“Hit-and-miss” weekend.

The past weekend was another busy weekend for the Jackle family.  I will call this past weekend the “hit-and-miss” weekend.  The good news is that the “hits” out numbered the “misses” but one of the “misses” was a big one.

Hits:

Friday Night “pre-Easter” Easter egg hunt – We packed up some of Jackie’s famous coleslaw, some plastic Easter eggs,  two kids, and a camera and headed to our friends house in Wake Forest for a Easter egg hunt.   Beside the hunting festivities, we ate some charcoal broiled northeastern hotdogs, baked beans, coleslaw(of course), and drank either some punch or an adult beverage or two (depending on the age and the designated driver status of the participant).  Also, we watched our precious children punctured  a piñata and scurried happily to indulge in its contents.  Last but not least, we had a surprise visit by one quite large and fuzzy pink and white Easter bunny.  The bunny could jump right out of his birchen stocks.  Quite amazing actually!!  Photos and blog post to commemorate this event will be coming shortly.

      

Saturday night Hurricanes–Penguins Hockey game -  As Sophie would say,  “Daddy you promised me that you would take me to Carolina Hurricanes game since I was four.  I am now seven and it is about time!”  Last Fall, we contact Linda Craft and Team to help us sell our house and move to a better location in the Raleigh area for our Sophie’s (and eventually Savannah’s) education.   We sold our house in less than 24 hours and moved just before Christmas to our new location.  Besides just the sale, the resources for moving, plumbing and electrical work for the our new kitchen all came from Linda’s resource list.  If you ever has visited Linda Craft’s office, you may get the impression that she is a Carolina Hurricane fan.  That is to put things lightly.  One may also think she is married to Rod Brindamour with all the pictures of the pair of them in the office.  She offered us some Hurricanes tickets for an upcoming game.  I gladly and appreciatively accepted this offer and set the date for the April 4th game against the Pittsburgh Penguins.  I was finally off the hook with my daughter with the help of Linda Craft.    So the father-daughter date night was born.  Linda provided us with a truly VIP treatment as we were treated with Premier Gold parking passes, admission to the Lexus Champions Club, free food, and drinks, some of the best seats in the RBC center, and last but not least a Hurricanes overtime win that clinched playoff spot.  A side effect, was my wife was a little bit jealous.  Pictures and a dedicated post to follow.

    

Saturday night Tar Heels win -  If you ever want to see an excited look on Sophie’s face, just mention to her that she can stay up to “midnight.”  This excitement comes from her first new years eve dropping of the ball experience.  I promised her that after the game she could stay up and watch the rest of the Villanova-Carolina final four semi-finals game with me.  This could result in her staying up to midnight.  The good news is that the Tar heels did not drop ball and are competing for the national championship this evening against Michigan State.  Since the games starts after 9 PM eastern standard time, it will be a late night for me tonight. Go Heels!!  P.S. Sophia fell a sleep on the couch at about 10:45 PM. :)

  Sunday Savannah’s 3rd birthday party-  Though her birthday is actually on Tuesday, we celebrated Savannah’s birthday with about 30 people at the Marbles kid museum.  This place is kid heaven!!!  I will save more details and photos for a later post once I get a chance to go through the hundreds of pictures that I took to capture the event.

Misses:

       DirectTV’s slow death- Since we moved to the new house, I have had many outages  for  HD DirectTV  that caused me to miss much of the ACC and NCAA tournament in HD.   Thank god for the HD feed on www.ncaasports.com  on my computer. Every time it rains I lose the signal.  I have had DirectTV for several years without an issue.   The technician came out on Sunday.  He was surprised from the placement of the dish by the previous installer that I was even receiving a high-def signal.  Apparently, we would not have a clear view to the HD satellites without cutting down some oak tree limbs in our yard.  The wooded lot is one of many traits we like about the house so that would not happen.  He marked the service ticket “NLOS”(no line of site).   This week we will be looking into other options for our TV needs.  Bye Bye NFL Sunday ticket and the NFL network !!!!

       My mother’s surprise 70th birthday party-  In another time zone and region of the United States  a surprise birthday party took place for the world’s greatest mom on Saturday in Racine, Wisconsin.  This is the one miss  I truly regret.   I called her last night to apologize for my absence.  In typical mom fashion, she was more interested on how things were going with me and how Savannah’s party went.  It made me feel a little better but  I still wished I was there like with my brothers and sisters to see her surprised face and share the special night with her.