Snow & Sun!

The next day, the sun came out! Honestly, we haven't seen it that much this winter and it was so nice! 

Kayte and Ben took advantage of the gorgeous evening (and the extra little bit of daylight) to do some sledding with Piper. :)

Valentine's Day

The kids no longer do the little teeny Walgreens Valentines. No, no, no. We've entered into a whole different season. Now the JH and high school kids try to outdo each other in the gifting department.

It's kinda fun. :)

And Joe managed to surprise me with a blizzard which just carried me all day long! This is our first skiff since Christmas!

It landed on a busy Wednesday this year, and Joe and Kayte left before 6 for Mock Trial practice and work. Then after school, Sara had her final basketball game of the season and wrapped it up with a win. That's 5-1 for the season!

 

Coach!

We went home for a heart-shaped pancake dinner and some really great Olympics.

Joe and I took Friday to go out to Black Cypress to get our rib eye and cocktails...SO GOOD!

Little Henry Beiler

We headed up to CDA to celebrate the latest Dower addition in little Henry. So good to see family, and this kid was a charmer.

Kelly makes us lunch.

Basketball season keeps rollin'

 The younger two Casebolts are certainly holding their own on Team Casebolt. Ben's season currently is 4-2 and Sara's has only lost once.

Check out that form!

Up and out

Kirk is building a new road south of our house and over the hill to two more lots. He's naming the road Swede, in honor of his Swedish grandparents. Since our driveway links in to that road, we will soon be getting a new address! Time for a new stamp!

Game over.

So the girls lost their final game last night at districts. It was a long season, but we are looking at building up and getting prepped early for next year! We celebrated the season with boxes of donuts in the parking lot :)

Love these girls!

Superbowl!

 We did Superbowl with the Wilsons this year. I ate a whole pan of jalapeno poppers myself. The Eagles slayed the Patriots. It was a good day.

This girl was pretty determined to watch every minute...such a little sports fan.

Date night.

While the kids were at the ball, Joe took me to Tapped for my favorite burger: the jalapeno popper burger. Fat cream cheese, jalapenos, and bacon. It's pure genius.

Knights Fest

Man, I love this week! So many fun activities and absolutely zero homework! It is the best!

Kayte took a baking class and made cake pops.

Making coconut cream pie for the competition, it got honorable mention!!

Kayte and Will both played basketball this week with their knights fest teams and they both ended up in second place!

Kayte's class did 101 dalmations.

And these yahoos are dressed up as pirates for the Peter Pan theme.

Kenny had Jasper and Theo and Will over to make a cake and a pie for the baking competition. They didn't win, but they had so much fun and made these costumes out of tees and duct tape. These guys are just the best.

Kelly and I crashed the feast day and watched the class films and skits...they were so good! It was such a fun day!

Getting ready for the Knights Fest Ball...I pinterested this hair! Look at how it turned out!!

Such good looking kids!

...and these guys!! :)

Such a good week!

Ben's season starts!

Ben is super fun to watch on the court. He is confident and in charge, and he just loves the game.

 2-0 this season already!

Pictures by Sara :)

Home

We got home Sunday afternoon in time for a much-needed nap. The Vegas souvenirs are a little lame, so we decided to take the kids out to dinner instead and catch up. We did a little Panda Express and then came home for game night! Catan!

VEGAS!

Oh man, we had so much fun! We wanted to do something big for Joe's fortieth, and his dream is to see North Carolina play at Duke. The tickets were so crazy, we put that on hold and booked Vegas instead. Bellagio, food/drinks, a Vegas show, and a whole lot of poker! Kelly and Ed signed on!

The year of the dog display in the Bellagio.

Our first dinner when we arrived! Outside, but a lot of the heaters were broken and the wind was blustery. So we got a little chilly but the food was good!

Watching the fountains.

Our room was on the 24th floor and we had a huge view of the city and the desert mountains.

The guys hit the poker room and Kelly and I explored the hotel. Everything in Vegas is done up to the nines. Everywhere you look there is beautiful designs and architecture. But we couldn't get enough of the Bellagio fountains! We'd watch one, and then head back in to say hi to the guys, or get a drink, and then we'd head back out in 15 minutes to watch another. We passed hours every night doing that...My fitbit nearly exploded with our steps :)

We really didn't venture too far from our hotel, because, for one, each hotel is like a mile long, and secondly, everything that we needed was in the hotel or just across the street. But the first morning, Kelly and I got up to do a little run down the street, and we got to see a lot of the other hotels.

This is just outside the hotel gym. Gorgeous.

We got breakfast and ate outside near the pools. The guys headed off to play poker and Kelly and I settled in for a good dose of much-needed vitamin D.

All the essentials: including wine in a plastic cup.

We didn't get in the pool, but we did admire it :)

My person. My favorite person.

The Beer Park was the first roof-top bar on the Strip and managed to be right across from our hotel. Perfect place for some wings and burgers.

Elevator mirror selfie. On our way to a Vegas show!

Ok, this O show was really incredible! The acrobats and contortionists and swimmers, all amazing! The only thing it really lacked was beauty. It was lacking that Christian element that we are so used to...and we missed it.  But it was certainly something to see people do what they can do.

Took a little late-night walk through the Caesar Forum. I love the fake sky!

The next day we found real sun! Hot sun! We had some pizza and some really yummy drinks!

Haha, we had to get a shot of Kelly at Sephora with a drink in her hand, that's Vegas for ya!

Poolside :)

I actually bought that sweater in Vegas, and I got plenty of use out of it there. It was just lingering around 60 or under the whole time we were there, so warm in the sun, but cool in the shade and wind.

After another afternoon in the sun, Kelly and I headed back to the Beer Park for some happy hour nachos and some diet coke, haha :)

Beautiful.

So this was the second time I sat down in Vegas at a poker table. It is so intimidating, but this particular poker room felt relaxed and the dealers were friendly. There was no hiding that I was a rookie and they were helpful. Last time I sat, I lost my $100, and I think I'd actually been practicing a little leading up to that trip. But this time, I literally had to have Joe review the order of winning hands so I wouldn't forget, just minutes before going in. I planned to play my cards super slow and wait for the good ones. I managed to win a small hand from a crowd of maybe 4 or 5 people because they all just kept checking and I had top pair. So that was kinda fun. After about an hour of play and the blind was coming back around, so I told Joe I was going to do three more hands. The very next hand was an Ace/King. I played with one other guy that just kept checking so I'd bet at it and then he would call me. I was certain that I had the best hand so I went all-in on the turn and he called me.

The board paired up, so I had two pair and I won! I walked away shortly after that with $192 dollars to my original $100.

Let's just say....that was a good time.

We found Kelly and Ed and went looking for In-n-Out. It was on this little side street with blaring dance music...so fun!

The guys headed back to the poker table, and Kelly and I found another happy hour in the hotel bar, that had its herbs just growing right there in pots.

And then the fountains of course. They were so amazing!

I headed to bed with a book, and Joe texted me shortly after to say he was on his way. Forty-five minutes later he arrived. He'd taken an exit out of the casino that dropped him on the highway with no way back to the strip.  He had to walk a couple of dark miles around Vegas on the back roads at midnight on a Saturday, till he found his way back to the hotel. Traveling with him is always an adventure, no lie :)

What a fantastic weekend!!