner. It was delicious and they had an all sides option which was the obvious choice. The three guys sitting next to us were enamored with Crosby and even stole my bowl of french fries to try her tricks.

That night we crashed hard and slept in leaving just enough time to walk for bagels in the morning before we needed to check out of our room.

I'm so glad Derrick planned this little get away. It was the perfect length for a long weekend and we still made it back home in time to rest up for our Monday scrimmag the next day. I loved staying in a different part of  D.C. than I'm used to and we discovered what a dog friendly place the city really is. So many shops had dog bowls sitting outside which was much appreciated during our 35,000 step day.

The whole way home and all day Monday looked like this for the Cros. Signs of a great weekend!

7 Years of Bad Luck

The guest room and guest bathroom are getting a makeover this week. We're not doing a full gut of the bathroom by any means but I am refreshing the towel bars, toilet paper holder, and mirror to give it a less builder basic look. 

When  I was first looking at the mirror I found it had these spring clips at the top.

They seemed simple enough, just lift them up to release the mirror and it should come right out. Should....that's what I thought so I didn't think anymore about it until it was time to paint the bathroom and the mirror needed to come down.

I could not get the mirror to budge out of the clips at all. So...I did some googling and found it was most likely both glued and clipped into place. The options were to try to slowly shim it free and still have a good chance of it breaking, or to just break it.

Is it still 7 years of bad luck if you intentionally break a mirror?

I texted Derrick to both make sure it was OK with him that I went ahead and destroyed it and to also make sure he knew what I was doing in case I called him later and needed to go to the E.R. Also, if he felt the need to be home when I was attempting this I wanted to give him that chance. He trusts me and gave me the go ahead with the promise that I'd text him when I was done!

There aren't a lot of google sources for breaking a mirror safely so I watched a few videos and pieced together my plan.

First I taped the mirror. The idea here is to keep the glass from flying everywhere after it's shattered. In hind sight, I'd probably tape it even more than this next time.

Then I changed into full sweats, closed toes shoes, and gloves.

Hood up, goggles on, I was ready!

Then I took my hammer, turned my head away, and smashed my hammer into the middle of the mirror where the tape overlapped.

Nothing happened. It was just loud, no shatter. I hit the mirror 8 times before it broke! On the eighth time I really hit it as hard as I could. I thought I was hitting it hard before but I totally underestimated how hard I was going to have to whack it to break it. You really have to get some muscle behind it.

In the end, it worked!

I have a few tips in hind sight.

1. Lay a cloth or drop cloth down under the mirror to make picking up the glass shards easier and to also protect your sink. I think our sink is OK but it also has a few new marks on the edges.
2. Close the floor vents in the room...I thought I had but I hadn't and I'm sure some glass went down the vent.
3. Close your sink drain. I thankfully thought ahead and did that.
4. Have your vacuum close by and ready. I had to carefully slip out of my shoes, get the vacuum, and come back and put my shoes back on to clean it all up.

Also, don't take your sweatsuit off until after the mirror is totally down. I did not do this. Thankfully I came away cut free but I was wishing I had my suit on. The mirror stayed standing in the clips and once I removed those big pieces in the clips the whole thing came shattering down everywhere. That was a little scary. Luckily I could tell it was going to happen so positioned myself and was prepared but it was so loud and glass flew everywhere. Goggles are key and I left those on even through the vacuuming.

Here is a closer look at those bottom clips. Helpful that the screw is UNDER the mirror.....NOT! I suppose if it hadn't been glued the clips would have been a good idea.

For the glass, I ended up taping up all the seams in a cardboard box and dumping the shards in there. You can see that there were still some pretty big pieces to deal with but there were also so many tiny little slivers. I vacuumed for a good 20 minutes and the bathroom is really tiny. I vacuumed out the sink, the tub, in all the individual grout lines of the floor, and I went over the whole floor several times. Then I used hands to go over the floor again to find any stray pieces and then I vacuumed again. I've been in there barefoot painting it today and haven't picked up any glass so I think we're good!

You can see where it was glued and took some drywall with it. Those had to get spackled and sanded before painting.

This was a fun one! Kind of scary but a little bit of an adrenaline rush and I'm so excited to get the builder mirror off the wall with no chance of return! Now I need to find the perfect replacement! The guest room itself turned a corner today too and is looking good. There is still a super long way to go but I'm excited!

Toro = State Champs!

**All photo credit in this post goes to Doug Wilson**

Last weekend we had sectionals for our club team Toro. The series is what teams work for all season long and sectionals is the first tournament in that series on the road to nationals. We were able to enjoy a really short and sweet sectionals with only three games on Saturday and finals on Sunday morning. 

Sectionals was in Charlotte so we were able to stay with CK and Irene which was so nice! We haven't visited them since they moved to Charlotte. We were at the fields for most of the day Saturday and Sunday but it was nice to spend Saturday evening with them, catching up and playing games.

We came in seeded #2 overall so on Saturday we only had three games against the other three teams in our pool. We were able to win most of those games with a nice margin so it left us fresh for finals first thing Sunday morning.

I don't typically lay out on defense but I tried here! This was in finals against Storm. June still caught this one but I think I scared her a little bit at least :)

Storm is a big rival of ours. They've beat us twice in the past but the last time we played it was double game point. This time we went up quickly but there was some back and forth in the second half that brought us to double game point again. This time we were able to close it out and take the State Champs title.

Regionals is in two weeks in Atlanta so we've got three more practices to prepare!