I love volleyball, but I do have a little fomo about all the fun things the kids are doing. So they all dropped us off at the Convention Center and they took off for a tour of the Daytona Speedway. I will let Dog Walker add some pics later.
This is my Baby Doll playing some awesome volleyball.
After the kids picked us up, Curly treated us to BJ's. The food was awesome, especially the pizookies.
Then we decided to give the airboat one more chance. This time, we got there with minutes to spare. They loaded us on the boat and we rode for about 9 minutes total. Lightening again.
We did see some wildlife, but no alligators.
I arranged for a refund.
We headed for the hotel. It was still early, so Baby Doll, Dog Walker, and I went swimming with Bossy's boys and Twizlet. Of course, they found a ball and played water volleyball!
We stayed in the pool until almost 11. Baby Doll's games had changed to the pm wave for tomorrow so we don't have to be there until 3:00.
It almost seemed like I didn't sleep...oh wait...I didn't!!
Sunday morning at 7:00am was our check-in time for the tournament. Scout and Curly came with Baby Doll and me and we left at 6 to get to the Convention Center.
Traffic was crazy!!
They have at least 150 courts set up in the Convention Center. People cheering and yelling; balls bouncing and leaving their own courts. Scout got hit in the face during warmups.
Baby Doll's team won one of the 3 matches they played.
After the games were over, we headed out to Boggy Creek to do an Airboat ride. It was the six of us and both of Baby Doll's coaches. We got there way early. So they let us wander around.
Lightening eventually canceled the airboat ride. So we went out to dinner with the coaches.
They wanted to go to a mini-golf place. The food was really good.
Sport bought us all ice cream. It was even better!
It's finally here! Our long-awaited trip to Orlando for Baby Doll's volleyball Nationals tournament. We decided to make it a bit easier on Bossy since Gamer had to stay home because of work by taking the the red-eye so her little ones would sleep. There are 7 in her group, 6 in mine, and 7 in the group with Teach and Drama Queen. It's almost like a family reunion with 8 of my 12 kids here. We came in early Saturday morning, but Teach's group is driving and they will be in later today.
Our flight left just before midnight. Thankfully, the airport was pretty quiet at that hour.
We got into Orlando around 6am. Everyone was tired and grumpy, and we still had to get luggage and our rental cars before we could drive the 40 or so minutes to our Hilton suites at Aqua Sol.
Some of us slept the day away. I got about 3 hours before Bossy and I went to the 'required for owners' Hilton presentation. After a couple of hours, I dropped her and Bright Eyes at the complex and then I went grocery shopping at Aldi's.
I can’t really afford restaurants all week and our suites have full kitchens. We ate spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and played games.
The rain shut down the pools and waterslide, so we watched the lightening from our 3rd story deck.
Afterwards, we all watched Sheep Detectives except for Sport. He hasn't been feeling well.
Last Saturday, Scout, Baby Doll, Grandpa and I headed out early with our sites set on Nephi. It is Grandpa's hometown and the city was recreating the first baseball game played this side of the Missouri River.
One of my relatives, my 4 greats uncle, played centerfield in that original game. We thought it was his father, who would have been in our direct line, but they used the wrong pic and everybody was confused.
L'il Bro and his family were there.
They left early and Bossy's family showed up late.
The Whitmores were our team and they won!! Bossy stayed until the end, but we had more places to go so we left early. Grandpa was getting tired.
We stopped at Terrel's for donuts; they had doubled in price.
Then we got lunch at the Dairy Freeze before we drove to Fairview for our final stop. My siblings wanted me to donate my mom's rifle to the museum there.
Sorry I have no pics. It was a great and exhausting day. I'm glad Scout did all the driving.
It seems like deja vu, huh? Mom has asked me to write for her about how our first Father's Day without Dad went.
First, Mom went to church by herself without her younger kids going with her. One of Curly's friends had a mission farewell, and the girls were not feeling up to it. So I went over to spend the time with her during Sacrament Meeting and Sunday School. She was really happy that I was there with her. I even drew a nice portrait of what Dad might possibly look like up in heaven.
After church, we had some groovy with corn flakes for both breakfast and lunch. Then we watched Dad's favorite movie, Eddie and the Cruisers 2: Eddie Lives! And after that, we watched the first Eddie and the Cruisers. From what we've learned while and after watching that one, Mom was right to say that Dad preferred the second movie, because it wasn't fully confusing.
For dinner, I found a bag of Dad's famous chili in the freezer that he made himself back in 2024. It was as tasty as it ever was before. Now it's really rare. Soon those bags will all be gone.
After a little while of relaxing after dinner and Mom making skirts for Crafty to go on trek (she and Craftsman are a ma and pa), we went down to the cemetery to spend some time at Dad's grave.
Mom and Curly read two new children's books that are based on Father's Day. Like, Chicka Chicka, I Love Dad. Afterwards, we played a few songs on our phoness that reminded us of Dad. For example, I played Not All Heroes Wear Capes by Owl City. That song really reminded me of the time I played it for Dad. He really liked that song because of me.
We miss you, Dad. I hope you're having a good Father's Day up in heaven.
It took me a couple of weeks, but I have finally finished repairing one of the Dog Walker's quilts.
If you remember, nearly the whole inner square and one of the triangles were totally shredded. He was planning to get rid of it when I rescued it from the garbage bag.
So the first thing I had to do (after giving the Dog Walker a scolding) was to remove all the torn and shredded fabric as well as the yarn holding them in place. Even the batting beneath had to be repaired.
Then I chose new blocks from my stash of fabric. I serged all I could, but that wasn't possible for some. They had to be done by hand.
I also had to sew the serged blocks in by hand. Thankfully, they were much bigger. One of them was 35 blocks and the other was nine.
When I finally had all the new blocks in place, I had to retie all the missing knots.
Then when all the new blocks were finally finished, I had to check the entire quilt for bad ties and other rips in the fabric. That was much harder than it sounds. I had limited matching yarn, so I couldn't replace the knots, I had to retie them.
Even though it took me many hours, I'm so glad this quilt looks like new. Many of the blocks were originally pieced by my grandma and that legacy is definitely worth saving.
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