Best day of her life, part one.

Friday was "the best day of my life" according to miss Hope Elizabeth.

 And well, I have to agree it was a pretty fantastic day. 

It started with the first real travel day for the Demo/Performance team for the Jumpin' Jags. They loaded up on the bus first thing that morning, and were gone almost all of the school day. I took a personal day and followed them around what felt like the entire state of Kentucky. 

 An hour and 20 minutes later we arrived at a school full of children eagerly awaiting to watch the kids perform.

See Hope in the back there?

I could tell she was a little reserved, but it was a big crowd.

But she slowly warmed up.

Never in my life would I have imagined my kids would be into jumping rope as a sport, but it's really quite awesome.

School #1 was finished.

But not much time to rest, because it was time to head to the next school, 8 million miles away.

WHO KNEW KENTUCKY WAS SO BIG?

The coach giving them a pep-talk just like any coach. WATCH YOUR LINES, JUMP LIKE YOU MEAN IT!

And I'd say it worked! Or maybe she just had the jitters out, because she was in it to win it.

And I am SO glad that I was there to traipse all over the countryside to watch.

But the best part of her day was still to come....

Not going to gonna do that again this year, except I will.

Twice a year I get an email from a consignment sale that runs here in BG letting me know, HEY, IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN! Come sign up to sell all your stuff, make some money, help some people, and well, just enjoy the experience that is consigning. 

Uh, let me tell you about the work that goes into it. It's dreadfully time consuming, think yard sale on crack. 

So when I see that email come in, I generally respond accordingly. 

AND EACH TIME I FINISH ONE, I always think, I AM NOT DOING THAT AGAIN.

But guess who always signs up.

Just got another email today letting me know the sale is only four weeks away, and I immediately started to itch.

So pretty much over the next four weeks I will settle into the abyss of clothes and remain there.

And just as I do every year, when the check rolls in I will do a jig.

See you on the other side people.

Nathan time

My weekend was centered around this guy. 

I did manage to throw in some stuff that didn't involve him.

But for the most part, it was Nathan time.

I walked into Borden High School to watch Nathan play basketball and who did I look up and see?  My bestie's husband!

I was all like, ERIC! And then all, WHERE'S TRACEY?

Sad face, Tracey wasn't there, but we all had fun hanging out. Cause you know when you hang out with Eric Reid it's basically like hanging out with the mayor, because he knows ERRBODY.

Also absent, my baby who came down sick on Saturday. Blah.

But back to Nathan, who is now SIXTEEN!

And as you can see thrilled about it.

 Thankfully Hope perked up for the party.

She's pretty crazy about her cousins.

But we all feel that way.

I remember turning sixteen, and what a sweet age it was.

Of course when I look at my baby nephew I see the little boy who carried around a ball all the time, and took a bottle until kindergarten. Ha! But here he is growing up, and doing a fine job at it.

So glad I was there to celebrate you. Happy Birthday, Nathan.

Our tiny jumper

It's been a really long time since I talked about my little jumper, and little is literal. Paul took this video of her one evening at a practice, she's the one in the middle, the smallest one. 

Hope was promoted this year to the Demo Team, which basically means she's part of the team that goes to other schools to show their stuff and hopefully recruit. She really enjoys it, especially the part where they get to go out to eat after performing.

A few weeks back all the teams got together to put on a performance for friends and family. This included some of the high school girls who still perform, made me wonder if Hope will be one of these girls someday....

This performance was a little different, they turned off all the lights and used light up ropes. Pretty cool to watch, but the pictures? Well it appears as if it was the 1960's and I was trippin' on something.

Turn on some Zeplin man.

Just look into the light....

You get the point, the pictures were wild.

But she did a really good job. I'm so impressed with her foot work and stamina.

Our tiny jumper.

She makes us smile.

My NYE with a killer cat

So the end of our visit in Wisconsin I was completely useless. I just sat around in pain . LOTS AND LOTS OF PAIN. 

While everyone else was off having fun on New Years Eve, I sat in a chair and hung out with Hoda and Kathie Lee.  Oh and I hung out with the cat Sonny.

He sat in this window by me and we chilled out like homies, that was until he acted like he might kill something.

I'm not super versed in cats, so his moaning began to FREAK ME OUT. I decided to video him, you know in case he decided I would be his victim. At least everyone would know how I went out of the world. I finally started to text Paul and he came to my rescue, turns out Sonny saw a tomcat outside and just wanted to defend his territory. Seriously cats, you scare me. 

I hate that I ended our visit feeling bad, but it still was such a great time together.

Pam and Tom have taught me that where you live doesn't mean if you are close are not. It really is in the heart.

So until we meet again....

Going to see the eagles. The birds, not the band.

When I say that we went to see the eagles, do you picture this? 

Well I know I sure did.

Pam and Tom would say "let's go see the eagles!" and an image of four famous rockers would pop in my head. But no, we didn't go see the band, but the actual birds.

Where Pam and Tom live bald eagles migrate down from the North to reach the open waters of the dam so they can feed.

I've only seen a bald eagle at the zoo, never in the wild. Which by the way, the eagles at the zoo are always sad what with their sad little messed up wings.

But here in WI, we had the chance to see them being free and all bald eagle'ish.

You can see we obeyed the rules.

In their defense, the first day we went there were no eagles out.

But second and third trip? HOUSTON, WE HAD EAGLES. People travel from all over and bring the big guns with them to capture these bad boys.

I obviously do not have that caliber of a camera, but we did manage a few good shots.

They are so close that it's pretty amazing.

And probably most amazing was that we saw close to THIRTY at one time.

Just being majestic and all eagle like.

Not gonna lie, pretty cool.