Easter

 We had a pretty low-key Easter!  We went to the 8 AM service at church, and we had a little egg hunt at the house.  My mom had my family and my sister and her hubby over for a big mid-day meal.  Since it was the first weekend of our spring break, my two nieces were with their friends at the beach.  

The Easter Bunny came!

Parker

Taylor

Sydney

Had to include this pic of Taylor's face.  She went from grumpy (all-day tournament the day before), to happy for a couple of minutes, back to grumpy. hehe

Egg Hunt:

Checking out the loot:

Taylor- Basketball Tourneys

This is the 3rd "season" that Taylor has been playing on her team, with mostly the same people... a few have left and a few have joined, but the same 7 have played together now since August.  I feel like their team has really clicked recently.  They've been really good and have won most of their games, but there was usually one or two standouts that the team relied on for the first half of the year.  The next few months, a few other girls really stepped up and the "standouts" kind of leveled out.  Taylor was always very consistent, coming off the bench and scoring maybe 6 points on average per game.  The last month, though, something with Taylor has just clicked!  I think it's her confidence- that is usually the main thing that holds Taylor back.  She has been working hard every day at home, and it's definitely started to show more on the court.

These are some videos from winter season:

This spring, instead of playing regular games each weekend, they're doing about 10 tournaments.  It's nice not playing the same 4 teams over and over, and seeing what else is out there!  3rd/4th grade girls' teams are all over the place... some are good, some are not.  In these tournaments, you never know what you're going to face!

The first tournament was in Atlanta, and they played great.  There were 4 teams in their division- one was okay, one was not great (we won 40-0), and one was really good- they were apparently the "number 1 4th grade team" in North Carolina.  (how people get these rankings, I have no idea).  We played them in the championship game and lost by ONE!  We were down by about 10 at halftime, so it was a really good and exciting game.  The coach of the other team was very complimentary of our team, saying we're the first team that has given them good competition.  They've been together for 2 years and have never lost!

The team got a big team trophy, and were even interviewed by girls who have a YouTube channel and travel to youth tournaments. ;) The extra cool thing was that Taylor's coach picked her to be the tournament MVP!  She was a scoring, stealing, and rebounding fool!  She was so excited, and she gets to keep the monstrous trophy.

 The extra cool thing is that a couple of weeks after the tournament, they announced the "all tourney team"- basically, the top players from each team, and the winning coach.  Taylor and one of her teammates made it!

On a fun note, since they scored 40 points, their coach made a deal that he'd have to dress up as "Macho Man" for practice. ;)

Two weeks later, she played in another tournament in north Georgia.  They joined the 3rd/4th division, with two other 4th grade teams and two third grade teams.  (so we thought...)

The first game, they won something like 32-3 against one of the 3rd grade teams.  (FYI: Taylor's team is made up of eight 4th graders and two 3rd graders).  The next morning, they played the other 3rd grade team... which was actually a 1st/2nd grade team playing up a division.  It was terrible!!!  These poor little girls, who were probably little ballers against other 1st/2nd grade girls... they couldn't even get a shot off.  Our coach asked the scoreboard to stop adding points when it was 34-0.  Our girls started to play less hard, and gave the girls the opportunity to score.  Everyone cheered whenever they did.  It was great!!  One of our moms keeps the stats for each game, and the final score (though not noted on the scoreboard) was 92-18.  And that was with us not trying hard for most of the game.  It was sad- good for them for trying to play up, but it just wasn't good for either team!  Though I do feel like our girls learned a good lesson. (I did ask the coach what he'd have to dress up as since we scored 90 points ;)

To give perspective, the girl in black is our shortest player... she is shorter than Parker!  And these little girls made her seem tall.

We had one mom come up to our team after the game and say how much she appreciated our team's sportsmanship.  And later that night, our league director received this FB message that he shared with us.

Anyways, after that came the playoff bracket, and guess which team we were supposed to face again?  Yep, the 1st/2nd grade team.  They rightfully forfeited, but that left us with a super long day before the championship game at 7:45 that night.

Lunch at Chili's

Taylor and Makenna, hanging out

The mountains were definitely pretty!

We played an actual 4th grade team (yay!) from Tennessee in the championship and won 39-6!  And Taylor scored 19 of those points!!

Guess who got the tournament MVP again??  (I couldn't believe it- we've never had the same player get back-to-back MVP)

So proud of her and her hard work and progress!  Her little team is so much fun to watch.  They all play so well together, they work well as a team, and they are all really sweet and fun girls.

March!

March!!  March was taken up by basketball (all 3), flag football (Parker), me subbing long-term (for the rest of the year!), and fitting in fun when we could.

Sydney:

Sydney started playing basketball!! She was cleared to play from surgery as of February 15, and she had her first practice that week.

Then... March 4, she was running at school and felt her left knee dislocate (her other knee).  UGGHH.  They nurse called me and it was devastating.  She had been able to freely play for 3 weeks at this point, after a 6 month hiatus. 

You can tell that the kneecap isn't where it's supposed to be (the curve should match up better with the curve in her bigger bone)

The next day... Amy to the rescue!  Doughnuts always make things better.

Luckily, she's really moving around on it well.  We got her new braces (since she's grown since first injuring her knee almost 2 years ago), and she's doing PT once a week.  The doc said, unfortunately, if she dislocates it again, she most likely will have to have surgery on this knee.... but we'll just have to cross that bridge when/if we get there.

Finley's birthday party

The weekly news show

Youth group

Parker:

Playing at Eli's house

St. Patrick's Day at school

Walking to David and James' house

Jackson's birthday party

Parker started playing flag football this season and he LOVES it! His buddy, Abe, from basketball is on his team, and Stephen is coaching along with Abe's dad. 

Coach Damien came to cheer them on!

Taylor:

Taylor went to lunch with her Grandmom, uncle, aunt, and cousins!

Lots of basketball in the 'hood

Gibbs Gardens with Mom:

Other stuff!

Year 16!!

My dad's grave is finalized.  It's beautiful.  We went to visit him- very bittersweet. Actually, it's gut-wrenching, to be honest.  

Hanging at Grandmom's!

We have been doing a BUNCH of home projects the past few months.  A lot of our free weekend time is filled with creating/painting/building/etc.  You can check them out here!