Annual Rituals

Well, hello again!  Hope all is well.  We had a kind of busy week/weekend here.  We started this week with a super cold few days.  Lows of 29 and highs of 52.  And it was terrible.  Mom was pretty dang ticked about the whole thing.  But we persevered and survived.  It was kind of tough.

On Wednesday, my school had it's 6th grade information night for parents.  My school is K-8 but the 6-8 grades are in a completely different part of the school, with lockers and everything.  Mom is a little overwhelmed with the realization that she and dad will soon have a middle schooler.  That same day, she got a random email from Shutterfly (where she stores all her photos) with a "look at 10 years ago!" group of pictures.  They were pictures of my very first time on a swing.  And I was so cute and little and it made her a little sad:(  But on we go.

Saturday, I had my pitching lessons.  I think I was a bit tired this weekend because, well, I was tired out there but I did OK in the end.  After that, mom and I headed out to meet Ms. Audrey and Madeline and few other girls at the Gem Show.  Ms. Audrey gets vendor passes/wholesaler passes from her sister which means we get in  earlier and get to buy stuff at much lower prices than the regular folk. Us girls took full advantage of the lower prices and bought purses and fuzzy pom poms and keychains and clip on animal ears.  The moms got some stuff they thought was pretty cool but we weren't impressed.  After THAT, we headed to the Good's house for dinner and then we finally headed home.  It was a super fun, exhausting day and we all slept until almost 8 on Sunday morning. That was kind of amazing!

Sunday was a much more relaxed day.  Since the morning was already over by the time we got up, we lounged around, read the paper, took Ginger for a walk.  Dad headed out to play golf and since it was finally a nice day, mom dragged me out of the house to enjoy it.  There were a few open houses in the neighborhood and mom loves those so we hopped on our bikes and rode to a few of those and then hit the Tanque Verde creek.  This is our annual January picture in the water.  It was a really pretty day and it's always hard to come back inside.

So that's it in a nutshell- hope you all have a wonderful week!

Mountains Out of Molehills

Oh my gosh- finally we have a nice day on a weekend!  It was rainy and cold last weekend which made us all kind of inert (cool word, huh?) and then THIS weekend was rainy and cold too!  Boooooo!  Everything cleared out late Saturday night so we had pretty mountains with lots of snow and blue skies too.  This is the Tucson winter we know and love!

In spite of the weather, we did end up having a nice weekend.  Dad and I managed to get in a quick round of golf Saturday afternoon.  It was cold and windy and part of the course was flooded out but it was good.  We've gotten 3.5" of rain at our house since last weekend!  Crazy, right??

 Mom and dad decided to invite some St. Michael's families over for dinner on Saturday.  I also play softball with these girls so we've known each other for awhile and gotten frequent invites to their houses in the past.  In an effort (and it was an effort) for mom and dad to be more friendly, they decided to return the favor.  The initial plan was to keep it simple.  We'll just order some pizzas, drink some beer/mango lemonade and hang out.  Somehow, that morphed into a whole lot more.  Mom decided she was kind of craving lasagna and it was good lasagna weather and really, lasagna isn't hard to make.  So she made lasagna.  But if you're going to eat lasagna, you need bread and her bread recipe isn't that hard to make.  So she made bread.  And of course, you need a salad.  But not just any ol' salad.  She needed Pasta House Salad.  And it isn't hard to make.  So she made Pasta House Salad.  And salad dressing.  And hell, at that point, you might as well go all in and since we have a huge orange tree full of ripe oranges, she made an orange chocolate bundt cake for desert.  And it wasn't that hard to make.  Oh.  And homemade guacamole for an appetizer.  Which wasn't hard to make.   So lets recap that shall we?  Pizza and beer.  Or lasagna, bread, salad, desert and appetizer.   She did not make the wine however.  That would have been over the top.  We all had a fabulous time and except for Colton getting hit across the back by an errant softball bat swing from Ella, it was a great evening!  Colton is fine BTW.

Sunday was much more relaxed and less food oriented.  As I already mentioned, the weather on Sunday was much more cooperative.  Mom was able to take Ginger for a long walk and in the afternoon, we met my coach for round two of pitching lessons.  This one was much improved over last week, even with my late night the night before.  We worked on my fastball, change up and rise ball and they are coming along nicely.  Hopefully, I'll be ready for the season!

Gettin' Serious....

16 months.  That's how long we've been living in this house.  And that's how long it took mom to FINALLY get all of her pictures and artwork hung up.  (Fair warning: we are going to delve deep into mom's psyche in this post.)  There are several reasons why it took 16 months to get everything up.  For a long, long time, mom's favorite colors for the house were oranges and yellows.  So all of her art was oranges and yellows.  But, slowly, her taste shifted to more blues, greens and purples.  So when we moved into this house, there was lots of room for blues and greens but she didn't really know what to do with her yellows and oranges and so she did what any normal human would do and let the art sit in a stack on the floor in the guest room for all of our guests to walk around and step over when they came to visit.  Well.  Around comes the new year 2017 and rather than make resolutions, mom picks a word for the year.  This year's word is ACTION!!!!  So that apparently means, getting orange and yellow art work up and off the floor and onto the walls.  And that's how she spent her Saturday. And it turns that it looks just fine.  And our guests will thank us.  Really.  (It was bad.)

On Saturday, we started my official, private pitching lessons.  Dad did a nice job getting to me where I am now but I'm having mechanical issues that are beyond his expertise so I am now working with my regular season softball coach.  You all know Coach Trish.  She's super cool, super supportive and she pitched in college.  She's done private coaching before but maybe we should have asked how many of her girls got college scholarships.  Just sayin'.  Anyway, it was a very frustrating session for me because I've moved up to a bigger ball and a longer distance between the mound and the plate.  You combine that with changes to my mechanics and there were a few tears shed.  This is the first time I've had someone stand right next to me and tell me EVERY SINGLE TIME that I need to stand up straight.  It will all be good in the end.  Right?  I have some drills to work on twice a week and then lessons on Saturday.  I'll let you know how it goes.

After that on Saturday, dad and I got to cleaning out my fish tank.  It's a small salt water tank but, boy, is it an effort to clean it.  First you have get enough distilled water to fill a holding tank, then let that come up to 78 degrees which takes a day.  Then you have transfer all of my fishies and crabs and snails into that tank and get the water emptied from the big tank using a hose and suction and gravity somehow and not spill any water on the carpet.  Then you have lug this huge tank outside and rinse the whole thing out, sand, rocks, the whole shebang.  Then you drag it all back inside and fill it with more water, make sure the pH and salt balance are good, wait for it to warm up and then you can put the fish back in.  But wait.  You aren't done yet because now, you have to clean and put away the holding tank.  It was a long process but the tank needed it and it looks so nice now and the all my sea creatures are happy campers.  I helped a little but probably not as much as I should have considering it's my tank.

So after all that ACTION!!!!! we were kind of tired on Sunday and it was a really good day to be tired.  It started raining about 2AM and has been rainy and cold all day.  It was a high of 49 at our house.  It was a perfect day for laying around and doing nothing.   We all spent most of the day in various degrees of reclining....

Here is mom reclining on the couch, reading a book, wrapped in a Great Grandma Walker made blanket....

 Here is Ginger reclining/snoring on the carpet.......

 Here is dad, reclining on the couch, playing video games......

And here am I, still in my pajamas, not necessarily reclining but still in my bed (eating chocolate covered bananas), playing on the iPad.

We did all manage to stand up for a bit when Grandpa Vern stopped by but it was a challenge so we headed back to our respective positions once he left.
It was a good day.

Hope everyone has a wonderful week and be looking for more ACTION!!!! items in the coming year!

Back To It

Well.  The Christmas decorations are down and put away so I guess that means the holidays are officially over.  Boooooooo!!  It was back to reality for 2/3 of the Goedel house this past week.  Mom went back to work on Monday.  Not too painful.  I went back to school on Wednesday.  Not too painful.  Dad was supposed to go back to work on Tuesday.  Waaaaaaayyyyy to painful.  So he put it off to Wednesday.  Wednesday rolled around and it was still toooo painful so he put it off to Thursday.  Thursday rolled around and no dice.  Still too much to contemplate.  Dad has a soul sucking job in case you haven't guessed.  He had Friday off anyway so he got to enjoy a week on his own, playing video games, golfing, and just generally relaxing.   Oh.  And he bought a new car.  Just little things like that.  Dad is a car guy and we were all kind of surprised by how long it took him to get another one.  He has been looking for months and months and could not decide between a family friendly SUV or a sporty convertible.  He and I were chatting about it one day (because my parents discuss all important decisions with me) and I said "Dad.  We already HAVE a family car and an RV.  Why do we need ANOTHER family car?"  And the decision was made.  Dad came home with a convertible BMW.  Yeah!   I was really pushing for the fun car and I love it.  Mom loves it too.  She has a little bit of a lead foot and fortunately, this car is fast.  Or unfortunately depending on how you look at it.

On Friday, I got dropped off at school and mom ran some errands and then she and dad had a Date Day.  The headed out in the fun car, with the top down because the weather was so nice and went out for brunch.  They decided that working stinks and it's time to start buying lottery tickets.

As I mentioned earlier, my return to school was not too painful.  I had intramural basketball on Thursday and once again, I was the only girl.  Thankfully, being a 5th grader, I was the big kid and I'm pretty good friends with the other 5th grade boys so they were nice to me.

Our weekend was pretty low keyed and we are maybe, just maybe a little bored?  On Saturday, we headed down to a home show.  Dad got some free tickets to get us in and boy are we glad we didn't pay.  It was about the lamest thing ever.  They did have two tiny houses on display and dad was getting ideas but mom put the big kabash on living in a tiny house.

Sunday was yard work, batting practice for me, play time for Ginger, golfing for Dad and the driving range for mom.  A calm day, getting us ready for the real return to reality tomorrow.  Hope you all have a fabulous week!

So Much To Talk About!

Another Christmas Season come and gone and it was a good one!  So good, I haven't been able to blog in forever.  The good news is, I still have ONE DAY of vaca left and I'm going to spend it the way I've spent the last two days- in my pajamas.  All. Day.  It don't get much better than that.

So, let's rewind all the way back to December 17.  We had our 3rd annual Camping Friends Christmas Kickoff at Tanque Verde Ranch.  These are all the guys that dad used to camp with until they all went off and got married and had kids.  This is about the only time we see several of them so it's always good fun.  It was actually, really, truly cold this year.  Enough so that mom and dad broke out their Denver winter clothes and mom wore her new favorite Christmas sweater.  Dad took some nice pictures with his camera but he hasn't sent them onto mom, so sorry dear blog reader, but there are no other pictures of our fun night.

The next week was my last week at school and you really couldn't call it a week.  Monday and Tuesday were spent doing Christmas word finds in class and we got out at noon on Wednesday.  Grandpa Vern was able to meet us for lunch and that's always a good time.

Thursday was Richmas so we had his favorite meal of tacos.  But these were real tacos and not the McCormick seasoning turkey tacos mom always makes.  To make dad's day even better, Nana D and Mr. Walker rolled in for the weekend in time to celebrate with us.

Mom tried really, really hard to get a good picture of me and my two grandpas but somebody was always making a goofy face no matter how many pictures she took so this what you get.  I was in heaven with both of my favorite grandpas here.  You'd think it was MY day, right?!

This is mom's favorite picture from the evening- I love my Foo-foo!

Once we were done with Richmas, it was back to our regularly scheduled program.  Uncle Adam, Auntie Erin, Aunt Erin's sister Kristen and cousins Sophia and Brendan rolled in Friday afternoon.  Thankfully, we have four bedrooms and three bathrooms so it was cozy but we managed without too much difficulty.  At least no one said anything so we're assuming it was all perfect.  We spent Friday afternoon taking turns in my new batting cage trying to impress each other with spectacular batting skills.  Kristen and Mr. Walker took the prize for most balls hit and mom got a special prize for not hitting a single one.

This is Christmas morning- I think there is a saying about too many cooks in the kitchen but since mom wasn't feeling great, she was more than happy to have twelve people in there if it meant less work for her.

We did manage to get out of the house on Christmas Eve morning to head to the park to practice my pitching and hitting.  We met my friend Jack, from my class at school, there so Uncle Adam could give him some coaching on pitching.  It was a super fun morning and it's a good thing we did go because a big, ol', wet, cold storm moved in and kept us cooped up inside all afternoon and evening.

We did take advantage of the nastiness and got our cookies all finished and plated up and Mr. Walker and I put the finishing touches on my reindeer feedbags for all of Santa's reindeer.

I managed to get everyone to bed by 9 because Santa.  He could have come at any minute and I didn't want us to miss it.  I showed Brendan how to track Santa on the computer so we spent a lot of time watching him get closer and closer.  Gaaaaaa!!  GO TO BED EVERYONE!!!

Christmas morning was as calm and peaceful as you would imagine it would be with 7 people, a 5 year old, a 3 year old, a 10 year old and a big, nosy dog.  It was great fun and Santa was good to everyone.

Once we made it through that, we got everyone corralled and headed out to the golf course for some attempts at family photos.  It was about as calm and peaceful as you would it imagine it to be with 7 adults, a 5 year old, a 3 year old, a 10 year old and a big dog that had been cooped up inside since the day before.

 Much like trying to get a good picture of the two grandpas, as much as we tried, we couldn't get us all looking in the same direction but that's probably half the beauty of these pictures, yes?

It was a wonderful, crazy few days and we are so glad we could fit everyone in here.  Apparently, mom has great memories of big, crazy family get togethers as a kid so she was more than happy to pass that on to me.  Me, being an only child was a little overwhelmed but it was all good!

Everyone rolled out about 11 on Monday and about an hour later, mom and Ginger were passed out cold asleep on the couch, not to fully recover for three more days.



 On Tuesday, mom returned to work but good news is, her whole afternoon cancelled out so she left at noon.  I had been asking to get my ears pierced so she picked me up, got my friend Ella and we headed out to get that done.  Because mom was worried about sanitary/cleanliness issues with the mall places, she took me to an actual piercing place that was highly recommended.  They did a great job, lots of sterile equipment, gloved hands etc. and my piercing lady was super nice but the shop was a little freaky for me.  It was a little dark and Ella and I decided it was kind of "goth" and little scary.  Mom is hoping this scares either of us out of further piercings.

I love my new look and am super diligent about keeping my ears clean- even more than mom.  I can't wait until I can actually change my earrings.  I already bought a pack of 6 sets of doughnut earrings!

For New Year's, we went to Buckskin Mountain State Park with the Goods.  It was a new part of Arizona for us to explore and it was very rugged and beautiful.  The campground was right on the Colorado River so Madeline and I spent a ton of time down on the beach, collecting shells and building sand castles.

There were a bazillion other things to do as well-  there was a basketball court so we had a family pick up game.  Mr. Mike played college ball and dad is just an all around good athlete but we showed them a thing or two about how to play "10 year old girl basketball."   We also got a good family volleyball game on the volleyball court.  You haven't played volleyball until you've played "10 year old girl volleyball"!

Dad and I took the kayak out and headed up river for awhile and the mom's headed out to do some hiking on the trails that started out of the campground.

For New Year's Eve, we invited our nice neighbor to join us for dinner and had some good steak and good conversation and we rung in the New Year at 9 PM.  That sucked.  It wasn't even midnight in California which was right across the river.  Madeline and I made the best of it though and blew our horns with all our might and popped our poppers and then we were headed off to bed.

 It was a great trip-  all the adults slept amazingly well, catching up on all their sleep from the last year and enjoying the outdoors- the best way to ring in the New Year!  Here's wishing you a health and happy 2017!  Cheers!