Happy 17th Birthday, Zara!

So apparently I haven't made a Z's birthday post for the last 5 years? Man, I'm a slacker. Got to go back and retcon that. In the meantime, we took almost no pictures but had a pretty fun day. Amity missed out for only the second time in her 12 years tenure as Zara's sister (first time was the summer Z tuned 13 in Ireland), becuase she was at UVA Women's Soccer residential camp. So the 3 of us went to RVA for the day - did a fun Alice in Wonderland themed escape room, toured VCU (in the rain), ate some ridiculous birthday desserts and then polished it off with some sushi at Lucky AF. Happy 17, sweet Zoo!

All my 90s dreams come true

We took a 24 hour trip to Charlotte, NC to see some of my favoritest bands from when I was the same age as A and Z are now. For the curious among you, that's Toad the Wet Sprocket, Gin Blossoms and Barenaked Ladies. Despite their nostalgia cred, at least both BNL and Toad have been putting out new music fairly steadily in the last 10 years, not sure about Gin Blossoms but who doesn't love a rousing rendition of "Hey Jealousy"? Anwyay, despite some whining (us) and some rude concert going behavior (not us) and the number of people who seem to still smoke IRL cigarettes??? (def not us) we all had SO MUCH FUN!

When we root, we root for the....

So as part of summer fun-a-palooza, we got tickets for a Washington Spirit game. They are probably our closest NWSL team, especially when they play at Segra field, which is actually a terrible place to play. So on the one hand I hope they don't play there next year, and on the other hand it'll be a much bigger schlep to Audi Field (DC proper) so maybe we'll be headed to more NC Courage games next year? Who knows. They were playing the Red Stars, who we also kinda like, so we were a bit coonflicted on who to root for. @e were not conflicted as to the need to get some more tuneful singers/chanters in the Spirit supporters section, but we'll forever treasure the memories of, and yes also make fun of, the off key droning that was the soundtrack to the game. Amity got a few autographs afterwards - I didn't take a picture of them but Aubrey Kingsbury was especially sweet and took time to chat. This last pic here is Amity with Trinity Rodman.