Okay, the Cootie calendar has become so full that when I look at the calendar on my phone, the ONLY days of the week that currently have no commitments at all in 2016 are Tuesdays. Poor Tuesday. I’m sure I’ll figure out something for those days soon.
So after 2+ years of begging (or has it been 3+ years), we finally signed up CootieBoy for tae kwon do. After two weeks I think I can safely say that he LOVES it. He can go up to 3x a week and to make our money count, he’ll DEFINITELY be going 3x/week. That stuff is expensive! My gym membership is only $10 a month and yet his TKD lessons are more than our electric bill in summer. No joke. I signed him up for 12 months (the only other choice was 36 months (!)) and told him he was going to do all 12 even if he hates it after 3.
CootieGirl started archery last week and did well her first week out, hitting the target with all her arrows, including a few bullseyes. Granted, they were only about 15-20 feet away from the target, but still. It encouraged her enough that I think she’s getting excited about being in the club.
Speaking of clubs, she is also part of a reading club at her school, and on Friday we she got to take a field trip to the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. I was a chaperone. Have you ever chaperoned a field trip for 40 middleschoolers? No? It’s actually not bad – walking around the tour with the kids was not bad. The bus ride, however? It was 3 hours of CONSTANT activity and yelling. When we finally rolled up to Biltmore I wanted to pierce my own ear drums so I didn’t have to hear them anymore. Having said that, I adore Biltmore House. We did two tours – one of the main house that is open to the public, and then a second tour of a part of the house not visited by tourists all the time. If you ever have the opportunity to go to Asheville, NC I highly recommend touring Biltmore. It’s wonderful.
On Sunday afternoon our family went to go see "Wicked." This was my third time seeing it. Well, 2 1/2th time. One time I took CootieBoy and he got scared during the first act, so we left at intermission. This time around he enjoyed it though. We had front row seats, which was AWESOME. There’s nothing better than stretching out your legs, kicking back and watching a play from spitting distance.
Speaking of Broadway plays, let me now talk about my new obsession: HAMILTON. It’s currently on Broadway and I have no hope of seeing it with the original cast live in NYC, so I’ll have to just wait until the touring version comes to Charlotte. At that point, I’m going for a front row seat because this musical is AMAZING. How do I know? The soundtrack is now available for free through Amazon Prime and I started listening to it this past weekend. It is unbelievably good. It will definitely sweep the Tonys this year, and deservedly so. Set in the 1770s, it tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, via various styles of hip hop music. Sound absurd? NOT SO! It is ingenious and glorious. Yes, there is a language alert for some portions, but it is such a well designed soundtrack that I just can’t stop listening to it. If you are on Amazon Prime, you have to go NOW and find it and give it a listen.
Lastly, I’ve continued with my walking/training for my big run in September. Thus far in January I have walked just over 30 miles. That’s more than I walked in all of 2015 (sad, but true). I have been trying to increase my mileage sporadically during my walks, and am now aiming for 5 miles per walk by the end of next week (my last two walks were both over 4 miles so I’ll continue with that for a couple more days before increasing to 4.5 miles). But yeah, so far so good. No injuries, no issues, and no quitting.
Okay, go listen to "Hamilton" now. Go!