Our first born is nine! And, she reigned it in escaping prison at Zero Hour with ten of her besties, and catching shrimp and chicken flung her way at Kobe Hibachi Grill.
It's impossible to get beam-side access at Mini-Hops, so we have little documentation of E's favorite sport, but Linds was able to sneak a few with the telephoto from the observation room recently.
Linds started her final lap as a 30-something with breakfast in bed followed, several hours later, by fondue at the Melting Pot.
Linds and JoJo ran their annual spring Get Lucky 7k, and Jeremy and I held our annual support group Bloody Mary rally at a nearby pub. This year, the race fell on St. Patrick's Day and was in St. Paul... so we had no choice but to make a green day of it. My favorite stop was was the Halftime Rec, as we bumped in to the McNerneys, the Irish Brigade was playing and I ripped a $402 pull tab (though the wings at Blue Door and cocktails and crepes at Al's "furniture shop" speakeasy were pretty sweet too).
E carefully making her March Madness picks...
#start'emyoung
Sawyer's first hockey season wrapped up with a four game Mite Madness tournament, where the Association pulls out all the stops (from the Banner, to player announcements, to music in the locker rooms, and beyond). Unfortunately, S missed day one with the flu, but, like a true hockey player, refused to miss the semis and finals on Sunday (even though she hadn't eaten in 36 hours) and gutted out two tough wins alongside her Wayzata Great White Shark teammates to bring home the hardware.
What a fun season. What a fun ending. And what great new BFFs she made along the way (Henrik Erickson, in particular... a cousin of the Fairmont Erickson crew I ran with back in the day).
E & I got back into our DN (date night) routine as well, with a night of monster chess at the Minneapolis Public Library in Plymouth, Thai food at Asian Duck, rock climbing at VE and late night donuts at Glam Doll.
We used to be so good about routine 1:1 date nights with the kids, but it's been a while. I finally got a couple in with S and hope we get back into the routine. We saw the Wild beat Carolina (Sawyer's first NHL game) by a score of 6-2. The Wild set a franchise record that night, scoring four goals in under 3.5 minutes. Then, we saw the Timberwolves beat the defending champion Golden State Warriors, 109-103 (Sawyer's first NBA game). Though, S, a GSW superfan, wasn't as pleased with the result of that game.
Pre-game, we enjoyed St. Paul's signature 'Sota Style pizza at Red Savoy (after killing time shopping and playing at Dick's, our favorite store).
L & I volunteered in E & S's classrooms on STEM day (we're former scientists, after all). We forgot to pull out the camera in E's class, where they were running water bottle flipping experiments, but did snap one of S coaching her table through the Jack and the Beanstalk challenge.
Hours after the hoops season wrapped up, the girls dusted off their gloves and took and played some long toss across the cul-de-sac.
E's Wayzata II squad struggled through their final two tournaments, going 0-6 after such a hot start to the travel season. But, they improved weekly, grew tighter as a unit, and smiled the whole way through. What a fun group of girls, and what a bright future of friendship and team sports.
Linds got E tickets to the see the Gopher gymnasts take on ASU at the Pavilion, a meet the U won by narrow margin on the final routine of the night.
Suz ended her streak and won this year's Title IX fantasy football championship, choosing Hai Hai, a trendy new Vietnamese restaurant as the dinner destination. The crew was late, so Linds happily toasted the season as we held down the fort until the gang arrived. After dinner hit up Grumpy's, right around the corner. The ladies kept warm by the patio fire, and the boys solved all the world's problems over Coors Lights inside.
Some crazy lady and a few of her friends transformed her office building at the Minnetonka Wellness Center into a Harry Potter World experience, including character cameos and real life "sorting" (I have no idea). E & S dressed up, brought friends (Kate and David, respectively) and had way more fun that I could understand.
