9th Annual Beer Olympics!

As the cold weather sets in and the holiday lights glimmer, let's take it back a few months and reminisce real quick on our penultimate and 9th annual Beer Olympics!

It's so hard to explain Beer Olympics to someone who has never experienced it firsthand. It's a day of drinking games, yes. But also so much more in a weirdly sentimental, make some new friends, competitive, but good hearted, feel good day. I don't know how to describe it but to say - that months and years later when I see people from various sects of our life chatting and laughing together and ask them about how they know each other, often times it begins with "at Beer Olympics," and that somehow describes everything about everything.

We had a beautiful, blue sky day in late June to celebrate our 9th annual event. Greyson's all-star machine pitch baseball team had a tournament that day - so for the first time in nine years, I was flying solo as host for the first half of the day! Thankfully though, I had no stress about it because our Beer Olympic veterans are so amazing and kind and helpful and know the ropes of how the day works. 

As in Beer Olympic fashion, we start the day with a game of Sloshball while we organize the teams, then it's face painting & color hair spraying by team names (we chose to do all Hashtag team names this year, HAH) before we dive right into the main event line up - beginning with Beer Pong and Hungry, Hungry, Hippong. 

Teams earn points by their performance on the various games and many of the games are tournament style so no matter what place you come in, you earn some team points. We also have individual non-mandatory challenges along the way if you feel inclined to earn some points for your team score like Keg Stands, Blow Ball, and Chug Offs. Following Beer Pong we have Dingbat Relay, and Ice Cube Tray Canoe Races.

God bless our friends who sign up to help ref or volunteer during the day too. I could not do this day without our friends who wear those whistles alongside me and put up with the incredible hilarity that comes with trying to organize progressively more intoxicated competitors. Half the success comes from observers (and helpful players trying to win the Olympian and Teacher's Pet awards!) who re-fill beer pitchers, replace kicked kegs, move tables to set up for the next games, and empty garbage cans.  Seriously, I love you all so much. 

To close out the first half of the day before the intermission; we play Slippy Cup (flip cup with a slip and slide) and Anchorman. 

I can't preach enough how important the intermission is for players to refuel (on tons of carbs) and non-alcoholic liquids. Another key to our beer olympics success is that everyone who comes brings something to share - so our garage slowly fills up as friends arrive with roasters, crockpots, desserts, and coolers filled with water and sports drinks. During intermission, the perimeter of our yard becomes the men's bathroom, bodies lay all over the place with plates of food balanced on their bellies, and we do a quick tally of the scores so teams can figure out how hard they need to rest before the games resume.  We plan for the intermission to last about 45mins, but inevitably it lasts at least an hour to a little more.

Then we ease back into the games with a flip cup tournament and a Quad bongs tournament.  The baseball team arrived back a little after intermission and Brandon said to me, "Geez, everyone seems like they are way more drunk than past years" and I laughed and was all like, "babe, that's only because you're sober this year." It's both hilarious and annoying to be on the Ref/sober side of the day, but it's my favorite so I take the whining with a smile and write down all the funny things people say and do to add into our awards ceremony at the end of the night.

My favorite event of the day is Survivor Flip Cup because people get seriously intense about it as it's the competition to rack up huge points for your team if you can keep a representative at a table for a long time (it's like musical chairs with the last one gets kicked off the table idea but with flip cup). And then it's one last chug offs before the Obstacle course finale.

Then it's another intermission while the refs tally team scores and decide on award winners before our big finishing ceremony - always a highlight of the day. We make a bunch of sashes with ridiculous awards and my sister compiles a playlist of songs to go with each award (hilarious!) and we do the whole thing like it's super official and celebratory. 

With the amazing generosity of our players and observers, we raised over $300 to support a local family and a local do-gooder who made a huge sacrifice to help them. It was a double dose of kindness that we were able to give this summer (YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!)

Our champs AGAIN this year was Team Pumpkins (#PSL)- two years reigning champs going into our final year of Beer Olympics! 

It's true, we are retiring the Studer's Invitational Beer Olympics after one last guns ablaze 10th annual event coming this summer; with a full weekend of fun, special surprises, and a year-in-advance invite already sent out (LOL). With growing kids and all their activities and just plain getting older (and hangovers that are harder and harder to recover from #sadbuttrue) - we know it's time to hang up our Beer Olympics sashes.

But first - one more time!

ps. Thanks for all who have read and followed along and re-pinned our posts.  Next August 2018, I will have a final Beer Olympics Planning Toolkit available to leave as a legacy. Stay tuned!

AKT trip: NC

As an almost perfect celebration to the closing of my semester long adventure in part-time teaching, my bff Kate, our Rusty, and I flew down to North Carolina to visit our other bff and her two baby boys for the weekend. #aktpluskids playdate (kind of).

Kate and I carpooled most of the way to the airport and after thirty thousand renditions of my "Mumma Loves You" song to keep Rusty happy in the car (hah), we arrived to the airport in time to meander to our terminal and grab a bite to eat and a nice, tall glass of celebration before boarding our plane for the quick hour and change flight south.  

It was Rusty's first airplane ride and he performed like a champ (read:  he fell asleep within minutes of take off), while I sat in silence staring at his little peaceful face.  It was clear this trip was already going to be the soul-cup refill that I needed.  best girlfriends, sweet baby cheeks, and spirits, desserts, &chatting...um, yes please.

Karpy picked us up at the airport and we all made enough of a scene of hugs and squealing that everyone within in a 30 yard vicinity recognized that we were best friends being reunited (maybe sisters because sometimes that's what people assume too).  #airportPDA  We headed back to the Hubbard house already in full-on catch up talk mode while also loving up on Andrew who grew so much since last April (!!)  Upon arrival 'home,' we spent the rest of the weekend snuggling up to sweet baby James - our groups newest addition! - and sharing child caring tasks, snacking, laughing, and talking, and talking, and talking on every imaginable topic and then some...because that's what best girlfriends do, okay!?

It's always so refreshing and incredible to me that no matter how long it's been between seeing each other (and it's been over seven months this time!) we step right back into stride like it's been no time at all.  We just pick right up and suddenly the months seem like they've collapsed and we're just right back in the groove again.  If you do not have friends like this, I strongly encourage you to go out and find some immediately.

A while back, I read this blog post about close friends who live far away and this mini-trip was the perfect reflection of that sentiment.  Just getting to spend time with each other as we wiped noses and cooked regular food for meals and snuggled up on the couch with blankets and a snoring puppy squeezed in close.  Just going through our regular motions, but together.

We have been lucky to meet up together with all the kids at the halfway points where we sight see and corral children and spend enormous chunks of time at the hotel pool.  But this trip, in particular, to one of our homes where we just hung out and made no plans and just lived together again - if only for a weekend - was exactly the dose of girlfriends that I think we all needed to refuel our momma cups.

After two cozy days, including one where the southern sun shone down on us and we took a long walk around the neighborhood, we reluctantly got packed up to head back up north until our next AKT plus kids playdate (tentatively June!) and made our way back to the airport where we hugged out our goodbyes.  Rust had another good flight (read: slept again!) and we made our way back to our other babies but lighter somehow.  You know Gretchen Rubin (author of The Happiness Project)  says "The most reliable predictor of not being lonely is the amount of contact with women." and my time spent with my best friends (and/or sisters!) is always verifiable proof of that.

Kate & Karpy, 

thank you.

always, always, always, forever

for being my friend. 

love, tab

And to my babies, 

you have been blessed in a thousand ways that your momma has best friends that are so kind and generous and patient and understanding to her.  Kate and Karp have inspired your momma to be a better mom and buoyed her up when she's been nervous or stressed.  And they are raising their own kids, some of your best friends in the whole world, with love and grace and kindness.  These friends of ours who share their hearts and homes and snacks.  Who laugh with us and cry with us and stretch out their hands to help when we don't even realize we needed the help.  

Honestly, darlings, we could not be more lucky to have these people as our friends through life. 

love you forever and ever, 

(even when you get bigger than me!)

Mum.

the importance of girlfriends

We made our annual road trip this past weekend to celebrate #aktpluskids with my two best friends and all of our kids in tow.  Currently, that equals three moms and six kids but will be bumped up to eight kids before the end of the year.  We are playing Zone Defense in a big way and we are definitely 'those people' when we call ahead to restaurants to give warning that we are on our way, and when we are getting noise complaints at 8:30pm on a Saturday night for the pillow sack races that were happening in the hotel room.

But since we don't all live in the same house (like we did back in our senior year of college), nor do we live in the same neighborhood (like we did in all the other years in college), nor are we even in the same state (two in PA and an hour apart and one in NC!!) - it's important to us to do this - to make the effort to bring all of us together for a big, wonderful, whiny, messy, hilarious weekend at least once a year.



Meeting halfway for us, means heading out to Richmond,Virginia: a four hour drive from the north for the Studers and Fiores and a hike up from the south of about the same distance for the Hubbards.  With kids ranging from six years old down to 18months, it's a trek to say the least - but pulling in at nearly the same time and getting that wave of relief that we were with 'our people' was awesome.

Doing our #aktpluskids trip means quite a different thing than getting together with my two best girlfriends like the good old days.  Long gone (like long, long long gone) are the days of staying up late and giggling over drinks and then sleeping in and enjoying a long brunch at some hip little hole in the wall diner.  Like, long gone.

Our trips now mean mostly sharing.  Sharing snacks, and water bottles, and photo stream albums, and seats and laps, and toys, and diapers, and group texts, and stories from our lives in these short little bursts riddled with interruptions of things like, 'honey, don't put that in your mouth,' or 'where does it hurt?'

Our trips mean meals together, which is symbolic and important in and of itself.  Even if the meals are breakfast at the hotel pool, or mostly corralling kids back to the table at restaurants that tease small children with their seemingly inconsequential attributes like a staircase or nearness to a parking lot.

Meals where food gets divided, shared, spilled, and well, some is eaten and some is packed up in takeout containers for when any of the kids are inevitably hungry in the five minutes within the table.  Meals that start out as an order-in pizza party in the hotel room and sweetly morph into a surprise birthday party for my son with cupcakes and hidden presents that give him a grin that leaves a lump in my throat.

Our trips mean packing up and heading out to brave exciting and interesting tourist spots that are mostly selected by how much energy it can expel from our six wild things.  We got to visit the Romp 'n Roll indoor play space, Sweet Frog ice cream shop, the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, Maymont Park, our hotel pool, and Three Lakes Park & Nature playground.  A little rainy and chilly weather was no match for our kids as they marched, skipped, climbed, explored, jumped, and raced their ways around.

 It means counting to six.  A lot.

  

It's most definitely a different kind of girlfriends weekend than we used to have, both filled with more joy and love but also more challenges and detours.  And we each now live in our own little version of motherhood; drowning sometimes in the worries and pride and questions and doubt that comes with our own unique kids.  And it would be incredibly easier to decide that we live too far away, and we have too much busy happening, and new babies to grow, and our own lives to try to juggle.

But we also know that life is too short and too fast and too messy, and sometimes you blink and impossibly eleven years have passed since you all slept under the same roof and sipped on glasses of boxed wine while watching Sex and the City episodes.  These two women are my very best friends; they know the writing on the walls of my inner soul and not only that, but when it was written and in what font and color, and why it was written in the first place.  The relief of being with my girlfriends always outweighs the challenge it takes to come together in this season of life.

And I hope with all my hopes, that we will always believe that as the seasons continue to change for each of us.  Because life IS too short and too fast and too messy and someday we'll blink and my kids will be creating wedding guestlists and I won't even have to ask to include my best friends because, of course, they will already be listed, not for my benefit; but because their influence and support and stories have been important and valuable to my kids.

akt fo lyfe.
love you so much.