President's Festival Weekend

This last weekend was our big Presidents Festival weekend in the cities.  Volleyball teams from all across the state, Wisconsin and the Dakotas gather for a huge tournament.  It's a 2 day affair, so a lot of sitting on my butt!  A quick mom and Emma selfie, of course the bigs was too cool to be in the picture.

 

 Thursday night was crazy busy trying to get food made and packed and finish up the volleyball door decorations.  I made my granola bars, rice krispy bars and some smores popcorn that was a bust. 

We headed down Friday afternoon, ate on the way and got to our hotel around 7.  Traffic wasn't horrible, thankfully.  The girls swam and we enjoyed cocktails at the pool with the other parents.  Very relaxing!  Saturday morning we headed out at 6:45 as we had to be in Coon Rapids (45 minutes away) by 7:30.  The girls were in the morning pool which was so nice, as we were done by 1:30.  The girls played awesome and got 1st place in their pool!

After being in traffic for twice as long as it should have taken us, we were more than ready for a cocktail when we got back to the hotel!  We had a taco bar potluck which was so nice, and then after, a few of us moms took the girls to the Mall of America.  That place is CRAZY!  We didn't get there until 6:30, and it was absolutely nutso.  We shopped for a couple hours and then headed back.  The girls had to be in their rooms by 9:30, and the parents watched the Wild hockey game in the lobby.  We were all tired!

Sunday was another early day, they played right away at 8.  Lost their first match, but won the next two, which put them in first place again!  Last year they placed 1st in their bracket, but they were in the lower bracket, so they actually placed 33rd overall out of 80 teams.

This year they made it to the championship bracket and placed 3rd overall out of 80 teams.  It was incredible!  We nicknamed them the cardiac kids, because of all the stress they put on us!  That was STRESSFUL!

After their final match we took them out to Applebees for a nice supper, those poor girls (and us) ate sandwiches all weekend and it was so nice to eat real food!

Monday I took off which was wonderful!  I didn't get a whole lot accomplished, but that's ok too.

Emma was quite proud of her "snail" she made for Alayna's lunch today, ha!