Go KJ !! Go KJ !!

Last night was travel volleyball "re-evaluations" and KJ found out she was bumped up to the "Power" squad. She's very, very excited but sad she won't be on the same team as some of her girlfriends. The website was updated last night after she went to bed and we totally busted her chops this morning. Cosmo & I were talking loudly and I said, "No! Don't tell her now! Let's wait until the weekend." He said, "no, the kids at school will be talking about it and I'd rather she hear it from one of us." Poor thing came in, sat on the edge of our bed and asked what was going on. Just to stretch it out even longer, Cosmo gave her a big speech about "I know how hard you worked for this and how badly you wanted it, blah, blah, blah" and I threw in "Well honey, what do you think you did wrong? What areas can you improve on???" She thought about it for a minute and said she does need to work on her spike (she can't get all that junk in her trunk off the ground). Then we told her the good news and she was very relieved. She really wants to play volleyball at the mdidle school level next year and I think this will help alot. She should get a lot of instruction and a lot of experience with the travel team.
Interesting dinner in our house last night. Nothing specatcular, just our usual taco night. The four of us were having a very in-depth convo regarding the Penn State situation and T admitted to me as we were cleaning up the kitchen that it really hit her tonight . . . this time next year she won't be around for taco night. She said she got choked up at dinner and started to cry a little and said she's going to miss our dinner conversations. Of course, I'll never let her live this down and once she goes off to college, I will remind her on a regular basis how much she misses us.

Trifecta, Triple Threat, Hat Trick, Triple Crown

Whatever you want to call it is fine by me!

T got her 3rd acceptance letter in yesterday's mail. She applied to 3 schools, was accepted at all 3.

To Russia with Love

I love when Coach hears from former players. I hope he is the coach or the adult or the person that made a difference in someone's life somewhere along the road!

Dmitry Petrov was a foreign exchange student with the French family out of the Montgomery area. Montgomery didn't have a team so the 3 brothers drove to Hoover to play (Brye, Blake & Brayden). One practice, they dragged along Ditma. He couldn't speak a lick of English but was a good kid and practiced hard. There were definately some language barriers and in the beginning Coach usually just threw his hands in the air and let Ditma run around with the ball. Eventually things fell into place and he had a great season with the Hoover team and apparently took home a love of the game: http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=34711

So, is "the fastest game on two feet" now the "fastest game in Russia???"

Proud Mama Bear (and Poppa Bear, too!)

Addendum: Holy cow! Good thing senior year only comes around once in a lifetime. I have shelled out a small fortune for T this week: graduation announcements, deposit on the Spring Trip and senior yearbook ad. I really wish school administration would learn to spread this stuff out over the course of a couple of months. It's September. Do we really need to be ordering graduation announcements and caps & gowns already?? Seriously?? Yearkbook ad? Can't we do this in January or something???

So proud of both of my girls! Even though KJ's volleyball team hasn't won a single game yet this season, she hasn't given up. It's so easy to become angry at her teammates or become complacent because she knows no one is going to be able to return the volley, but she still has been giving 110% on the court. Every week we tell her she needs to be a leader, she's the only 6th grader on her team and she needs to show the less experienced girls how its done! She had school photos today and looked so pretty when she went off to school. I like her hair long and she had on new jeans and a pair of brown mary janes w/ a slight heel (I have no idea where these shoes came from; I had never seen them before but she said she found them in her closet. Huh! Amazing what you can find in there when you clean!). I can't believe how grown up she's getting! She's so funny and sassy and keeps us in stitches. She comes up with the funniest things sometimes!

Daughter #1 has made both of her parental units very, very happy. She got her most recent ACT scores back and we are all just over the moon! She killed it. She totally killed it. Unless a wild card pops-up after her Naples tournament this fall, she's got it narrowed down to 3 schools . . . two of the schools want her for lacrosse and each of the schools is different from the others in size, location and setting. One of the school is a super large university, one is a smaller school and one is mid-size. One is up North, two are in the South. It will be very interesting to see which direction she goes. She's got some tough choices ahead of her but whatever she decides, we are incredibly proud of her!

“You have four years to be irresponsible here. Relax. Work is for people with jobs. You'll never remember class time, but you'll remember time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So, stay out late. Go out on a Tuesday with your friends when you have a paper due Wednesday. Spend money you don't have. Drink 'til sunrise. The work never ends, but college does..." -- Tom Petty