January

 Dylan spoke in Sacrament Meeting and Kylee got up to sing with the choir.  Sadie snapped a picture of both of them up there.

Sadie is doing Battle of the Books again this year.  I have enjoyed this fun program.  I like that it pushes them to read books they otherwise wouldn't.  Sadie was on a team with Evelyn and Tenley.  Tenley is a 5th grader but she didn't have a team and Sadie needed another teammate so it worked out.  There are three battles and the last one is in May (spoiler- they won the whole thing!)

Sadie's team got to go hang out with the girls varsity team.  They had a great time.

I took Sadie and Evelyn to Targhee.  Jen was there with Averi and Porter.  Jen was hanging out with Porter on Shoshone so I left Sadie and Evelyn there with her and she kept an eye on them while I went off with Averi for a bit.  There was a lot of snow but it wasn't great snow.  At least not in the ungroomed areas.  When I went back to Shoshone I found Sadie actually listening to Jen and carving like a real boarder, even though I've been asking her to try and she's been arguing with me.  I think there are good spots on Shoshone to practice that are not very steep at all.  I was just happy she was starting to get it.  The girls had a lot of fun.  They had to walk back to the car to get Evelyn's lunch (celiac disease makes it hard sometimes) and they spent some time at lunch but then they went back out and wouldn't come off the hill until they kicked them off.  It was a fun day!  And the scenery is always beautiful.  

Seattle

 Kylee's team was scheduled to play some games in Seattle.  The weather was looking not great, rainy and cool.  Like in the 30's at night and maybe up to 50 at the highest.  So we weren't all that excited about playing but Kylee loves to play and this Yellowstone Premier League is supposed to challenge us.  Most of the team had booked the same flight on a Thursday morning. Our first game was Friday afternoon.  On Wednesday morning, literally 24 hours before our flight, we get news that two of the three teams we were supposed to play were not going to come.  The one remaining team is from our club here in Idaho Falls and we play them all the time.  How annoying is that.  Jeremy, our coach was trying to find some other teams for us to play.  He made 40 phone calls, was so stressed about trying to make it a worthwhile experience for the girls that he couldn't eat or sleep that night.  

Most of the team decided to cancel their flight and hotel.  Fortunately the airline had changed the time for our flight shortly after we had booked it.  The change didn't really matter to us but because of that change, they allowed everyone to cancel their flights with a full refund.  There were a handful of people who had booked later and couldn't get refunded, including Jeremy.  So they decided to go and they ended up meeting with a Jr College team up there and playing with them and had a good experience, but it was still a big letdown.

As for me and Kylee, we had planned to stay with Kevin and Vanessa.  So we didn't have to cancel any hotel, and we could've cancelled the flight no problem.  But I was really looking forward to visiting with Kevin.  I couldn't decide if I should still go with Kylee, or cancel Kylee's flight and just go by myself.  In the end, what made our decision was that Kylee had been sick all week and didn't seem to be getting better very quickly.  On the day I left, she ended up with a nasty ear infection and had to start antibiotics.  We are thankful we decided to keep her home because the flight would've killed her ears.

So I flew by myself and picked up my rental car and drove to Federal Way to stay with Kevin.  It was a chilly weekend but not as cold as home, that's for sure.  The humidity does make it feel quite cold though.

I was training for a half marathon so I had a couple runs I had to get done.  One of them was 16 miles!  I know that sounds dumb for a half marathon, but it was a pretty heavy training schedule to run a fast race (spoiler, it worked).  I didn't know where to run that far in the Seattle area and I didn't want to figure out how to pack enough water and food and layers so I just did the easier thing and got a trial pass at LA Fitness.  16 miles on the treadmill with the last 1.5 at zone 3 (basically race pace).  It was tough but I did it!

The rest of what we had planned was hiking/exploring.  Kevin showed me some trails and cool areas on the Puget Sound.  We had a nice dinner in Tacoma.  We drove to Olympic National Park (the park is really big and we only went to a small section of it but what we saw was pretty cool!)  Vanessa had plans with some friends to go see a comedy show so we tagged along for that and saw the glass museum on the streets in Tacoma too.  The Seattle area is VERY artsy.  Kevin wanted me to run with him and see his neighborhood, and I wanted to see his neighborhood so I went, even though I had ran 16 miles the day before, lol.  I actually felt better than I expected and it was fun seeing his running route.  My flight was later at night so we went to Seattle and walked around Alki and had sushi before taking me to the airport.

I'm really glad I got to go!  And it was nice getting to hang out with Kevin and not worrying about getting Kylee to her games.  We did see people out playing soccer on all the fields and it looked cold if I'm being honest!  We bundled up quite a bit when we went hiking and it was good.

This was from the plane.

Kevin and Vanessa's house is really cute.  They have tons of plants and bird feeders and stuff outside and these plants inside too.

This little hike we found in Olympic NP was so magical!  I loved it so much!

Tacoma

Views of the Sound from Kevin's neighborhood run.

Views of the city from Alki

Florida for Christmas Break part 2

 We really only had one day in this area.  We were supposed to do kayaks when we got there on the 31st but the weather was not good.  The kayak rental company even called me to tell me it wasn't a good day and asked if we wanted to trade.  The only other option was the next day and the weather was not necessarily looking great then either but we decided to switch.  So we had to fit a lot in the one day.  

The pictures make it look like it was a gloomy run.  And it kind of was, but it was actually really cool still.  It was cool, which was nice.  And I ran over a couple bridges and past a couple golf courses that were really pretty even in the fog.

We wanted to check out Siesta Beach.  It's rated the best beach in the US according to some sources.  And Sadie was not quite done swimming in the waves.  It was definitely a cool beach.  Long sandy beach with beautiful soft white sand and nice shallow water for awhile too.  And it was pretty warm!

We left in time to get ready to meet our kayak adventure.  The weather turned out great!  We saw dolphins right by us!  We paddled out to Shell Key where there were tons of shells and birds and things to find.  Then we found the mangrove tunnel on the way back, which was really cool but also kind of gross and muddy and stinky.

This was a long adventure and I had ran lots of miles earlier so I felt like we really needed ice cream.  It was a little more complicated to find- we tried going to the beach shops but parking was ridiculous so we gave up and started heading towards our place and stopped on the way but this one was at a mall.  Plenty of parking but we had to walk through the mall in our swimsuit clothes and it was getting chilly.  Worth it!  It was yummy!

We got our tacos that night- they were just okay.  And the next morning we had to pack up and leave first thing to head to the airport. It was so fun and I had the best time.  I'm so glad it worked out last minute.