The Store Opens!

We may have survived the longest and most stressful week with the store yet. All week big shipments of merchandise was coming in. It all needed to be checked in and put away and displayed. It was long nights for all of us including my mom who helped out a ton at the store. Thank you mom for all your support through all of this! The store was ready to go about 30 minutes before opening. Ryan and Sean did such a great job working 2 jobs and getting this all put together in such a short amount of time. It's been fun watching all of their hard work come together.

I was a tad worried when I left Thursday night if things would be ready for the next day at noon....

But like most big projects it all comes together in the end and the store looks great! Here are pictures from all over the store.

This is their baseball wall....

They are also selling lacrosse equipment. Most of that didn't come in until 10:30am on Friday! The store opened at noon. That was some quick unpacking.

More baseballl.....

They will be carrying a lot of different Hudson apparel throughout the year.

Over on the Hockey side...

Soccer wall.....

Can you believe some of those sticks are over $200.00! I hope my boys prefer the $30.00 sticks :)

Finally the shooting lane was finished. I was sort of getting nervous about this also. It's been a big hit with the customers coming in. It keeps the kids busy while their parents get their skates sharpened or shop around.

Easton loves seeing his name all over the store!

Ryan's dad had asked me awhile back when I thought the store would open. I took a guess based on what Ryan said and hoped for the best. The timing was perfect. He flew in Friday morning and got to the store around 11:00 am. That's probably the biggest secret/surprise I've kept in a long time! Ryan was shocked to see his dad and happy to have him there for opening day.

Here is a picture outside the store. On the far left is Sean, Ryan's partner in the store. In the middle is Matt, the store manager.

That's Kim with Sean, his wife. She's the only one who maybe understands what it's been like for me during this whole process. Kim and Sean have triplets that just turned 8 last week.

Thank you to all of our friends that sent flowers and/or treats to the store to help celebrate. It was truly appreciated. I think the best part about opening on Friday was the amount of friends and family that stopped in to see the store and show their support.

The first skate sharpening transaction. She's checking her phone for the emailed receipt to make sure it all was working.

Auntie, Finley and Hadley made the trip up to see the store. I love Finley's new shirt! I see two future hockey players!

This was waiting for me when I got home on Friday from my neighbor Amanda. She knows us so well!

After the store closed we went out to celebrate a successful day. 

With this week being so busy the boys have been shuffled around and routines have been ignored. I'm looking forward to things getting back to normal in the next few weeks. They've been troopers but I can see it was starting to take a toll on them also.

I was able to stop and have lunch with Spencer at school. I look forward to being able to do more of this next year when I'm staying home.

Wearing full baseball uniforms is an every day outfit. 

I'm sure the parents of his friend were impressed by his outfit of choice for the birthday party.

It's been cold and rainy here for the last 2 days. To burn energy we headed to the trampoline park. We got these fun gripper socks that help you stick to the trampoline. The boys loved it and burned off lots of energy.

We were still stuck inside so we got out the new games the Easter bunny brought. Some are easier to play then others....

This game is called fibber! They didn't really get the concept of it yet but we had fun putting on the glasses.

Easter Weekend!

Spencer started off the week with no school on Monday. I wanted to do something fun with the boys but of course it was still cold outside. We headed towards one of our favorite indoor parks.  

We burned some energy jumping on the giant pillow...

They have a floor interactive video game that requires the kids to use their bodies and feet to play.

It was fun having the 3 of them home together. It also gave me a glimpse as to what this summer will be like when we are all home together every single day. The thought of this still makes me nervous!

They did some building...

After, I needed to run to the MOA to go to the Apple store. I love when places have built in entertainment for kids while I can get my questions answered.

They convinced me to allow them to ride on 2 rides. This is the downside of them ever finding out there were rides at the MOA.

We made homemade soft pretzels.... 

Nolan must get his driving skills from me. First let me explain what is going on in this picture. Our neighbor Amanda was doing some painting in her garage. She didn't want the kids to touch it so she shut her door but left it slightly open to let the fumes out. Her and I were sitting on the side of the house when we watched Nolan drive up the driveway. A moment went by and we didn't hear him. I walked around the corner and he yelled "I'm stuck!"Before attempting to rescue him I had to snap a picture. A moment after this picture was taken he drove the rest of the way under the door.

The baby stuff is still disappearing. We said goodbye to our double stroller.....

I love that Nolan still wants to snuggle at night!

His neck had to hurt sleeping like this.

Thursday night we kissed our kids goodbye as Grandma took them with her to Eau Claire. With the store opening up in a week there was lots that needed to be done. Thank you to my mom, dad and Heather for helping watch our kids so we could work in the store kid free. We may have also snuck in a dinner just the two of us.

Some of the merchandise started to come in mid week.....

Sean (Ryan's partner in the store) was sharpening skates....

Things are starting to go up on the walls. It's fun to see what they've spent so many late nights working on all come together....

There is still a lot that needs to be done but it will get there eventually as they figure out what exactly they need to finish up and open on Friday.

 Plenty of baseball equipments. Gloves, bats, batting gloves, bags and accessories.

The "Locker Room Talk" portion of the wall is dry erase board where they can write the High School sports schedules for the week, store specials and promotions, etc.

After hinting and begging for multiple days they finally let me unpack some of the apparel boxes. Currently there isn't anywhere in Hudson that you can go to get sports apparel. 

If you haven't seen it already you should check out this great article that was in our local paper:
http://www.hudsonstarobserver.com/content/st-croix-sports-full-service-pride-home-grown-connections

While the boys were away the dyed Easter eggs....

Took a trip to Lacrosse to visit Auntie Dixie, Uncle Tim, Shellee, Darren, Conner and Tanner. I heard they had a lot of fun and spent most of their time at the park and riding on their golf cart.

Easter was not very exciting this year. I don't know if the kids were tired, have spent too much time together, worn out from not being at home or a combination of it all but my kids were having some major melt downs from some of the most simple things. At one point I was ready to call off Easter all together. Nothing drives me more crazy then when we try to do something fun for them and it back fires.

Our first sign should have been when we tried to get a group picture.... FAIL!

The kids did a scavenger hunt around the house. They were more worried about who was next to be the leader to the next spot and what order they were going in that they hardly noticed the gifts they found.

There was also some begging for candy along the way.....

Each little got one big gift at the end. For Spencer it was new shoes. He was beyond pumped.

Easton and Nolan got new bike helmets and they love them! Nolan refuses to take his off. 

After lunch it was time to do an egg hunt outside. We decided this will be all that we will do next year. Each little had their own color and the same number of eggs to look for. There was no fighting!

One can never be to safe when hunting for eggs!

Grandma had a great idea to get a picture of all the kids on the slide...

Finally it was time to see the surprise that were hidden inside their eggs....

When we were in the car on our way home Spencer informed me the Easter bunny isn't real. Seriously your only 6! I thought we at least had a few more years of him believing! After talking to him about it I determined he doesn't think the Easter bunny is real because he's never seen a bunny that's as big as the car. So I'm still not sure if he believes or not but he still had fun hunting for eggs and his basket at our house.

We hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. This is a big week for us as St. Croix Sports it set to open at noon on Friday! Wish us luck as we continue to get the store ready for opening day and that the  people of Hudson and surrounding communities are just as excited to have a local sports store as we are!