Maple Leafs at Penguins!

For the past couple of Christmases, B1, S1, B2, S2, C, and I have done a Secret Santa gift exchange and this year, B1 pulled C's name. When our gift exchange rolled around, C was the lucky recipient of hockey tickets! I know B1 wanted C to be able to see a Leafs game and I do like to think that he chose a game in Pittsburgh because the Penguins are my American team after we lived in PA not far from Pittsburgh for several years many moons ago!

We drove up to Pittsburgh yesterday after dropping Avalanche off at his dog hotel for two nights, then we visited my dad and went out to dinner together last evening. I love spending as much time with him as I can!

The game was today at 1:00 pm, so we slept in, went out for brunch, and then headed over to the arena. This was our third time attending a game in this arena - we went to a game in 2016 when it was called the Consol Energy Center and then a second game in 2018 when it had been renamed PPG Paints Arena (which it is still called).

As I've shared in many posts, we've been to hockey games in 39 NHL arenas - we had caught up and could proudly state we'd been to all of them, but now we're one behind because the Arizona Coyotes were relocated to Salt Lake City and that arena is the only one that we haven't seen a game in. We plan to go to Utah for a game next season to rectify that!

PPG Paints is a GREAT arena! Absolutely in our top ten, and possibly our top five! We'd been looking forward to this game since December and were super excited to wander around the arena before the game began. There was a shocking number of Leafs fans in attendance. So many Leafs fans! I mean, Pittsburgh is having a pretty abysmal year, while Toronto is having a great year, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised? Truthfully, Toronto is only about a five-hour drive from Pittsburgh, and that, coupled with the insane ticket prices and lack of availability of tickets for Toronto home games, makes the volume of Leafs fans at the game completely understandable. We've also encountered Leafs fans LITERALLY all around the world in the course of our travel, so I know Leafs fans are everywhere!

The game was incredible! By no means was it a display of defensive prowess, as a total of 11 goals were scored, but all of that offense made for an amazing fan experience! As far as I'm concerned, things couldn't have gone any better - my beloved Sidney Crosby scored a goal and got three points, and then my favorite Maple Leaf, William Nylander, won the game in overtime! Honestly, if I could have written a script for the game, what actually happened would have been pretty close to my vision!

We are currently on our way home, and we'll pick up Avalanche from his dog hotel tomorrow morning before school! What a fabulous weekend! We cannot thank B1 enough for the gift and all of the awesome memories that came with it!

C wore his Matthews jersey and
I wore my Crosby jersey

perfect metaphor for how I was feeling
because I love both of these teams!

my American hometown team hosting
my Canadian hometown team

I absolutely could not love him more!

my Maple Leafs

Happy Tails to you!

Life Lately January/February 2025

Time is such a funny thing...how is it that the 31 days of January felt like a year while the 28 days of February felt like a week?!?

Nonetheless, it's been a pretty good start to the year because for once, we've had a real winter - lots of snow and very cold temperatures. These two Canadians and their Husky have absolutely loved it! I was lucky enough to get five snow days (four of which occurred during the first week back at school in January, so I really had an extended winter break!) and any extra time I get to be home with Avalanche is so appreciated! We love winter and these two months have been really fantastic!

January 1 marked two years since we adopted our handsome boy and while he has been very well-behaved from the very moment we met him, he has come so far in other ways! He was pretty thin and only weighed 53 pounds two years ago, but is now a very strong and athletic, 73-pound guy! Don't let his senior age fool you...he is 13 years young, always eager to go for long walks and explore new places!

He has also learned to accept our love and affection, and in just the past week, he was TWICE given me the full-body, head-on-my-shoulder, complete-weight-of-his-body lean when I've hugged him as he stood on the backseat of the car waiting to get out. If you know us or have read my posts about him over the past two years, you know I thought such a day would never come. It has become our thing for me to hug him every time he gets out of the car (which is very often, because we take him with us everywhere and try to do as many fun things with him as possible, so he gets to go in the car at least once a day and on the weekends, he gets many car rides!). At first, he didn't really like the hugs, and just stood stiffly like a statue, then gradually, he came to tolerate the hugs, until finally he seemed to almost happily accept them. Most of the time, he would sort of slightly lean into me or rest his head on my shoulder, but there was always a sense that he was still kind of on guard. As I've shared before, we don't know what kind of a life he had for his first 11 years, but it is crystal clear that he was never loved on, which is pretty heartbreaking to me. I tell him all the time that if he had been ours since his puppy days, I would have smothered him with so much love and that I'm doing my best to make up for lost time. So this recent full-on reciprocation of my affection has been amazing progress and I'm so proud of him!

he is not a fan of blankets
and you can see how thrilled he is
that I covered him with one

he did the Husky thing
where he just went out into the middle
of the front yard and nestled down
in a little snow bed

despite the frigid wind chill that day,
he was very content to hang out in
that spot

enjoying winter on the porch
while feigning deafness

this is usually how he curls up
in the armchairs

but he's taken up facing backwards
when he is annoyed with us...

which we find hilarious because Husky sass
is a real thing

despite our pleading, he does not
sleep on our bed, but he does usually
jump up on it in the morning,
mostly so he can judge us

he was fascinated by the plow
when we had our street cleared

it was another really cold day
and he refused to come in the house,
preferring to just sit on the porch
while the wind whipped around him

this was earlier this week - spring seems to be
in the air and he actively ignored all requests
to come in the house and instead happily slept out
in the yard like the lovable weirdo he is

he had his first visit to a Civil War site

One of the most wonderful memories from January was attending the wedding of one of my best friends! It was an absolutely beautiful event that included lots of snow, which made for incredible photos for her and her new husband! We had such a great time until we ended up having to evacuate the hotel at 2:00 am because the fire alarm began ringing at about 11:55 pm and the fire department ended up not being able to turn it off (I think maybe it ended up being due to a frozen sensor or something? I'm not entirely sure.) There was a lot of waiting around, being subjected to the awful sound of that deafening, unceasing alarm for two hours, and not a lot of information being shared; I felt badly for the one hotel employee who was having to deal with everything himself and also for the guests, including families with children and pets, who were abruptly woken up in the middle of the night. What a crazy situation!

We had driven up to NJ with my best friend and her husband, and at that point, the four of us just decided to get in the car and drive home through the night, rather than moving over to a nearby hotel for what would turn out to be only about six hours or so. We got home around 7:30 am, exhausted, but it was all worth it to share in the joy of watching someone you love so much get married!

some of the emergency vehicles
outside of the hotel as we were
packing the car to leave

As for the rest of the goings-on of the past two months, I went to see a production of Mamma Mia at one of the local high schools because one of my former fifth graders was playing the role of Donna and she absolutely blew me away! I've always known how special she is, but the degree to which she commanded the stage in every one of her scenes was truly incredible! I also got to have dinner with two of my favorite people ever and C and I went to see a pretty cool light show at National Cathedral.

We plan our big trips pretty far in advance and try to book flights when the airline schedules open, which is typically about 11 months out, and we finalized some pretty exciting upcoming travel! While we were technically traveling at the beginning of January because it was the tail end of our winter break trip, other than the wedding we went to, we didn't travel anywhere in January or February, which felt pretty strange for us. Up first is a recently planned to trip to WDW at the end of March and we are very excited about it!

for the first time since 2018,
we are annual passholders at Disneyland!

we booked all of our flights for our trip
over next school year's winter break!

we booked a Disney Cruise out of Singapore
as part of our trip to Asia we are planning
for summer 2026!

We are huge hockey fans, so it was also cool to watch the Four Nations Face Off tournament! We were BEYOND thrilled that Team Canada emerged victorious! In a compelling coincidence, the American captain of Team USA, Auston Matthews, is the captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs, which is my Canadian team, while the Canadian captain of Team Canada, Sidney Crosby, is the captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins, which is my American team! The day after Canada won the tournament, I proudly wore my Team Canada Crosby jersey from the 2010 Olympics - another occasion on which Canada beat the USA on the world stage!

I love them!

I will end with a few pics of my adorable baby nephew! I wish we lived closer, but I cherish every minute I get to spend with him!

Happy Tails to you!