October 2013

 October was JAM packed/crazy!! Thankfully, my mom came out to help and watch some volleyball:) Berkeley started a joy school group in September. She LOVES it! It was great timing, because Cheyenne was ditching her to go to real school. She loves to talk about her school and her friends. They all took a little field trip to the pumpkin patch! Mom and I came and it was so much fun! The only downside is that it was raining for a lot of the time:(

 Ellie, Berkeley, Maya, Sloan, Azalee, and Scottie...  adorable group of kids!

I thought for sure Berkeley would want an Ariel birthday party, but she all of the sudden requested a My Little Pony party and hasn't looked back! She is obsessed with Rainbow Dash and carries her little plastic pony everywhere!

 Fruit/cheese/marshmallow rainbow treats

 Berkeley's friends: Henry, Afton, Lena, Sarah, Eve, Cheyenne, Scottie... there were a few others that didn't want to come out of the toy room for the picture (Ellie, Sloan, Maya, Micah).

 Berkeley's Rainbow cupcake/cake!

 Berkeley playing pin the tail on the donkey, everyone loved this one!

 Grandma Sylvia and Berks.

Berkeley doesn't like to take pictures, so I had to get her in a head lock to look at the camera!

 

 I carried out this tradition from my friend Diane who coached with me at Kearns. It was once again so fun! We had Nuns, Superheros, Magician/bunny, clowns, decade girls, kitties, tom&jerry (Julie & I), cows and come girl volleyball players. We actually did play, and the cows won!

The season finished up in October, and I call it a success! We went to a tournament in Atlanta called Serve for the Cure and it raised over $5000 for Susan G. Komen. We played some awesome competition and although we only won a few games, we improved so much and it was a blessing from God, because it was just what we needed. A team had dropped out so they invited us last minute. We then moved into the area tournament and played awesome and won our area, for the first time in the school's history! It was a sweet moment for sure.

Then we breezed through the first two rounds of state and made it to the final 6. Once you get to the final 6, you get re-seeded and we had to travel to Buford. We didn't play our best, but we barely lost the first set 23-25, then we really lost the second 15-25, we went in the locker room for our break and the girls just seemed so flat. I told them to do something to get themselves pumped up... we did a loud cheer and got fired up to fight for our lives the next game. We won 25-21, then ended up losing the last game 18-25. So we ended up 5th or 6th with a record of 42-10... It was a great season, and a success for me (although I would have of course loved to win that last game). We only graduate one senior and I am already looking forward to next year, the girls are focused and committed and all working hard in their club seasons right now.

 

 After church one Sunday...

 Cheyenne dressed up as Cinderella for her school Halloween party

 Berkeley, Cheyenne, and Layla trick or treating!

 Cheyenne & Berkeley having a picnic!

September 2013

I literally have NO pictures from September, and you know how I take pictures of EVERYTHING!! So yeah, no pics for Sep, that goes to show just how busy we were! September started out great for volleyball but hit a rough patch the last two weeks, we suffered three losses and our setter was injured, plus lots of girls were fighting, bleh! And I am seriously not a very good relationship counselor, but I did what I could and just prayed my heart out that they would get over it! We finished September 30-3. We were still ranked 4th at that point I believe, and first in our area. Although I was stressed...

Oh! I almost forgot, at the beginning of the month we went to visit our friends Amelia and Trent in their new place in Tallahassee. They are so much fun so we had a great time! I think that is all we did, but its been so long now, I could be forgetting something!

August 2013

 In August, things got CRAZY!!! Volleyball at NOHS was in full swing, Cheyenne started Pre-k, and soccer and continued with gymnastics, Jeff's parents and my dad came out to visit and Jeff and I flew to Dallas for success school.

 Cheyenne started Pre-k August 7th. It is every single day from 7:30 to 3 pm. I had been looking forward to Cheyenne going to pre-k since I found out about it, because I thought that was so cool. I was so surprised when I went to drop her off, I was so sad and didn't want her to go! Cheyenne got a little nervous, but was super excited and she definitely loves it. She loves all the kids in her class and has made so many new friends. She is the sweetest thing, really. Her favorite friend is a little girl named Michelle and she also really likes this boy Avery. They are who she talks about the most.

 Cheyenne continued with gymnastics and continued to love it. She also started soccer! The league was definitely not the right one for her and her level. It was U-6, so almost all the kids were much older and bigger than her and had played before. Cheyenne couldn't keep up with them and rarely got to touch the ball. The coach was great with the kids and positive and encouraging, but unfortunately cared about winning (which is not the best for development of 4 & 5 year olds) and so Cheyenne didn't get to play much and when she did he would only have the best players throw in the ball instead of giving everyone a chance to learn. I think the 3v3 leagues are definitely the best for the little ones so they can actually touch the ball more and everyone gets to play. They weren't supposed to be keeping score, but some of the coaches did, which was really annoying. On top of that, the games were soooo far away, (30 minute drive), so we are just going to go with the Athens one next year, hopefully it is a better experience. On a positive note, Cheyenne still had fun and was excited to go. I even offered her a scoop of ice cream every time she touched the ball and that game she touched it 3 times! I think her favorite thing was the treat after the game.

Jeff and I flew to Dallas for success school using our free plane tickets from Jeff's near death experience. We are soooo grateful to Connie and Frank for coming out and watching our girls!! We also got a few days with Connie and Frank too, so that was really great. We flew in to Houston and then drove 4 hours to Dallas. We went to Success School (for Advocare) Friday night, all day Saturday and the morning Sunday. It was really awesome. We saw FC Dallas Soccer team, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, Emmit Smith, all the Advocare Doctors were there talking about the products, Erik Wahl spoke and painted amazing pictures right in front of us, Micheal W. Smith performed on Sunday. Then Sunday we drove to Houston and stayed in a hotel there and came home Monday.

My dad came for a visit shortly after which was really nice to have him here too. He got to come to a volleyball game as well.

Volleyball went great in August, we finished the month 11-0. And ranked 4th in the state! It was a good month, but definitely a lot going on, thank goodness Jeff wasn't coaching football!