Fire & Ice

twentynine

The first half of the spring semester has been controlled chaos. I've worked really hard to stick to my schedule and not stray too far from it and it has worked. It has been a long stretch and it is almost over now. In just two more weeks we will be on spring break and I'm excited to bring Cassie home with me.

Sticking to my schedule this semester has really been the key to my success my school grades, hockey performance and my relationship with Cassie. Even with all the extra practice time, both on the ice and in the weight room, Cassie and I have managed to have plenty of date nights together. We been to the movies, skating together, and just spending time together cuddled on the couch. One of my favorite dates we went on was to the winter wonderland festival that our campus holds every year. It was the in the second week of February and the campus was covered in a few feet of snow. The football stadium was turned into an ice rink for students to skate on while in other parts of campus had little shops and sleigh rides through the large quad. Even though by the time the night ended we could barely feel our bodies, it was such a fun moment in the middle of schools madness.

            Speaking of home, Mom and Alyssa have been officially living with each other since January and everything seems to be going really well. Mom and I try to talk regularly on the phone to be involved with what's going on in each others lives, but its been hard to get some solid time to talk. But last week we finally had a a night together and facetimed. We ended up talking for about three hours just catching up. Mom finally got to tell me all about the new house. Her and Alyssa put a down payment on a three-bedroom house that's about 15 minutes away from where we used to live.

            I was really excited when they walked me through the new place. The main living space when you first walk into the house is an open floor plan with two out of the three bedrooms on the second floor. The backyard had a nice deck already built attached to the house, kind of like how our old house had but bigger that led out to a medium sized yard. Mom and Alyssa have been working hard packing everything up to move while trying to sell our old house. From what mom told me someone was interested in buying the house and put in an offer for lower then what she was hoping. The house has been on the market for a month and they were the only interested party. So mom sold our house for lower then she wanted so we could move into the new house.

            The closing happened earlier this week and Mom and Alyssa have to turn over the keys to the old house at the end of March. But they already got the keys to the new house so they have slowly started to move things in. The previous owners bought a home down south and didn't need to wait to move in so once the papers were signed they gave the keys over and left. Mom and Alyssa have movers coming next week to move most of our stuff into the new place. When I get home at the end of the month we are going to finish moving everything into the new house. I also get my pick of the other two bedrooms on the second floor when I get home. The room that doesn't become my bedroom they are most likely going to turn into an office.

            But back to the present. It was only a four-hour bus ride up north to Minneapolis so we got to leave on Friday afternoon. I'm rooming with Stacey for the trip and we didn't have a hard time finding our room in the hotel. I was just happy to find out that on game nights, Becca and Stacey stay in their respective hotel rooms. After we all got settled in, we got to go over to the arena and had a night skate session to get to test out the ice. Our game was up first on Saturday as we drew the 1pm slot.

            The skate session was worth it as well got to experience what the ice conditions will be like for the game tomorrow. Whoever cut the ice for this arena does a really great job. There weren't any major divots in the ice as practice wore on and the ice continued to hold up as the team kept going over it.