... Free Cone Day

F

Pharisees and Gnomes

It's still pretty chilly here, which is going to set us up for what's to come, which I hear will be pretty warm.  We'll see how things turn out, but for now we're wearing heavier jackets and not spending as much time outside as we normally would in March.  Later on, that may still be the case due to warmer weather and possibly an explosion of pollen.  Yeah, that's coming too.

It was a quiet day today.  Maddie had college in the morning - I got her home, and then off to work for another meeting.  I finished up my Palm Sunday game using quite a bit of AI to create some animated singing rocks, and a few disgruntled Pharisees too.

This is a printable game with trivia questions, challenges, and other things that keep the students moving - sometimes backwards - along the path.  Each printable page is a square that you basically lay out across a room, and I even have a few disciples that the kids can pick as game pieces moving along.  All along, of course, there are parts of the story to tell and trivia questions about the event too.

Mom was doing a good bit of housework as always, but this Braves channel has been great to have on in the background.  The Braves won another game vs. the Phillies, although it was all just Spring Training.  Still, we have a pretty good record at Spring Training, and although it doesn't necessarily count, it's still a lot better than having a terrible record at Spring Training, right?

Tonight's big feature was chosen because of our seasonal thinking - we were remembering this old movie with aren't necessarily leprechauns but in fact gnomes.  Yes, we're talking about "The Gnome Mobile." 

It was a bit slow on plot, and certainly dated.  But there were some familiar faces in there that brought smiles, and sometimes you set the bar a little bit lower for these older obscure movies so that you come out still smiling and just fine.

We said our prayers tonight after reading from our story in the Discworld.  It was a nice day - and we'll see more activity this weekend.  There's a prom coming up!

Promposals and Potatoes

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  We finally made it to the big day, which we seem to celebrate quite a bit lately.  For example, look at this coffee that Mom got us from Bones Coffee - it's an Irish cream flavor.  We put on our green this morning, and headed off to school and work, and we even got some potatoes to take with us...

Of course, these aren't actually potatoes.  Anyone familiar with Mom knows she does an excellent thing each St. Patrick's Day with brownies, marzipan layers for the outside, all rolled in cocoa for that powdery look on the outside.  These are super rich dessert items - so very good!

Oh, and speaking of very good, Maddie got a visitor tonight.  Out of nowhere, we heard Nate was at the door, and sure enough, there he was with a big Promposal sign, because you can't just ask someone to the Prom anymore.  The joke of "Yeah, sure" is that last year, that was Maddie's actual response because she was so surprised.  It's been a joke all year, of course.

We had a good day today.  Mom and I were watching a little of the Braves game where they were going up against Boston for Spring Training.  There were so many in the crowd wearing green, or actual leprechaun costumes!  Pretty fun.

We had a few meetings today, one of which to try and emergency plan a massive egg hunt for the kids in a few weeks.  We've suddenly been assigned this task - it was finalized just yesterday and we were completely stunned!  We're racing to get things in place, including costumes, ordering thousands of eggs, finding a petting zoo that's not already booked in two weeks, and of course all the other details.  One pretty cool thing was a quick task I took care of, creating a base map of the church so that we could assign locations for rides, for the egg hunts, for the animals and so on.  I put the satellite image of church and asked AI to make it look a bit more like Easter.  I used different terminology than that to arrive at this image below, but wow:

It's a new world.  We can all create artistic imagery and music.  Incredible stuff.  Instantly, you take a crummy satellite image of rooftops and so on, and it can become something like an amusement park map.  And speaking of creative AI artwork, here's a song I created for today, a song about Lucky the Leprechaun.  I wrote out the words and made it a live recording with an Irish sound.

It's been a good day.  We watched "Zootopia 2" tonight, which isn't necessarily Irish but really we've been watching quite a few Irish movies lately and we've been itching to check out this sequel.  We enjoyed this movie quite a bit though.  It's nice to see Disney making some good stuff again.

Oh, and look at this accomplishment on Wordle tonight - all green.  How appropriate given the day, right?

We said our prayers tonight, not exactly an Irish blessing.  And we read from "Night Watch" a bit more, continuing the story.  Captain Swing didn't stand a chance against an enraged Sam Vimes.  The story is really picking up steam here - we'll see how things turn out as we continue reading.  We're heading towards the end of this one, and things are looking somewhat bleak, but we'll see how it all ends up.  

Anyway, we had a nice day today.  Happy St. Patrick's Day!

March Snow

 

Easily the weirdest weather day we've had in a while.  This weekend we were out there in eighty degree weather, and later on this week we'll be back in that temperature range... but last night this fast-moving front swept in, this arctic fury that just roared by us around 6am this morning with such ferocity that all the little blossoms were blown from our Bradford Peach Trees, making it look like it snowed this morning.  There was a thin layer of white petals all over our yard and in the street in front of our house.  

It looked pretty cool, and it was so ironic because there was actually a forecast of snow today.  Many of us scoffed at this possibility because we're talking a super dynamic plunge in the temperature just to get to snow flurries, and goodness, the odds of snow happening in January and February are usually odd enough.  And yes, I was around in the 90's for that epic March snowstorm.  It's just been a while since we've seen snow in March.  But Maddie called out to me to come check outside... and sure enough...

Beautiful flurries, heavy enough to actually accumulate on our back deck somewhat, thick and swirling around with the cold winds.  It was very, very cold out there - but it just looks wonderful.  You can't capture it in pictures.  

Today Maddie was off to college in the morning and talking with a friend a good bit afterwards.  Mom and I watched a game on BravesVision, an 11-2 stomping by the Braves over the Rays.  It's just a great new thing to see, a lot of fun to have the Braves on.  Mom has been recovering today, and that's been good.  I was walking again, virtually along the Dublin Bay Area.  I'm at about 63% of the walk around the Dublin virtual walk, and should be done towards the end of March, a perfect St. Patrick's Day complement.

We had a Spring Training game on in the background, the Braves vs. Tampa Bay.  It was another crushing, with Atlanta coming out on top 11-2.  Mom saw the rest of that game through as Maddie and I headed off into the cold, driving over to Edge Martial Arts.

Taekwondo tonight was nice, because Maddie and all the winners were called out for their successes.  Maddie was particularly honored because we found out afterwards that one of the judges thought that Maddie's weapons form was the best that she'd ever seen.  High praise indeed!  But classes went well tonight, and all the while the temperature was plummeting down, down, down tonight.  It was so cold out there, getting to the twenties.  For context, we were feeling 80 degrees this past weekend in Augusta.  

We got home, and started our St. Patrick's Day celebrating a little early with a viewing of "Darby O'Gill and the Little People."  Such a great movie.  We watched it on Disney Plus, and it was edited a little, but it was good quality, and probably the greatest St. Patrick's Day movie you can watch.   For a pinch of extra good luck, I finished off the Lucky Charms tonight, and actually used the box provided to create a leprechaun trap out of it!  

Who knows?  I might catch one this year!  Closing out the day, we read a little bit more and said our prayers.  Then it was time to dive under the covers and stay warm throughout the cold, cold night.

St. Patrick's Day Dinner

 

We had our yearly celebration of St. Patrick's Day at Ye-Ye and Nana's house today, and as always, it was a really wonderful time.  There were all kinds of seasonal decorations celebrating all things Ireland, and of course the Irish music playing - and then there's the food.  Yes, there's Irish soda bread, and yes there's the corned beef and cabbage and potatoes too.  We had St. Patrick's Day desserts too, and all was well.  Even the weather outside had that Irish feel, overcast cool skies with hints of drizzle in the air.  

Okay, check this out.  Technology is moving along fast - some day this post will seem like such old news and in fact it probably already is.  But AI is such that the average person can take a photo now, and convert it into something fancy.  I asked for this photo above to be changed to an oil painting sort of image, and it did a pretty nifty job!

For the record, I just can't seem to like cabbage.  I'm trying.  Maybe not as hard this year, as evidenced above.  That's my sampling of cabbage this year, just because I'm trying.  Maddie even tried some cabbage.  Aunt Shain, Maddie and I are hard passes on the cabbage. Sorry, Ireland!

We all came dressed up for St. Patrick's Day.  I was wearing my Buc-ee's st. Patrick's Day shirt, but Hannah here outdid us all with an Irish flag!

After the party, we came back home to shut down the rest of the night.  It was the close of all Winter sporting games in Italy, the end of the Paralympics, and that meant one last huge game, the sled hockey game between Canada and USA on the ice.  Canada and USA faced each other in the gold medal games for women's hockey and men's hockey - we watched both of those games.  Now today we were watching the US team battle Canada in sled hockey.  The first part of the game was fairly close, as expected.  But also as expected, the US team just had more depth and a couple key players that are supremely talented.  The end score was 6-2, and there was a whole lot of celebration.  USA swept the ice hockey games, defeating Canada for each of those finals!

These games were really awesome to watch.  If I can see something like that around here locally, we might go check that out.  

The other thing that we saw tonight were the Closing Ceremonies, which were really great.  The visuals were so creative, with these LED ropes used for an amazing sequence, and then a whole series of white boxes - so simple, and yet really imaginative.  The snow globe above was a beautiful design and centerpiece.

It was super cool.  And it's bittersweet, because now it's really all over with.  We'll see all this again in four years in France, but that's a long time from now.  But looking backwards, the time does go by quickly.  I will say this is probably the most engaged with the Paralympics.  

As for the rest of the day, of course it was Sunday.  We were at KidPak this morning and it was really nice.  We were talking about the Ten Commandments, continuing with our Spring Training series, which has been pretty good!

Mom is feeling better, although not quite 100% yet.  But a lot better than she was yesterday, and that's a good sign.  She took it easy today.  Tonight we read from our time-traveling adventure in the Discworld, and then it was time for sleep.  We have classes tomorrow for Maddie and things get going again.  It was a good day today.

Celebratory Twizzlers

Happy Pi Day!  We got up a bit early this morning, right on time for a free continental breakfast!  Maddie and I headed over to the Columbia County Exhibition Center to drop Maddie off for her big day.  Mom and I stayed at the hotel for a bit longer, as Mom was not doing so well today.  No pieces of pie today, but we did start out the day playing that online game Strands, which had a tribute to Pi:

The "spanogram" reads "Happy Pi Day," and all the supporting words are related to actual pies from a bakery.  Oh, and speaking of which, we were sure to pick up some celebratory pie of course.  Publix sells pies for $3.14.  Well played, Publix!

Easy as Pi.  And speaking of which, meanwhile, Maddie was having a immense day!

Here we are back in Grovetown again, and today was quite the mixed bag.  On one hand, Maddie had an incredible time here, although a bit stressed at the beginning of the tournament because she was assigned judging duties.  In the end though, she had a great time at her location, joining two others to judge a lot of young students as they sparred.  I got to see her for a little there, although here comes the mixed bag part:  back-and-forth to the hotel I went to check on Mom, who was just miserable.  I don't know if it was something she ate yesterday or if there was some sort of viral thing going on - but Mom spent the entire day sicker than I've seen her in many years.  She missed a lot today, but as always I took pictures, and Kaylee took video of Maddie's routines when she did get to that part of the afternoon.  It was scheduled for 2:30 when she would demonstrate her form, although it was probably about a half-hour later when she actually got going.

For her first competition of the day, there were three competitors, and one of them was her friend Chloe.  Maddie was guaranteed a medal, so all of this was a good starting point for the afternoon.

But first, some posing!  Kaylee's Mom took a few pictures of some of the girls from Edge Martial Arts, including this one of the girls showing off their Edge ware.

And then things began.  Once again, randomly Maddie was selected to go first of the three competitors, something that happened all day long for her in fact.

She did well!  She said she was nervous and maybe made a small mistake, but of course I couldn't tell a thing.  

In the end of this first competition, it was close - and Maddie came in third.  And then right after that, it was time for Maddie to compete again, this time for form with weapons.  Once again, Maddie went first!  

She did really well!  We're definitely so proud of her.  Alongside me, there were other family and parents cheering Maddie on afterwards with a big applause.  The other two girls did their routines next, and again it was really close.  We had no idea who was going to win.  As is the format, the three judges count off and then point at who they think won the competition.  Look where two of three pointed:

I'll never forget Maddie's face as she turned around to look at us all.  She won!  This was a big deal because it was the first time she's won first place at a tournament, a well-deserved victory.  She was so happy!  And now it was time to get her first place medal!

There was one more competition left, and that was an interesting one because Maddie was the only competitor in this category of extreme weapons.  That said, she was automatic for a first place.  Also... last place!  But she did very well with this extreme weapons form.

Maddie got her third medal, and how exciting for her!  

She was so happy telling Mrs. Edge all about her competition, and of course there was a chance to take a picture with Mr. and Mrs. Edge.  Look at all those medals!

I didn't get to take as many pictures of others today, but Chloe was right there with us, and we saw Mr. Cornett competing nearby, so I snapped some photos of them too.

These competitions were towards the end of the event, and it was getting late of course.  Especially because we have that three-hour drive to go home - and Mom was still very, very sick.

We drove home without incident, and yes, it was time to open up that bag of Celebratory Twizzlers!  Driving north, we made one stop at an interesting place called Redstone along the way, this mega-gas station somewhere north of Athens.  Maddie and I walked around in there for a break - it was pretty cool.  We might stop there again next time!

Mom went right to bed when we got home.  It was a rough day for her.  Maddie and I weren't too far behind either - we were pretty tired from the long day.  We got our reading in tonight, and said our prayers too.  It was time for some sleep, but what a day for Maddie.