Amy's New Place

Here is a picture and text that Amy sent us last night from the place that where she is staying in Cumberland, MD. We miss her already.

My apt is third floor the window on left. Cumberland Maryland.

WV Wild vs Dayton Red Bombers (Squirts)

We drove to Dayton to two games with the Dayton Red Bombers. The Wild did well playing as a team, passing the puck, skating with the player during a breakaway, etc. The games were at different rinks, but we didn't know that. We always try to show up about an hour before the game. We showed up to the news that there was not 9am game, just the 3:40pm game. Kind of a bummer, then the assistant coach called the head coach to tell him. The head coach was at the right ice rink wondering where we all were. We raced across Dayton and made it in time for the game.

This is Isaac headed down the tunnel from the dressing rooms to the ice.Here he is after the game. They won 8-1. Isaac spent the last minute and a half of the game in the penalty box for tripping. He pretty much tackled the kid, it wasn't his fault. He was chasing the kid down from behind, got up to the side of him and the kid cut into Isaac. The pile up on the ice ended with 2 minutes for tripping.

The Emperor with No Clothes

The Alum Creek Elementary Drama Club has been trying since before Christmas to put on their play. Every time they have tried to perform, it was a snow day and all of school was canceled. This last Monday it finally came together. The play that they performed was "The Emperor with No Clothes". It was a cute play. Lots of singing. There she is right in the middle of the front row in the red shirt. Lexy was a 'parade organizer'. Here she is with the other parade organizers singing their song, half way through the song they spread out through the crowed offering fruit from their bags. But, they wouldn't let anyone take one.

The play was about a good emperor that had some crooks talk him out of this clothes. Brave kid, he spent the last third of the play in boxer shorts and a tank top under shirt.

Good Job Lexy..!!!

Jungle Jim's

This place is awesome..!! It is a supermarket on steroids. Cheese from 70 countries, produce for about a have acre, a bakery that is even bigger, seafood counter where you pick the fish and they clean and fillet it for you on the spot. Not to mention that they have sections for about 25 or 30 different country's. Specialties from all around the world. Check out their site if you have a minute.

There are tons of custom animated displays all around the store.

There were about 10 different flavored pickle barrels.

The hot sauces were in alphabetical order. If you are ever in Northern Cincinnati check it out.

WV Synchro gets a 'Smile'

The Charleston Gazette does a weekly column called Smiles and Scowles. It is quite opionion based as I see. The West Virginia Synchronized Skating Team was given a 'Smile" in the January 22, 2011 edition of the paper.

I don't think that I agree with some of the other comments on this one. But it's fun to see the Synchro Team get a good review.

Weekend Hockey Update

Isaac's team did well this weekend. They won both games at home. Isaac got a goal in Saturday's game. The league standings are here. When I looked they were in second, but this weekend's games had not been reported. There overall record is now 11-7. Still undefeated in league play and winless out of league. An interesting wrinkle in the league is that the teams only have to report 7 home games and 7 away games. So, the team that WV Wild beat 4 times in one weekend only shows 3 losses and WV Wild only show 7 wins.

Sunday's game is on UStream, if you want to watch for a bit...

For Real...?

So one day last week people were crowded by the window on one end of our office laughing. A little closer look and this is what they were looking at.

You must click on the picture to see it full size to see for yourself and get the detail that you need.

These clowns have used the winch on a car hauler trailer and a frame tow hook to hoist up this Ford Explorer. They backed the trailer up to the side of the Explorer, ran the winch cable over the top, hooked the tow hook in the door frame with the window down, and tipped the car up on it's side. If you look at the picture full side you can see the cable running from the top of the car to the front of the trailer. I wish that this picture showed them under the car, but it does not. When I saw them they were both under the car, one sitting and one laying on the ground, yanking on the fuel tank to remove it. My guess... They ran out of gas and were pulling the fuel tank to take it across the street to fill it up. Ha.

Backyard Brawl on Ice 2011

What a game, what a game. We have been pumping up the BACKYARD BRAWL on ICE, trying to get people that we know there to see the game and how much fun hockey can be. WVU vs PITT is big in any sport. Well that place was packed the other night and what a game. Scoreless first period, 2-2 tie at the end of two, then things really picked up. WVU took the edge with a mid-third period goal and appeared to have things locked down when PITT scored the tying goal with 30 seconds to go. At WVU time out came the coaches a chance to set up the play that was needed. The puck dropped in the WVU attack zone and the fury began. It seemed hopeless as the clock clicked down, 10... 9... 8... working, working, 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... and the puck hit the back of the net. The whole building erupted as WVU scored the go ahead goal. When I say the place erupted, it was crazy. Crazy enough that on of the local hockey boys watching the game hit the glass so hard from the outside that the glass shattered to the ice. With 3.1 seconds on the clock and glass all over the ice the refs ran out the clock. WVU wins.

Butch was standing right behind the kid that broke the glass, and he does have an extra piece to fix the spot. I was impressed.

Isaac before and after the game gathered as many players signatures from the WVU players as he could. Look at the mess his arms turned out to be.

The kids and I had lunch with a few of the player on Monday afternoon. We ran into Sean McFadden (#3, C), Luke Sonnefeld (#16, A), Christian Lewton (#25), and Chris Wilder (#33, Goalie). They had run the kids clinic one Sunday night and remembered Isaac. Lexy really liked the goalie #33, she made a sign from him that said, "Catch the Puck #33!"

Articles from The Daily Mail and The Charleston Gazette.

Now, why is it that they can barely mention the game at all. We need more coverage for hockey in Charleston. That would make the kids hockey program stronger. Maybe they could get some corporate sponsors to get the cost down a bit. If we can get enough kids to join there can be a house league here in Charleston, which in turn will keep the cost down. And maybe, just maybe, there will be enough going on to build the other half of the South Charleston Memorial Ice Arena. But that is just a dream at this point.

More from the weekend

Here are some more pictures from the weekend.

This is the hockey rink where the kids played. From the last post, the ice they were supposed to play on melted. This was just before the game. So while we were waiting for the ice to freeze at the Indian Hill rink the kids were all watching the sun rise and watching the ducks wake up and head to the little bit of water left. I found this picture that Isaac took Sunday morning when I downloaded the pictures tonight. Good one buddy.

Misc Hocky

Isaac's team was scheduled to play two games on Sunday morning in Cincinnati's Indian Hill area. We drove up the night before and stayed, thank you Priceline. We rolled up to the ice rink at 7am for the 8am game. Nice place. It is a country club with an ice rink. So, Isaac headed to the locker room to start getting ready. By 7:30am we learned that it was not just a bad Zamboni job that made the ice look so bad. The compressors had been turned off. There was a quarter inch of water on top of the ice and it was not freezing. They opened up all the doors to let in the cold air from outside in to help. By 8:30am they were calling other rinks in Cincinnati trying to find some ice for them the play on. What a long shot... But it came through, they found some. Our boys got to play one game at 10am in downtown. After all that, the game didn't go real well for our boys. They got beat pretty good. These other boys played a lot more physical than what our boys have been taught. By the second period our boys figured out that they had to put their bodies into the game and they did a lot better. Isaac ended up full on checking a kid a couple of times. I need to edit the video that I have to see if I can get it better to watch.

So, I don't have much for pictures from the game, so here is the team picture. And this is a pre-game pep talk from Coach Phillips, at home in our locker room.

So, to go with the story at the top of this post. I am thinking that we need to travel with Butch. He keeps the ice and facility so nice at our home rink that we need to take him on the road to make sure that we have good ice to play on when we are on the road.

In Memory of Tiff

This is the obituary for Amy's good friend Tiffany. She just didn't wake up on Saturday... Her family is in our thoughts and prayers. Really tough situation, her kids are 7 and 10.


Tiffany Ann Tidwell Cox
1976 ~ 2011

Our beloved wife, daughter, mother, and sister returned home to her heavenly father on January 7, 2011. She was born July 9, 1976 in Nephi, Utah.
Tiffany was a very sweet and caring person with a loving personality. She was a great wife and mother and was a shining light in everyone's life that knew her.

Tiffany married Josh Cox on June 22, 1996 in the Salt Lake Temple. Tiffany and Josh were blessed with two children Toshany and McCade. The children were a great love and light in both Josh and Tiffany's lives.

Tiffany was very devoted to her career and she had just completed her Master's Degree in Nursing in the fall of 2010. Tiffany was an RN at the Utah Valley Hospital for many years and was a Nursing Director for the Wasatch County Health Department for 2 years. Tiffany was a very strong, devoted and inspiring person. She was a ray of sunshine and an example to everyone she was around. Tiffany always would push you to reach for the stars and achieve as much as possible for yourself. She was everyone's biggest supporter to achieve what they were setting out for in their life. She was a very good mother and wife and will be sorely missed by all her family and those that knew her.

Tiffany is survived by: her husband, Josh Cox; daughter, Toshany Cox; son, McCade Cox as well as many extended family members. She was preceded in death by her grandfathers, Dwayne Tidwell and Kelly Johnson and her father-in-law, Larry Giles.

We Love you and miss you more than words can say Tiffin!!!!

Funeral services will be Friday, January 14, 2011, 11:00 a.m., in the Mt. View 5th Ward, 789 East Arrowhead Trail, Payson. Friends may call at the Walker Mortuary, 587 South 100 West, Payson, Thursday, 6-8:00 p.m. or at the church Friday, 9:45-10:45 a.m.
Burial will be in the Payson City Cemetery.

Condolences may be sent to the family at: http://www.walkerfamilymortuary.com/

Rewind April 2010 - What did you do?

I ran across this little video that I made back in May. I had trouble loading it up to YouTube. But now we have a new router things are better. Enjoy.

Lexy's Synchro Team on the News

Sorry, I haven't got the cable that I need to transfer this from our DVR. So, I used Lexy's FlipVideo. So... The audio SUCKS..!!

What a Weekend of Hockey

Man, Isaac's team had some exciting games this last weekend. The WV Wild (Squirts) went into the weekend 5-6 overall, and came out of the weekend 9-6. That makes them 9-0 in league play and 0-6 out of league.

We drove to a suburb of Dayton, Ohio for games on Saturday afternoon. Just Isaac and I went, so that Lexy could go to skating lessons and Amy could stay home and sleep in... errr, study. (Truly she ended up cleaning the house and doing laundry). Anyway, it was a 3.5 hour drive in a light snow. Not too bad. The facility was middle of the road, nice ice, nice waiting area. The ice rink and tiny locker rooms have been well used. The other half of their building had basketball courts and volley ball nets.

The Springboro Panthers were undefeated. WERE. Our boys stunned them 6-12 in the 1:00pm game and 1-9 in the 3:30pm game.

With the first game at 1:00pm, at 12:40pm the coach got pretty nervous because the goalie wasn't there yet. Well, turns out with split parents no one call the coach to say that he was not coming. So, it's a good thing that we brought the goalie pads. Isaac suited up and we borrowed a stick from the other team's coach. He was excited to play. He had his hands full with their star player who would race down the ice weaving between defenders to take shots. Isaac held his own to keep them down to 6 goals in the first game and he shut out their start in the second game only allowing 1 goal from another player.

Here is a picture of Isaac standing tough with their star (#11) coming in for a shot.

This is a picture of the scoreboard after the first game.Isaac was on top of the world when his team swarmed him after the game to celebrate the wins. It was fun to watch.

Here they are after the game shaking hands with the other team. Isaac is on the far left end. The goalie always goes first.

On Sunday morning Springboro met us in South Charleston for games at 7:30am and 10:30am. They looked like they had practiced in the night, they really picked up their game. How intense..!!! The first game was close until the 3rd period when the WV Wild decided to play and pulled away finishing 11-8. Isaac got his first penalty. He was chasing down the Panther's star (#11) from behind, which he did about 4 time in the game to steal the puck, and his stick got tied up in the kids skates. When Isaac had enough and yanked his stick out, plop, the kid hit the ice. Isaac got 2 minutes for 'tripping'.

The Panthers picked it up even more for the 10:30am game. At the end of the 1st period they lead the Wild 1-4. Push and shove. By the end of the 2nd it was Panthers 5, Wild 4. With less than two minutes left in the game the Wild tied it of at 5 a piece. Our like ice rink was electric. The puck dropped again and the boys went back to battle. With less than one minute to go, the Wild scored the go ahead goal. With a couple of dozen parents horse from cheering the game ended West Virginia Wild 6 and the Springboro Panthers 5. The game can be watched on our UStream page.

The poor Panthers went from being undefeated to 4 losses in less than 24 hours. The Wild are 9-0 in league play. But their coach will not let up on them. Keep pushin'em Coach Phillips...! We are super excited for the league tournament in late February in Miami, Oh.

Here is the team calendar for the rest of this month.

Morning Homework..?

Isaac told Amy last night that he wanted to get up when she did to work on something for school. That is like 4:45am, not going to happen. He usually gets up around 6:30am to just make it to school at 7:05am. So, I got him up at 6:10am when I got out of the shower. I told him that he had to get dressed before he could work on it. I came back to find this...

Then he made copies in the office and it looked like this...

Homework...?? Nope, he is writing a play for him and his friends. He wanted to finish the script and make copies to give to his friends today. It is a Dragon Ball Z Kai story, written to be much like the cartoon that Isaac likes so much. (if you remember he dressed as Goku for Halloween this year.) He has each characters name before their lines (he even highlighted peoples copies for them), he had narrator parts, and blocking notes all in the script. It ended up being three pages long.

I hope that he and his friends have fun with it. He is thinking about costumes, props, wigs, stage. He is thinking of most everything on the project. He hopes that his school principal will let them perform it at school, maybe at the school talent show.

Athens trip to play hockey

On Sunday we drove to Athens, Ohio for Isaac to play hockey. They played on the ice at the University of Ohio. What a beautiful campus. Wow. Lots of red brick with white trim. They have done a great job is making it all fit together.

Here is a quick picture of the kids on a bridge over one of the many ponds on campus. Here is the same pond as Amy and the kids.
The clouds driving into Athens were really cool looking. Little waves of clouds, it reminds me of the ripples in a sand dune after the winds had blown.

This is a shot of one of the buildings on campus with the wave clouds and the sun.This is the only action shot I got of the two hockey games. I got plenty of video with Lexy's new HD FlipVideo.

The boys played pretty good. They defiantly played them better this time that last time. However, our boys were not able to score a goal in either game. They lost the first game 7-0 and the second game 5-0. They really ran with them the second game it was 1-0 until late in the 3rd period. Isaac was frustrated about the losses. I have been trying to help him turn that frustration and anger into skating harder and taking it out on the other team. He is getting better, to was able to break up several plays, steal the puck for some short break outs, and even shoved back when they tried to push him around. Keep playing hard buddy..!!

Amy and Lexy watched the games from the luxury box above the ice. It was a nice, heated lobby with soft chairs and a great view of the ice.