Catching Up - L

L is for La Quinta Inn, a hideous rat-trap slum of a motel that almost ruined our trip to the Kohl's tournament in Naples. Just about all of the families on the team made reservations with this particular La Quinta in Naples due to a great deal they were offering on their website. Long story short, the hotel was an absolute pit and was extremely overbooked to boot. So we found ourselves wandering around Naples on Friday night at 10pm (on a holiday weekend, no less) without a place to stay. Fortunately, I had for some reason remembered the directions to the hotel at which I had originally planned to stay and they took great care of us when we showed up on their doorstep in the middle of the night. So yay Inn at Pelican Bay, boo La Quinta.

Catching Up - K

K is for the Kohl's All-American Tournament, an annual Florida state-wide all-star tournament for recreational soccer players that was held in Naples this past February. I coached the CPUSA girls U-10 all-star team in the tournament. We took eleven girls total, six of whom played for me in the regular season (including Zoe). The other five girls were taken from two of the other three girls U-10 regular season teams. Unfortunately, we were both outclassed and out of gas as a team, so we finished last. But the weather was great, the facilities were incredible and we ended up staying at a beautiful hotel that almost made the whole trip worth it, so no complaints. Zoe was one of a small handful of girls who played well throughout the tournament, and it was nice to see her get her first traveling tournament under her belt.

Catching Up - J

J is for Joe Gross, my neighbor. As I'll discuss later in the entries for P and S, I had some major landscaping issues to address over the winter and Joe provided invaluable assistance in dealing with those problems. This is par for the course for Joe, who is an exemplary neighbor in every sense of the word. If you can imagine a friendly, helpful, generous neighbor character in a setting like Leave It To Beaver, that's Joe. Awesome guy.

Catching Up - I

I is for the Inn at Pelican Bay, a very nice Naples hotel that figures into events that will be described later in the list. Suffice to say, this place turned what could have been a disaster into something almost resembling a vacation.