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The new Head Basketball Coach at Elbert County High School!

I am so proud of Jeff for accomplishing this! The previous Head Coach was awesome and did a really good job with the team, but he wasn't able to get certified so they had to let him go. He was a friend of ours and we will miss him. Jeff has worked so hard teaching and coaching and has been doing such a great job, he didn't even have to apply, they offered him the job and he accepted. He has a lot of work ahead of him and I am going to be home alone a lot, but I am so proud of Jeff and he totally deserves this opportunity. I know he will do such a good job and be a great example and leader of their team. I feel so blessed that Jeff's hard work is paying off and he is being promoted in an economy where it is hard to even keep a job. Jeff you rock, I love you and I am so excited and happy for you!

Fire pit

I tried to upload a video, but for some reason I can't upload videos anymore. My camera must be set on too high of resolution or something. This past weekend we got a visit from some fun friends. Chad and Rachel Meynders are from our stake in Washington, but now they live in North Carolina. They came to visit for the weekend and we had so much fun! We went to Sandy Creek Park Friday and played some clue that night, then Saturday morning we played in a softball game, then while Jeff mowed the lawn, Chad built this amazing trail and fire pit! We LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!! We can't wait until winter when it will be cold enough to enjoy the heat of the fire:) We had to try it out though, so even though it was 80 degrees out, we roasted hot dogs and the girls went back and forth from the swimming pool to the fire. It was so fun! We can pretty much camp in our backyard now!

Prom Date night!!

Jeff and I chaperoned the ECCHS prom a few weeks ago. We had a good time. We had a gift card to Carrabba's so we went there for dinner. A couple of girls from my volleyball team babysat and did an AWESOME job! They fed the girls, cleaned up, fed Berkeley a bottle and put them to bed. The prom was kind of boring, because it is not like we actually danced, but it freaked me out to think of Cheyenne going to the prom with a boy! Our conversation went like this:

Me: "It freaks me out to think of Cheyenne being here with a boy on a date."

Jeff: "She won't be going."

Me: "Yes she will or you will be crushing her dreams!"

Jeff: "Well, I will be there too."

Me: "oh yeah! That is so awesome that you will be teaching at whatever school she goes to and we can chaperone the dances and know what is going on."

Jeff: "Yeah, and I will have to approve of whatever boy she goes with and that boy will know me and he will be scared of me I will tell you that much."

haha... I think it will actually be good for Cheyenne to have her dad at the school and at the dances, she can always feel safe and still have a good time. We can always know what is going on and be in the loop!

It was fun to have a date, although I would have rather done something else than chaperone a prom, it was still a good date night, and we got in some good conversation in the 35 minute drive there and back... plus we stopped at McDonald's for a delicious ice cream Sundae!

Scorpions and Ticks

I found this in our house a few weeks ago, it was the biggest one I have found yet! So creepy... We also had our first experience with ticks recently. I forgot to take a picture, but we were playing in the woods (pictures of that to come soon) and when Cheyenne came in I found a tick on her leg. Jeff twisted it out with tweezers then we cleaned it with alcohol.... then we all felt like we had bugs crawling all over us!!

Easter

I got Cheyenne an Easter Bonnett this year, it was so fun! A sweet couple in the ward also hosted an egg hunt for all the nursery/primary kids, Cheyenne LOVED it!!

Childhood Memories

Forts, movies and popcorn... this brings back memories. I watched one of my friend's kids, Ethan and Claire. We built a fort and they watched Mulan and ate popcorn. Cheyenne lasted like 40 minutes which is a total record for anything other than Dora! Now, she always asks to watch it, but never actually watches it when I put it on... so funny.

New Family Pics

One of my friends in the ward took these awesome family pictures. She really is so talented. So I need to decide how to display them on the really big blank wall behind our couch in our living room. I want to do some sort of picture combination so it takes up a lot of space. And maybe a family quote somewhere in there (perhaps vinyl?). I have no idea what to do, so any suggestions are more than welcome! Perhaps you could vote and tell me which picture should be the main big picture? Also, for any family members who want a picture for their house, choose which one you want, leave a comment, and don't forget to tell me what size you would like:)

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New Shirts

Our friend sent us these cute matching shirts--- in the mail---!! Cheyenne LOVES to get mail. We walked out to the mailbox and I gave her the box and she told me to open it and she wanted to put it on "right now." I just love these girls:)

Big South

The pictures are all scrambled, but here is a long train of blocks Cheyenne made in our 2nd hotel room:

Waiting in the MARTA station on our way home, we kept barely missing our connecting trains, so it took us 2 hours to get back to our hotel:

Before one of our games:

The coca-cola man, which Cheyenne thought was Jesus:

A giant blow up dog at the dog contest show thing that Cheyenne was scared of:

Jeff took this picture, I am not so sure where it is, somewhere downtown Atlanta though:

Jeff found a dog show and took Cheyenne in to watch it:

Walking to lunch before the first day of our tournament:

Me in my coaching jacket:)

Cheyenne, Berkeley and I in our awesome hotel room at the downtown Hilton:

We had a tournament in Atlanta, that actually did not go well and I would prefer not to remember, but I am posting about it anyway... maybe I am addicted to blogging? I don't know. I have about 25 journals that are filled up from 1st grade on. I have always been a big journal writer... my blog is now my journal, so I guess I need to record the good, bad and the ugly! Hah! Anyway, this tournament is a National Qualifier and was held in the Georgia World Congress Center. They had three tournament divisions for every age group from 12's-18s. There were 96 teams in our division. That gives you an idea of how many teams were participating in this- over 1500. The sucky part is that it is 3 days long and you only know what wave you will be playing in the first day, but the next two days you do not know. We were given a pm wave for Friday, so we had to stay in a hotel friday and saturday night. Then we found out we needed to register our team on Thursday so we got a different hotel for Thursday night as well. We decided to make a vacation out of it (as much as we could, I was pretty busy the whole time). Thursday night we got a deal on hotwire for the Hilton downtown atlanta. It would have been a better deal if we didn't have to pay $20 extra for parking, but of course I didn't realize that when I booked the hotel. It was actually pretty fun to stay downtown Atlanta, because we never had before. Oh and there were volleyball players everywhere in Atlanta this weekend so we fit right in. Our hotel was full of them. The first night we checked in and walked to eat. We ended up eating in the mall foodcourt at some chinese restaurant. The next morning we worked out in their fitness center which was awesome. Then Jeff dropped me off at the tournament. He took both girls and checked in to our other cheaper hotel for the next two nights which was located in the Perimeter area. The next day we had the great idea to ride the MARTA to the tournament. It was about 30 minutes driving, but the MARTA ended up taking an hour on the way there and 2 hours on the way back. Yes, we definitely regretted that decision! Sunday Jeff just took the girls and picked me up after. I was so happy for it to be over. Our team came out AMAZING the first game and barely lost in 3 games to a team from Florida who was much more experienced than us, after that they shut down, there was some 15 year old girl issues between them all and was basically a nightmare. We did not play very well and the whole thing was a big headache. We thankfully recovered, because in our next tournament we played up a division and got 3rd out of 8 teams which was really good. I am thankful to Jeff for supporting me in coaching volleyball because I love it and he is really supportive about it. I can't believe I didn't take any pictures with him in it, but I guess I was just focused on something else at the time.

March Madness 2011

This was the game after ours, I was too into our game, I forgot to take any pictures during it, but this is Oregon vs. Duke. It is so weird because UNC fans were way more crazy cheering against Duke than they were cheering for UNC during their game vs. UW.

Frank discussing the game with some randoms:

Before the game, waiting for them to open the doors... we were really excited:

A picture by the court, we were way early:

This year Georgia played Washington in Charlotte, in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament. We wanted to go to that game, but I had a volleyball tournament really early the next morning in Atlanta and it would have been too much. We didn't go, but Washington thankfully ended up winning and so we went to the next game vs. UNC. It was pretty much a home game for UNC since we were in Charlotte. It was so close and Washington ended up barely losing. It was funny because after the game random Duke and Michigan fans were coming up to us (there weren't many other UW fans there) and saying, "that was a good fight, you played a good game." I thought it was ridiculous... I didn't play, I sat there and watched. Sometimes sports fans don't realize they are just sitting there watching, they think they could go out there and do just as good... also people kept asking if we were leaving and if they could have our seats, haha there weren't many seats higher up than ours... we should have offered to trade them!

Our friends recently moved to Charlotte and were so so nice to watch Cheyenne and Berkeley for us while we went to the game. They even made us delicious BBQ pizza after the game- so good! We had so much fun and made some great memories! We tried getting better seats in the handicapped section, but kept getting booted. It was kind of embarrassing so finally we just went back to our seats in the nosebleed section! hah!