Monday, August 10, 2009

Tent-camping at Turkey Run

I apologize Aubrey for only posting two of the promised three posts! I didn't want to overwhelm you ;-)

The past few weeks my mom kept bringing the idea of going camping up but I completely disregarded it [as would you if you knew my mother] because she only went on one camp-out with me when I was in Girl Scouts because she had to sleep in a cabin and she couldn't shower in the morning. Well low and behold, we went tent- camping [as my mom refers to it] this past Thursday-Friday at Turkey Run in Indiana.

The Wednesday before this, was when I went to St. Louis for the WPS game. The game didn't start until 7 and then we had pictures after, had to drive home, and make a Steak N Shake run for the people at my house so I didn't even get home until 1:30 Thursday morning. I slept napped until 4:45 and we were on the road by 6. Once we picked out a campsite, we pitched this monster of a tent.
This picture doesn't do it justice. It's a 10 person [grown men] and it can fit three queen size beds. It's a good thing we got it though because there were 8 of us. After we got settled, we started tried to start a fire for lunch. Turns out Zach isn't that great with fires we want him to start. Eventually the smoke turned into flames and we were able to eat.

After lunch, we went canoeing. Let me just start out by saying thatmy family everyone completely underestimates my abilitles. Things started out a bit rough but once we got the right groups of people it all worked out. It was a gorgeous day for it!

We all came back to the campsite after that excursion. My mom went to shower [yes, probably the only reason she was able to make it these two days], I napped, and the other 6 went to the pool. That night consisted of washers, food, and fun!

The next morning we were awake [too early in my opinion, I'm on vacation, remember?] and had breakfast and headed to the state park to hike. I wish I would've taken my camera because it was gorgeous!! We went back to the campsite, had lunch, played washers [Melissa and I are STILL unbeaten! Any takers??] and packed up to head home.

It was a great two days with perfect weather and I'm so glad I was able to go!

Sorry about the strikethrough...I thought I did it right but aparently I didn't!

Friday, August 7, 2009

WPS

As most of you know, I'm a bit of a soccer fanatic, to say the least. As much as I love men's soccer, I was growing up and playing when Mia Hamm and the '91ers were at their peak and have been following the Women's National Team ever since. After the WUSA failed because of lack of money, the National Team has been the only women's soccer that's ever on, until this year. The Women's Professional Soccer league started up this year with 7 teams [8 next year with Philadephia] and it's been awesome to have multiple games on every week! I had been trying to go to games all season but most of them are on Sunday's or during the week so I was unable to go because of babysitting. On July 26th, I was able to attend my first game, and it was definitely worth all the trouble it took to get there! Zach and I drove up that morning and met Caitlin, Hannah, and Maeve at Chuck's Southern Comfort Cafe which I highly recommend if you like barbeque and live in the Chicago area! We had time to kill after lunch so we all headed to Caitlin's to hang out for a little bit. We all parted ways and Zach and I headed to Toyota Park for the game which was Chicago Red Stars vs. Washington Freedom. Toyota Park is such a cool stadium. The fact that it was built for the Chicago Fire and used for other things and not vice versa makes it all the better in my book. We had amazing seats for the game and it was a great game, even though Chicago lost, meaning they were out of the hunt for a playoff spot.

I was able to go, a mere week and a half later, to another game this past Wednesday in St. Louis. This time it was Saint Louis Athletica vs. Chicago Red Stars. Kayla, Brittany and I drove down and picked up Sarah for this game. We had front row and almost dead center seats. I had a minor dilema though. After much deliberation, I've concluded that Chicago is going to be "my team". The only problem with this game was that my absolute FAVORITE player, Hope Solo, plays for St. Louis. I ended up wearing a Red Stars shirt but cheered for Athletica because it was in St. Louis and Hope plays for them, but don't worry Chicago...I'm working on the loyal fan thing. After the game, we had the incredible oppotunity to get our picture taken with the 4 Gold Medalists who played in the game, Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Lindsay Tarpley and Lori Chalupny, except Tarpley wasn't in the picture then because she tore her ACL in practice and didn't play. As I mentioned before, Hope Solo, is my favorite player in ALL of soccer, yes even more than Becks, so I was rather excited! Here are some pictures from the game...and the one with us and the players will be scanned in as soon as I get it in the mail!They walked down to the field, through the bleachers!

Saint Louis

Chicago

Final score

Catch up

After a brief hiatus, I am back to the blogging world, at least until I run out of things to blog about! For my loyal readers, I know there's been a void in your lives without new posts to read, and for that I apologize ;-) Ya'll are in for a treat though because there will be three, yes THREE, new post tonight! And yes, I said ya'll!

This summer has definitely been a good one! I've been babysitting for two little boys, E [7 years old] and J [5 years old] every day. Some of the days have been long, but it's been so much fun. We've had very few stay at home days, in fact I think we've only had two days where we didn't leave their house at all. Between pools, parks, camps, we haven't had time to just sit around!

What have you been up to this summer?