May Madness

Jeff hosted a May Madness basketball fundraiser. He brought back alumni to play against the current players. He ended up mixing the teams though so that it wouldn't be a blow out. The alumni cheerleaders came and there were  quite a few fans who came, especially since Jeff just planned it like 3 weeks before. They raised $1000 for their team! I think next year even more people will come since it was such a positive experience for everyone who was there!

The pictures were taken during warm up and after the game, but during there were quite a few people in the stands. It was fun and a great event for the community!

Mother's Day!

 One thing about Jeff is that he never disappoints on holidays! Especially my birthday, Mother's Day, Valentines and Christmas. He is pretty awesome, I must say. He grilled me the most amazing food ever! Usually I am a meat girl, but those veggies were the best thing I have ever tasted in my life and I almost ate all of them and then barely had any steak!

 Berkeley was napping while Daddy was cooking, but I got a picture with my sweet little Cheyenne! It was such an awesome Mother's Day!

OH! I almost forgot! They gave me the best gift I have gotten yet! A little flip book that said 10 reasons we love you and each page had a picture of me with them and reasons why they love me. Jeff even laminated it and had it on a little ring. I love it so so so much and it was so thoughtful. I will put a picture up on here when I get a chance! Even though sometimes it seems like so much work and I am like what the heck was I thinking this is too hard... being a mother is the biggest blessing of all time! I am so lucky with the sweetest and cutest girls I could dream up, I just forget how lucky I am to have them sometimes. And especially with Jeff not coaching football and being home so much more now, life is great!

Preschool Co-op!

This was the last day of Cheyenne's preschool co-op. We did it all year long and got through the entire alphabet and I think it was like 20-25 sight words:) The girls had so much fun together. The saddest part is that these two girls up above moved as soon as the year was over:( Brielle (left) moved to Utah in July and Sadie (right) moved to Washington in May. Cheyenne was really sad to have them leave. The whole time she also actually thought Afton was moving to Africa as well to live with the lions because that's what she told her. I think she believes me now that she is staying since it is only the two of them left:) Berkeley loved to tag along, but usually came and snuggled by me when it was their play time, then when we would be doing school time she would sneak in the playroom and play with all the toys I made them leave behind! I'm so glad we did this and Cheyenne really ate it up. She just LOVES learning. Anytime it was playtime she really wanted it to be school time again.

Tugaloo State Park

After we had so much fun camping in Helen last fall, we were waiting all winter for the warm weather to hit so we could go camping! It usually gets super hot here by the end of May so we planned to go in early May. The day after our reservations were made, we checked the weather and saw that it was supposed to rain on our second night! I tried so hard to get out of the reservations, but they were sticklers! Nothing worse than camping in the rain! So, we decided to just go for one night.

We arrived and this was our campsite!! Isn't it beautiful?

 Berkeley was in the middle of potty training, so we just brought her potty with us and there were no accidents- yay!

 Roasting marshmallows by the fire with the best view ever!

 Mommy making the tin foil dinners!

 The girls love camping!

 Our friends thankfully let us borrow their canopy, and we were glad we had it because it rained all night long! And it was loud and there was some dripping in our tent. We did not sleep well at all... The next day after an amazing breakfast of pancakes, sausages and eggs, we went for a walk. We decided it would be fun to walk along the beach back to our campsite... let's just say that was not the best decision.

 It got a little scary, and we may have gotten almost trapped a few times, but we made it! We were filthy, but we made it! And Cheyenne must have thought we were going to die or something, because she was super proud of her dad for protecting her against the bears and bringing her back to her campsite safely. She kept saying little things like, "my daddy keeps us safe." Or "All the bears and snakes are scared of my daddy." It was pretty cute.

 After our little adventure, we were all dirty and really wet and really tired from not sleeping well, so we waited for a break in the rain, then packed all our wet camping stuff up and headed home. It wasn't perfect, but we had fun and the campsite was beautiful even if it was wetter and shorter than what we had hoped for!

This camping trip was a sign for our summer!! It has rained almost everyday!! CRAZY!!

Volleyball Banquet

 We had our club volleyball banquet at Shokitinis. It is this asian sushi place and you can rent out a room for karaoke. Cheyenne and one of the girls' little sisters sang twinkle twinkle little star, Cheyenne loved it.

 The volleyball girls loved it too!

 This is my assistant coach, Lizzie, who moved back to London after the season was over. It was her second year coaching with me, so it was sad to have her leave.

 These are my two girls that will be on my high school team. It was my second year coaching each of them, so this year will be my third season with them!

 The whole team, minus one girl who couldn't make it. They were a fun group of girls:)

POTTY TRAINED!!

I don't think I ever posted about Berkeley being potty trained... probably because it is still a sort of work in progress. 90% of the time she pees in the potty and always poops in the potty, but randomly she will pee her pants and it is so annoying! Like, the other day we were all just sitting there eating breakfast and she just peed while eating at the kitchen table, but she even gets up in the night if she has to go potty... I tried putting her feet in warm water when teaching her, but it didn't really work. My kids are a little hard to potty train because they have big bladders and only go about 2-3 times a day. 

This is our first time in 4.5 years with no kids in diapers and we are LOVING it!!! 

Outdoor volleyball tournaments

 I played in two outdoor volleyball tournaments this summer. I love them, they are so fun. It is just a day in the sun, getting tan, and playing volleyball all day long. The first I played with my assistant coach, Lizzie. She played middle at UGA and played in the olympics for Great Britain. It was fun, we made it out of pool play, but lost the first round of tournament.

 The second tournament I played with Kelsey, she just finished her first year going to school at UGA, but she was a great high school player and played for our club the years before. The competition was a lot better in our pool this time, and we got 3rd out of 5 teams, and only top two went to tournament. It sucks too, because one of the teams only beat us by two points and they ended up winning the entire thing, which I think was like  $400 a person!

It was fun, but not quite as much fun as it used to be when I played all the time. I am pretty inconsistent, especially with serving! I can't wait til the girls are older and Jeff and I can split up and play with them:)

Disneyworld April 2013

 I have been so excited to do this blog post, but I have had way too much going on to do it! Finally I uploaded all the pictures tonight and holy cow, there were way more than I thought!

We had first thought to go to Disneyworld on Wednesday while Trent was still in classes, but we looked on some chart online and it said Wednesday would be High crowd day, as with the rest of the week, but Sunday said it would be a low crowd day. We would obviously prefer not to break the sabbath, but we were spending a lot of money and only going one day so we didn't want to spend the whole time waiting in line!

If you read the previous post you know that the night before Berkeley woke up with such a bad cough she could barely breathe. I decided in my head that night that Jeff would take Cheyenne and I would hang out with Berkeley and just find a hotel to stay at while they were at Disneyworld. I was so bummed and could barely sleep (mostly because I was worried Berkeley would wake up not being able to breathe and we would be asleep). 

The next morning, Berkeley was completely fine. It was kind of weird but mostly awesome! We were all going to get to go to Disneyworld! I got ready, then got the girls ready. Cheyenne really really wanted to wear the Cinderella dress, but it poofs out a little more and when she put it on it looked like adult lingerie. Berkeley also wanted to wear the Rapunzel outfit (apparently they had already discussed the switch or something). I felt really bad making them change, but I didn't want anyone to mistake Cheyenne for a stripper.... I finally talked them into switching or actually threatening not to go to Disneyworld if they didn't switch. I did Berkeley's hair, but Cheyenne wanted hers down. I finally talked her into letting me do it half up so at least it would be out of her face. I wish she would have let me put it up, because it was hot and her hair got really sticky and yucky by the end of the day.

We started the day off with a time share presentation at 8 am. They said it would last 90 minutes and Disney didn't open until 9. Jeff signed us up for this and I was really nervous because we only had one day at Disney and the mornings are the best because the kids are happiest and there are barely any people. I was so worried the girls would either fall asleep later in the day or throw giant tantrums or something. We had the timeshare thing down. Seriously, I think Jeff and I are pros. We just acted like vacationing had no importance to us and we played up the fact that Jeff is a teacher and I stay at home and we don't have extra money to be throwing around. We were up front the whole time that we were just there for the reward! We were very polite and nice, but we asked zero questions, very important, don't ask questions!

I timed the whole thing and I told them their time was up and the guy got upset and said, "don't time me!" but they let us go, and we were off to Disneyworld with our $167 for three tickets deal. We also got a two night stay in Orlando again, so we will be going back sometime. We have to use it from October 2013 to October 2014. 

On the ferry boat thing to the park:

 Cheyenne was soooo excited!

 Berkeley fell asleep in the car on the way to Disney and got a solid hour and a half nap before we woke her up to go on the first ride- Dumbo!

 Meeting Minnie Mouse!

 Taking a break!

Daisy Duck

 Prince Charming's Carousel

 Cinderella's Castle, we took a bunch of pictures in front of it, but we didn't get any of the four of us that I liked.

 We randomly stopped for a parade on our way to meet the princesses... perfect timing!

 Meeting the princesses, the girls were so excited to meet Cinderella! They also asked Cinderella, Aurora, and Rapunzel where Ariel was, haha.

 Meeting Mickey Mouse with their friend T.J.

 Cheyenne sat by Goofy and asked me to take a picture!

 Berkeley was so funny meeting the princesses, she would just talk and talk and the poor princesses didn't understand half of what she was saying, and Berkeley never wanted to stop talking to take a picture, it was so adorable to watch. Cheyenne also loved meeting them, but was a little more quiet.

 This Ariel was AWESOME! She was totally in character the whole time! The other princesses would kind of just smile and respond to the girls, but this girl created conversation. She asked how the girls were liking Disneyworld, they said they rode the teacups and she asked if they saw flounder. She said "he likes to fill the teacups with water and swim around in circles really fast." The girls thought that was funny. Then Berkeley asked where her daddy was and she said, "My daddy, King Triton, is very busy because he is in charge of all of Atlantis!" The girls love Ariel so they were in heaven, but then when we left, Cheyenne said, "She looked different than the one in the movie." Hahah, I guess she thought we would be meeting the cartoons!

 Berkeley playing in the playground at Splash Mountain. Cheyenne rode it with Jeff, and we got the rider swap, but when I tried to ride it with her, she started crying and didn't want to ride it again, so I didn't make her.

 We got a great nap on this people mover in Tomorrowland. You can stay on it as long as you want. One of my favorite rides!

 Buzz lightyear ride.

 Orbit rocket ship ride...

 Jeff loves Disneyworld! We even went there together one time before we had kids:)

 When the night time fireworks were going off, all the rides were empty so we got to watch them from Aladdin's magic carpet ride! We just kept staying on it and watched the fireworks, it was perfect!

 It was so fun, I had bought glowsticks from the one spot at Target. They were so fun to wear when it got dark. Also, a woman came up to Jeff and asked where we got the girls crowns! I'm sure she would have paid $15 for them, since that's probably what they would have cost there, I got them for $2 each at Target before we went!

 I love this picture:

 I wish I wasn't standing so ackwardly, then I would love this picture! Everyone was lined up to see the fireworks, so we got a picture then went and rode 100 rides without any lines at all!

 This was at the end which was an electric parade... it was a little weird... It made me feel like the person who came up with it was on drugs...

  Two tired, happy princesses. I was so happy because they were so so so good the whole time! I have seen lots of grumpy and cranky kids at Disneyworld, so I was expecting them to throw some tantrums or something, but they were so happy and sweet the whole time and never even asked to buy one single thing. They stayed awake the whole time too.

 When the parade was over and all the rides were closed down, we still didn't want to leave and we didn't want our day to be over, so we walked around the shops and tried on merchandise for a while.

 The girls fell asleep on the walk home, perfect timing to a perfect day!!!

There is A LOT to do at Magic Kingdom, there are several rides we didn't even get to! We got to do a lot of the stuff once and a few things twice. Cheyenne's favorite ride was small world and Berkeley's was probably Dumbo or Peter Pan. Neither of them liked Pirates... Berkeley intensely sucked her thumb the whole time and kept her head down but her eyes looking up nervously. It was kind of funny.

After we finally got to the car, it was about 1 am, and Jeff drove all the way to Gainesville! I don't even know how he did it, because I was so so so tired I could not keep my eyes open for the life of me! He had a spark and sunflower seeds and he pulled through and got us to the Savages house safely! We spent the rest of the night there and then left for home the next day. 

We love Trent, Amelia and their two cute kids! It was so great to finally visit them again and spend some QT together! Can't wait to see them again!

One more thing about DWorld... there were several things that made this awesome trip a success!!!

1. Looking and following the crowd calendar!! It was awesome having short lines!
2. The amazing double stroller my friend Lindsey let us borrow!! The seats switched around so many ways and even laid back, and there was tons of storage underneath so we didn't have to wear a backpack the whole time.
3. We froze a bunch of water bottles so we had plenty of water. When that ran out we got water at the quickservice for free, which was nice and cold but still tasted like nasty orlando water so we had the single serving Crystal Light packs to mix in the empty water bottles we had drank with the new gross water and you couldn't even taste the grossness! We stayed very hydrated and didn't have to buy any expensive drinks!
4. Planning ahead with snacks and sandwiches! We made a whole loaf of pbj and pb honey sandwiches. We also had a ton of snacks including apples, trail mix, cashews, goldfish crackers, raisins, and we also brought cookies and chewy candies so we wouldn't be tempted to spend money on overpriced treats!
5. Remembering to put on sunscreen and bringing extra camera battery and having an empty memory card to begin with.
6. Buying a lanyard for $4 at Walgreens the night before to carry our id, credit card, park tickets and fast passes. We had to get out the tickets and fast passes a lot so it was nice having an easily accessible place for them where they wouldn't get lost or fall out!

We had so much fun and definitely got our moneys worth! I have to say the timeshare thing was totally worth it and I have to apologize to Jeff for freaking out and getting mad when he told me he signed up! I am so glad he saved us the almost $100! And perhaps we will even get to go again with our free hotel part of the deal! Every time I see ads on the computer for Disneyworld it makes me so happy and I think of the great memories we just made there!