Knoxville

Taylor's basketball team traveled to Knoxville, TN the first weekend in May to participate in a pre-national basketball event.  It was really cool, because there were teams from all over the US.  We personally played teams from Tennessee, Indiana, and West Virginia, but even more states were represented in the tourney.  Our coach wanted to see how well we did against teams we've never seen before.

It was an absolute blast!  We had to rush up there on Friday, having a 4:00 game to play.  We won a close game- I think by 2!  Taylor didn't have her best game as far as scoring points.  We played again the next morning and won by a more substantial number.  Taylor was in beast mode, knocking down a bunch of baskets.  Then, we entered bracket play that afternoon, where we played a tough (and very tall) team and lost.  This was the elimination round, so once you lose, you're done.  Taylor had a great game, scoring about half the points we scored!  Unfortunately, the other team's 5'10" 4th grader (no joke) scored 22 points (all by rebounding and throwing it back up) and we couldn't do much against her.  Taylor is the tallest on our team, coming in at around 5'1"-5'2". Luckily, we were able to shake it off and have fun hanging out together that night!

Here are some pics of the weekend!

Friday:

Walking to the stadium before their Friday game

Friday evening shenanigans

rooftop pool!

Hanging out in the square

This guy taught these girls some moves

Saturday: 

post game chat (after their first game)

no idea what's going on here!

Walking around downtown Knoxville between games

Siblings playing before the second game

This shows you how tall that one girl was!

We learned pretty quickly that we had to take long shots... if we dribbled in, that tall girl would block it.  Here's Taylor shooting a 3 from about 4 feet behind the 3-point line!

Post-game swimming

Sunday:

We drove through the UT campus on our way out.

Mother's Day

 Well, I'm a bit behind on my blogs, but I'm motivated to catch up in the near future.  The longer time goes by, the more I forget what happened!

Mother's Day was super sweet, and I wanted to document the precious things the kiddos made for me.  I have to treasure these, because time is going by waaaay too quickly lately!

I am definitely one blessed mom!!

April!

 April!  What a month.  I started a long-term subbing position in mid-March, so my weeks have been much busier than normal (and my weekends much more treasured!).  I'm not as organized, my house is not clean, and I'm not keeping up with things lately... but it's been kind of nice having a job outside of the house!

Anyways, here is what our April looked like!

Spring Break:

We didn't go anywhere, but did a few fun things!

Six Flags:

Stars & Strikes:

Church/youth group:

B-ball:

Taylor's coach made a bet that if they score 40 points, he'd dress up!

Nasty bruise

Abby's birthday party:

Virtual 5K:

Flag football:

Parker's teacher came to cheer him on!

Amy's 40th!

Going to watch friends' soccer games:

Random:

Trying out new hair gels ;)

Apparently Parker is, too

This is looking like a hair theme now

Parker!