Civil War Weekend

The name of the game on Saturday was GAMEDAY....followed by, "Kids, be quiet, exit the room, and don't mess with us".....There is definitely an different atmosphere between Michele and I on this annual day. It's unfortunate, as we should be high-fiving each other, and celebrating simultaneously, but, alas, she's a Beaver and I'm a Duck - and on this day, each year - we are at odds. This raises tensions a bit, so we were prepared with some "gimmicks" to keep the kids occupied and out of the room. This was the first gimmick employed....it worked for nearly an hour....I walked in as Santa was bowling and knocking elves into a canyon....hey, whatever works!

Later on, we put them to task making some wire and bell laced snowflake ornaments. They did a pretty good job with those. (You can find the kits for pretty cheap at Michael's).

Finally, I enlisted them to help me get "lime zest" and lime juice for the cheesecake I needed to prepare for the auction. (Yes, they did all wash their hands).


As if the kids weren't enough distraction, we had three dogs running around the house this weekend too. We tried to keep them busy with a rawhide bone each. That worked...for sure, but only for about 10 minutes.

Baxter:

Sydney:

and, guest dog for the week, Cheyenne:

I put a picture of Cheyenne in my blog last year because I fell in love with her during her visit to the Schillings' house then. I have yet to meet a person (who has an affection for dogs) that wouldn't load her up into their car to take her home on the spot as she is such a sweetheart. Soooo lovable.....as evidenced by these pictures of her and Nati, and her with me the night before:

Well, we all know by now the end result. The Ducks took the win. The game started out with a lot of back and forth mistakes to the benefit of the Beavers...which, for Michele's sake, was actually kind of nice. Towards the end, I had Brayden sitting next to me and we resorted to silent fist pumps as to not rub it in to Michele. We did earn the win, there was no "if it weren't for the refs" scenarios, but I just wish it didn't eliminate the Beavers from a bowl run, as they really are our runner-ups to root for.

As for our Ducks - we're going to the BCS National Championship! Even though the computers have us at #2, that's kind of inconsequential now, as the real rank will be decided on January 10th. I admit that I got a little teary-eyed listening to a recording of Jerry Allen (the Ducks' radio announcer) voicing the final 30 seconds of the game. He lost it a bit, got super choked up as he recognized with all of the thousands of other Duck fans out there that we've finally done it! This is brand new territory for our team - never before have we gotten this far and it feels a bit surreal. It's a good time to be a Duck, that is for sure.........