Our weekend

Our weekend included most of my favorite things-good friends, good food, crafts and most importantly watching our Ava play basketball!

Friday was the Garden Club's annual Greens sale  I am the president and I helped organize the event.  I should say we have many, many dedicated members that help with our annual greens sale.  It is the biggest fundraiser that we have all year.  For the event we made 140 arrangements and 50 wreaths and swags.  Our members started last Monday (the Monday following Thanksgiving) making the arrangements and wreaths.  Since I work full time I popped over on my lunch to help make arrangements.  I also coordinated a Tuesday night session where our members who work could come and help make arrangements.  During the sale I help with the luncheon.  Here I am with the rest of the "lunch ladies."

I made this sign to advertise what we were having for lunch.  We kept it simple (like they've done it for many years) soup and sandwiches. 

The arrangements and wreaths were so beautiful!  Here are some of the ones our members made. 

I loved this quirky wreath.  My friend Wendy bought it and took it home for her front door.  It is perfect for her!

I bought this small Christmas tree in a turquoise pot with turquoise Christmas balls.  Turquoise is my favorite colors so I was happy to buy this one.

Saturday Rachael and I hosted a wreath making and kissing ball classes for our small business Branch and Bloom. I will post pictures about our classes on Crafty Wednesday.

Friday night and Saturday Ava had a basketball tournament.  Since Ava was in the Czech Republic last year she missed the basketball season.  It has been so long since we've seen her play for her school.  It was great to have her back on the court!  My friend Lynn takes amazing action shots so I am going to do a post tomorrow full of pics from the tournament.  

Here are a couple of my favorites :)

Our weekend

Ava had her last tournament of the AAU season over the weekend.  She had a great time playing with her team and she learned a lot from her coaches.  

 My friend Rachael and I made a flower arrangement for Art in Bloom. Art in Bloom is a floral arranging exhibition where floral arrangers create an arrangement highlighting a piece of artwork.   We have made arrangements for Art in Bloom the  last 4 years.  You can see our past arrangements here.  This year our art piece was an elephant made out of recycled material.  This one was our most challenging piece yet.

 

Saturday my friend Rachael hosted a summer brunch.  She had tons of delicious food and drinks.  I love getting together with these girls!  

Sunday we went to our first graduation party of the season for Gabby who graduates from high school on Saturday.  It was a great afternoon!  Here is a picture of the kids from the party. 

And here are some of my friends that were at the party. 

 I love them ❤️. 

We also celebrated Father's Day Sunday.  Happy Father's Day to Graig! He's a great Dad to Brock  and Ava.  We are so lucky he's ours ❤️❤️

And Happy Father's Day to my Dad ❤️❤️

 

Senior night

Tuesday night was Senior appreciation night for our exchange student Anne.  It was a great night and I'm so glad we got to celebrate her!  She's from Denmark and they don't have cheerleading there so she said it was something she wanted to try while she was an exchange student.  The cheerleaders cheer at boys and girls home basketball games. Anne has done a great job this year and we are so very proud of her for being a cheerleader this year.

 

During senior appreciation they honored all the senior basketball players and cheerleaders.  We were also honored as Anne's host family.  

 

 

 

Here are all the seniors and their families and coaches.  It was a great night! 

 

For basketball it is a tradition that the seniors dress up and the underclassmen wear a funny outfit.  This year the seniors wanted the girls to dress up like orange cones so that's what they did.  Ava had fun dressing up like s cone.  Ava has had a great year and has learned so much from the older girls on the team.  

 

 

I can't believe their season is almost over.  It's gone way too fast!  

Happy Thursday!

Xoxo 

Our weekend

This weekend was the perfect weekend it was a balance of fun and work and friend time and family time.  It was a great weekend!!!

Friday was G's birthday!  He doesn't like to make a big fuss over his birthday and he wanted dinner at home so that's exactly what we did.  We had a quiet dinner at home before we went to Ava's basketball game. 

 

Friday night Ava had a game.  I always love watching her play.  She plays her heart out each and every game.    Her team played a tough team and they lost :-(. Ava's friend M took some pics of her during the game.  I am so grateful to her because she captures some great shots ❤🏀

 

 

Saturday I woke up bright and early to go snow tubing with my friends for my annual joint birthday party with my dear friend Jenni.  This is our fourth year doing a joint party.  The first year went  bowling, the second year we went to a trampoline park, last year we had a fabulous 40th birthday trip to Cooperstown and this year we went snow tubing at Hunter mountain.

Here's a collage from previous years ❤

 

And here we are this year👏🏼❤. Don't mind my sweaty head 😬. We took this pic after tubing and it was quite a warm day on the slopes-50 degrees.  

 

Here we are on top of the mountain ready to tube.  As you can see there was NO snow so thankfully they make their own. 

 

Anne (our exchange student from Denmark) came with me and she skied while we went tubing.  Sadly Ava couldn't go she had basketball practice in the morning and then a game in the afternoon. 

 

We had lunch in the lodge and then headed home. It was a gorgeous day!

 

We raced home after lunch so I could get to Ava's basketball game at 4.  She played good and her team won!  Yay!!!!!!!!

 

 

Sunday I went to see The movie Jackie with some friends.  I'm trying to see all the movies that were  nominated for an Oscar. The movie was done very artistically and focused on Jackie during the first few days  after the assasination.  It was tragically sad.  Honestly I didn't love the movie but Natalie Portman was fantastic in her role as Jackie  I was happy to hear this morning that she was nominated for an Oscar!

 

After the movie I raced over to our new (tiny) house and helped G clean up a bit because we have tenants moving in on Saturday for three months.  

We bought a new sectional for the tiny house and I love it!

 

 

Here's a picture of the kitchen.  I adore the white cabinets.

 

 

Our plan is to move into the tiny house in May and rent our house out as a baseball rental in the summer.  We already have 11 out of 12 weeks booked-yay!!!  We would like to stay in the tiny house next year while Ava is abroad since its in town and so much closer to our work.  I'm praying our current house gets rented for next year so we can live at the tiny house.  

I hope you had a great weekend.

Xoxo 

Basketball season

Ava is in the middle of her first basketball season in high school.  She has practice every.single.day and games 2-3 times per week.   She loves everything about basketball-her teammates, her coaches and the game itself. I love watching her play and G is THRILLED that she loves it so much.  She was a dancer for many years and he was thrilled when she put down the ballet slippers and picked up a basketball.

My dear friend Lynn takes pictures of all of the girls during the games.  Here are some she has taken of Ava this season.  I am SO thankful that she takes pictures because I am too busy talking  I mean paying attention to the game to take pictures.

This is their pre-game team circle.   Ava's team has cheers and chants they do and before every game they get in this circle and give each other a little pep talk.

I am so happy that our girl loves basketball so much and I am thankful that she has many good friends on her team.

 This is Ava with her friend (since kindergarten!) Ting.  This is Ting's first year playing basketball and she is loving it!  

 

Happy Thursday!

Xox

Final 4

Graig and Ava spent the weekend with friends at the women's basketball final 4 in Indianapolis.

This is their third year going together and Ava absolutely loves it. The practices are open so the girls get to watch.  The players have meet and greets and sign autographs. It's a dream weekend for Ava because she eats, breathes and sleeps basketball. 

Ava's favorite team is Dayton so she wore her sweatshirt to represent.  Hopefully next year they'll make it to the final 4. 

Meeting the players!

They had a blast!  They are headed home today.  It was a great weekend for them :-)

Xoxo