Happy Birthday Dixie

Last month, one of my dearest friends in Woodbury had a birthday. And it was a big one---like possibly THE biggest one! And she so happens to be one of those people that never does anything for herself and is constantly doing things for other people. So we knew this was quite possibly our only opportunity to make an entire evening all about her without her having an excuse to get out of it. But knowing Dixie, it had to be a surprise party or else she would have prepared all the food and hosted everyone at her house. Yes, she's just that giving and serving---which made organizing this party all that much more fun.

She knew there were 7 of us going out for dinner in Minneapolis and she was so excited about that! She loves to get dressed up and she is a foodie at heart, but she'll never tell you that! She has 4 kids and her husband TJ has been in Kansas City since this past fall working in his new role for his new job, so whenever he's home, they are soaking up as much family time as they can. So you can imagine how long it's been since she got dressed up for dinner in the city.

The surprises started when she walked out the door....

Yes, we got her a limo. We needed to make it an extra special night and instead of figuring out who was going to be riding with who, we all got to enjoy time together. I didn't realize, however, that this was Dixie's first-ever limo ride! Bonus!

Dixie and TJ

Joel, Terri, Dionne, Dixie and TJ

A picture of Matt and I, just to prove we were actually there

Dionne and Dixie both turned 40 the same week, so we made it a surprise for both of them!

 Happy Birthday to the birthday girls!

I had asked Dixie if she wanted to know where we were going to eat or if she wanted to be surprised. She opted for the surprise, but little did she know that there was a surprise waiting for her. 

We had the entire loft room over the bar at Cafe Lurcat and it was amazing! (The pictures aren't great because of the lighting, but you can get the idea). 

No one was able to get a picture of Dixie when she saw everyone because she immediately buried her head in my shoulder and said, "I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you" with tears in her eyes. She finally looked back at everyone waiting for her to see 12 of her closest friends all there to celebrate her. And to say that Dixie has an eclectic group of friends is an understatement. As Dixie will readily admit, "Normal people are boring". (Which always leads me to think, "What does that say about me? I'm not normal? I'm weird? Or at least I'm not boring? But back to Dixie..)

Dixie is someone who loves having people around, but often times she spends all her time making everyone feel comfortable and never gets to enjoy the evening herself (do you notice a theme of selflessness here?) So when we started to plan this party, TJ and I knew that we couldn't have too many people there or Dixie wouldn't be able to just sit back and enjoy herself. We narrowed it down to 6 other couples who were all happy to come out and celebrate Dixie! Everyone who I contacted was so excited that finally something like this wasn't being organized by Dixie but was being done FOR her, which is just a testimony to what kind of person she is!

So blessed by our friendship and so sad that she's leaving me! 

The crew

Some of the ladies 

One of the couples made Dixie's favorite cake and brought it for us

After dinner, we went to a dueling piano bar and then headed home. It was a fun night, mostly because of the rare opportunity to lavish Dixie with lots of love without her having the ability to turn it down first!! 

Wyatt's first AAA hockey tournament

I wanted to post a few pics from Wyatt's first tournament with his Warrior team. Thus far in youth hockey, they mostly do drills and scrimmages with a tournament once during the winter. However, this consists of our hockey club (woodbury) playing against another hockey club from around the city and it's not a real 'tournament'. It's more like several scrimmages in one weekend in cross-ice games. So this was his first tournament play against other AAA teams from around the cities and these games were full-ice. What an exciting weekend it was! The kids won on friday night 10-2. Apparently they were feeling pretty confident because they lost their first game on Saturday morning 12-4. But thankfully we won our game on Saturday night 5-4 (on a goal in the last minute to win), which sent us into the championship on sunday. 

The team we were set to play in the championship was the team that had killed us 12-4. But our coaches are amazing and stayed so positive with the boys throughout the whole tournament, constantly teaching and coaching and encouraging our boys (despite some other teams' coaches that were yelling and getting on the refs cases) and our boys pulled off a win! We got behind 0-2 in the 1st period but rallied for 3 straight goals and then the teams went back and forth scoring until we ended regulation at a  6-6 tie!! Seriously, I could not handle the nerves--and this is just mites! But we ended up scoring just a few minutes into OT and our boys were elated (and exhausted)!

Clearly they have all watched a game or two before because they knew exactly what to do--pile on the goalie!!!

The handshake with the other team, Legacy, who is known around the cities as being one of the better AAA teams

Warrior Cup Tournament Champs (Wyatt is in the front row, 3rd from the right)

After the game with the trophy, just outside their locker room.

It was fun for the boys that it was an actual 'cup' since many of the tournaments teams play in give our plaques or other things as trophies. So the coaches decided to treat it like the Stanley Cup and each player got to have it for one week. I found this picture on my camera a few days later....you can see the reflection of Wyatt taking a picture

The coaches encouraged the kids to be creative and take pictures of what they did with the cup, so Wyatt had a few ideas (I think prompted by Matt who has seen a picture or two in his life of what NHL players do with the Stanley Cup)

Eating cereal out of it....

Drinking out of it at a local donut shop..

What an exciting weekend it was for these boys! Our next tournament isn't until August, so we'll have a nice little break for the summer! But of course now that the kids got a taste of a big win, none of them want time off (but us parents do!!)

Potpourri (does anyone actually use that stuff anymore?) of the last month

I took this one day as I walked Wyatt to the bus stop...this was in mid-April and we couldn't believe we were still getting snow (little did we know that there was lots more of it coming!)

I went in for some allergy testing and the doctor told me she has never seen anyone with allergies this bad that isn't on prescription medication or shots! Yes, I'll be starting allergy shots soon! (I had Sadie take this picture because my back was itching SO bad and I wanted to see what it looked like...not a great pic but you get the idea!)

We were leaving hockey practice one day and Blake jumped on one of Wyatt's teammates bags to 'hitch a ride'...thankfully Hunter has a little brother and wasn't bothered by it at all! (gotta love that Blake wore cowboy boots with camo pants!)

Wyatt's first time taking the face-off in a real, full-ice game! (They play a lot of 3-on-3 and cross ice games at this age.)

We caved to Sadie's pressures and finally got a pet...the most low maintenance pet I could think of..a hermit crab! But she loves that thing and takes pretty good care of her. (Make no mistake, it is definitely a girl!) Sadie named her Rusty and didn't want to hear anyone tell her that Rusty is a name usually reserved for males--love her confidence! 

I took this picture one night while we were saying prayers in the loft before bedtime. Yes, I should have had my eyes closed as well, but I was so thankful I was able to take in this moment, watching Matt pray over our family while the boys lay in his arms.

Another sweet moment...each night when we go to bed we go in the kids' rooms to check on them, turn out any reading lights and retuck any ruffles sheets/comforters. Is there anything sweeter than watching your babies sleep? (I'll never forget--ahem Jen Sullivan--that for Blake, is just recharging for another action packed day.)

And more snow!! This was late April and we had all this when we opened the garage door!!

That is no light dusting people!!

And then just a few days later we were in sundresses headed to Mary Poppins! What an amazing show!! Sadie danced all the way back to our car--so inspiring for a dancer like her!

And finally, May 2nd in MN.....thankfully this was the last of it and it looks like we are in the clear, but it seemed like winter would never end this year!!!

My not-so-tiny dancer

Sadie is just about to wrap up dance for the year and it has been a wonderful experience for her. She loves being 'graceful' and asks me to turn on classical music at home so she can practice 'moving to the music', as her teacher calls it.

I took this picture at dance last week as the girls were posing after their dance. Each girl would dance however she chose ('moving to the music' or 'dancing like the music sounds' as her teacher calls it) until Miss Mary Ann would say "pose", and then they had to put one hand on another girl that was already finished and the next girl would start dancing. 

And this was Sadie's turn to 'freestyle' to the music.....she definitely LOVES to dance!

Mr. Physical

As everyone who knows Blake already knows, he loves anything physical and rises to any physical challenge. I took a few videos over the last week or so of some examples of this. The first one is something the kids love to do--jumping off the stairs into Matt's arms. Wyatt and Sadie are both definitely more cautious, but clearly Blake is not. You have to watch the video several times to really appreciate the air he gets and the commitment he makes to the jump. The second video is of Blake at swimming lessons this week. He just started lessons about a month ago and they are just once a week, but he quickly progressed (props to his teachers--and all the teachers for that matter--at FOSS swim school). He started out in Level 1 and has no prior swimming experience, but as you can see, he quickly 'got it' and his teacher told me he'll be skipping level 2 and going straight to level 3.





Many of Blake's physical accomplishments are not positives in my book (scaling countertops, climbing out of his crib, etc) but I am SO grateful for his swimming abilities because the better the kids get at swimming, the less I have to worry about them drowning! This last week, he was doing back floats independently and learning how to swim on his back!
(FOSS swim school has been SO amazing for my kids and I can't say enough good things about it. The classes are small, instructors are always so positive and excited and my kids have learned so much in short periods of time. Wyatt and Sadie had safety week this week in their classes and had to learn how to swim with clothes on and without goggles---I never would have thought of these things!)

Last trip up to Stormy for the winter

We made one last trip up to Stormy Lake in April, but we weren't expecting it to still be winter! We didn't even bring any of our winter gear with us, which was just poor thinking on my part. But I really didn't think there would be snow....of course, they got several inches on our way up and then a few more while we were there!

There's nothing like being in the middle of nature, though, and enjoying its beauty. Check out what we saw looking towards the lake from inside the family room....

..if you missed it in the first picture, you'll probably see it in this one...

It was a great family weekend and we are getting closer to being done with all our projects and ready for everyone to enjoy it this summer! 

On Saturday, Blake ended up taking a really long nap and just wasn't very tired when the kids were going to bed. He came downstairs after Wyatt and Sadie had fallen asleep and rather than send him back to bed, Matt enjoyed a few clementines with him and had some great discussions. I can't remember what they were talking about, but I loved the expressions on Blake's face. It was such a precious time between the two of them.

This one was a bit blurry but I had to post it because Blake makes this face whenever we tell him something that he doesn't agree with or that he doesn't already know.

And the next morning, as we were packing up to come home, we had a few more visitors. The excitement never gets old!