Bob was at my teacher conference Wednesday. Thee Bob. The one that Justin knows.

We lost 12-0 tonight against the Kenai High School Cardinals soccer team...but our team is really a "team" - good team building is going on. My assistant coach is a child of the Lord's own heart and is amazing to work with - especially when I'm scatterbrained.

So tonight, as my computer tells me its running on reserve battery (how long do other mac laps batteries last for yous? mine's only good for 2 hours then crap out....), I am thinking of 153 computers packed into a narrow and double or triple floored internet cafe in the heart of London. Always hot and gross. Never enough time to read up and reconnect to our roots, and don't blink b/c there's just about 55 seconds to send a generic "all is good and safe, having fun, miss you all" forward to loved ones.

Summer nears, and a travel minded wanderer's mentality becomes me.

Dogs are cute, Casey is ready for summer, God is good, God is sovereign. Thoughts and prayers are up and out constantly to those in need and in whom the heart is urged to intercede. Happy weekend to all, this is short tonight from an exhausted coach and teacher.

p.s. the snow is almost completely gone and we're off to Anchorage and beyond (after another home soccer game) to belatedly celebrate Casey's Wednesday in style tomorrow!

Went to the *new* property today, and it was a beautiful day! Storm is sitting by a "game trail", meaning moose and bear and other friends of the wilderness follow it like a road through their world. Are we evil for wanting to plop a house right on it? Hmm...


This picture is across the meadow that our house will overlook. After about a football field of walking from our Jeep at the highway, I took a 10 foot leap down to this opening in the forest! Awesome! We'll have a walk out basement only 4 feet down and 4 feet above the regular ground - three floors plan with that half basement!

Anyways, what a good weekend of doing nothing! WOO! But I did throw out 50 things for spring cleaning. HA! Read it in a magazine to lighten up, get rid of 50 things! Most of my get rid of's were clothes, but HEY NOW I'm just getting started! WOO! :)

We start the soccer season finally this week after practicing 3 weeks. Don't blink though - - we have 3 weeks of 8 games only and that's it! NICE! It's great to get outside too, and just so you know there is no snow mostly anywhere, except our house has about 6 inches around it still for we are up the mountain a bit.

Have a good week!

Left handers beware.

There's much frustration (light heartedly) at the creation of left handed spiral notebooks. Why should they exist?

Either side of the notebook writing is equally hindering to a lefty or a righty. Who fell for the left handed journal purchase - many I fear. What of a legal pad with spiral at the top, now that's an invention of genius.

I just need to skip spiral journals of skinny size (though I do love thee), for they cramp my writing and stylistic penmanship flow.

Speaking of good flow, the entire Mac library shuffle has been quite a slough of good mix tonight. It was a peaceful Thursday night at the Willow homestead here. Onto a Friday once and for all! And to all a good night.

Here's a random list from my weekend away in Anchorage!

INSPIRED by a viewing of Wimbledon (with that Kirsten Dunst lady) A list of my all time favorite sports memories:

Going to Wimbledon with Mom outside London - center court and the museum!

Cutting down the (bball) nets at the MIAA championship

Training in Chow for triath

Doing the Mission Bay Triath

Watching Dad at Jacobs Field

Breaking into Eppler and pretending to play bball with the guys

Pretending to play bball with the guys (like Nowicki) at the rec

Mombasa pizza after soccer with Matt, volleyball and tennis with dad (and earlier in the week bball with all)

Almost playing bball at TCS/watching Matt play at TCS

Playing in the Cage Classic (high school Wood County bball game)

Playing against Fremont Ross in my last high school game

Running into an orange VW playing neighborhood street football

Chasing foul balls for free slushes while Mike and Justin play little league

The Schilthorn hike in the Swiss Alps - just unmentionably wrong to endure! HA!

Metric century through Santa Cruz (might I add the pluralization of mountains onto that?!? :)

1/2 marathon and Alpine bike challenge

Almost #1 of all time --close to the Mission Bay Triath is......- Muddy Buddy in San Jose! (adventure race!)

All-Ohio college cross country meet - all divisions of colleges in attendance - stampede, herd of runners was so loud!

Defiance tennis at the MIAA championships (Kalamazoo)

Tennis anywhere and everywhere on all continents - coaching it in Chow even

Conclusion: Tennis is my all time favorite sport! You are all now enlightened to my tennis obsession of late, yet not of late - of forever! Now, it's only a 45 minute drive to the closest, and might I add most disgusting, court I've ever seen - no net either :) Must pour concrete of my own tennis court creation some day soon!

Tomorrow is Friday for me!!!! Can't wait for a little time away in that busy Anchorage world; thank God for the free apartment we get to use too!

So we close on our new 70 acres in 10-15 days! WOO! The next 2-3 weeks will tell how sloppy the ground gets. By the way our driveway is washed out, we must park at the highway from now till mid-May at least. Large knee high rain boots anyone? Should post pics this weekend to those needing a visual blog reference from Alaska world!

Shortest blog of pointlessness to report today!

What are you all doing this weekend?

Long time, no talka to many readers -who reads>? no idea! But hope your weekend is good though.

It was a good day for... starting off overwhelming. Found out my neighbor assistant coach might not be helping me next year with bball, hmmm. All good, just left me hanging with an overwhelming feeling of "out there" on my own - need to hire some (awkward) strangers to help me coach. The Lord is up to something, as usual :)

Let the good days, MONDAYS keep on rolling though- only like 5 (Mondays) left. What!? You didn't think I could blog almost two days in a row without mentioning a countdown? WOOO!

Or mentioning coaching....aht...I know, get on with the life besides school and coaching.

Well for this summer I plan to finish two books and get a writer's market out, up, and running with some freelance work to magazines, or other.

Besides that I/we want to grow strawberries and raspberries, complete a family tree book, finish 3-5 scrapbooks equaling: England trip 1, adventure racing, and England trip 2/the best trip ever with of course Ireland, Italy, and other places from last summer!!!!

I will catch up on Alexander McCall Smith's Mma Ramotswe and also the Scotland philosopher books - don't forget Scotland 44 which I haven't tried yet! AHhh, woo! ---10 years ago who would have listed reading as the higher ranked past time? - oh English teacher you're turning 30 this summer and valuing reading more? hahahahhahaha

And on a side note I need to get organized to be a better snail mail communicator once and for all. ONCE AND FOR ALL!

Maybe a quick trip home over memorial day to 1040/1156, some SD before next fall, then its back to preparing for Houston High School's best girls' basketball season ever! We go up a division and cinderella our way through state beating local big schools and getting motivational speeches from the new governor Sarah Palin (she was on the nearby other team that won state 25 years ago - and her alma mater won state this year with a pep talk before hand! HA!)

The only thing really, literally, sadly, oddly, upsettingly, unbelievably missing is: TENNIS :( No, I'll make that happen on the literally one tennis court in the whole valley!

Golf though, golfing this summer. Everyone pick up some good cheap clubs at Sports Authority and pick up the game with me! Expensive courses? Find the good local cheap ones (in Calif? possible?) and enjoy!

Welp, that's all for now. have a good week all!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Hope it was wonderful, and of course wish we could have been there! And I am super excited to hear we might get to see you early this summer in Ohio, and maybe later this summer in Alaska! WOOHOO! We can look at log cabin designs!



As for celebrating, we golfed to you Mom on the frozen Willow Lake! Our team, consisting of Casey, Doran (neighbor coach pal), Mike (Doran's son-in-law), and I, tied for 5th out of 13. Then, somehow out of 5 girls, I got first! With a par 3 course, 9 holes, I got a 43...anyone who's anyone in golf knows that ugly, real ugly! But super fun!





The ice holes had a plastic piping cutout (taken out in that Casey picture) that made hole hopping skills necessary, and as the morning progressed the 54 degree sunshine melted quite a thick terrain of slush to get through. This we know b/c after playing first we went home for lunch and came back for the awards ceremony, and went for another round of water golfing! The pictures here represent that, as we forgot the camera this morning :)



Welp, we look forward to an Easter Sunday lunch with some friends tomorrow and next week Casey and I are taking Friday off - me for a conference, then just fun after that! Good food, Blades of Glory, oasis, escape, rest, joy!

Happy birthday mom! Happy Easter all!

The land is going through this week! Praise the Lord! Fun!

Our plan is to slowly develop the property - like the computer game Tropico (familiar?) Roller Coaster tycoon? Clear land. Then foundation. Then septic. Every 3-6 months do a part of the project.

I know it might be wrongly weird, but a cape cod log cabin is our goal - weirdly wrong b/c almost exactly like 1040!!! But we would have an open great room and kitchen. Picture at least half of 1040's upstairs opened up. We'd build one a bit bigger than 1040 though.

Walk out basement overlooking the lower earthen meadow that moose will inevitably be spotted day in and day out in the fall. Now that we're dreaming big, let's think no job and just sitting all day with a large hot chocolate (latte for yous?) waiting for moose.

Summer anyone? So close, yet so far away. We have about 35 days left. And whenever it gets to the 30s it goes fast in slow motion. Then blamo! All the snow is gone, every single thing in sight is green, green, green (let's skip the couple weeks of pure water everywhere - melted snow of course - flooding?), and its summer.

This summer has a few small items to attend to, mostly basketball related, but I'm really looking forward to just resting, hanging out, reading, writing, canoeing, fishing, SD on bday (? :), maybe some visitors.

Welp, I'm wiped out with standardized boring, slow silence all week at school. And this week has been horrendously busy - driving back and forth to two sports.

Soccer might go already for next year...fun, fast, short, too busy...Duh. I knew it would be, why did I sign up? Its fun though while it lasts :) have good weekends yous!