I don't even remember where I left off. I know I posted from Guam, but there were a few blogworthy things that happened before Guam...
* Last Wednesday, my mom flew in. She's so awesome.
* Thursday through Saturday was the Dan Landry Volleyball tournament. It was great to have mom there to keep one eye on our games and the other on Mackenzie. She also donated a bunch of U.S. candy for us to sell as a fundraiser for our Guam trip.
* We won the tournament! No one can really remember, but we think this was the first or second time ever that Faith has won the 11-year-old tournament. I know my senior year we went to 5 sets, but then lost it. Shucks. Anyway, the girls played awesome and it was a great way to start off our Guam trip.

* At 10:55 on the 7th, we flew out on Philippine Airline for the 3 hr. 40 min. jaunt over to Guam. We were all so exhausted from the DL tournament, packing, and getting ready for the FE tournament, so we all crashed hard on the plane and then in the lobby of the hotel.
* The week was awesome. On Monday, we finished 1st in our pool of 4 teams, putting us in the gold bracket. After playing the 4 other gold teams on Tuesday and Wednesday, we were seeded 4th overall.

Thursday was an intense day because if we lost at all, we would go to the losers bracket and would have to play 4 or 5 matches for a 5th place finish. Thankfully, the girls came out rockin' and took both matches.

On Friday, we knocked off the #1 seed team, Seoul American (who had a 5'7" girl with a 36" vertical!!! She was amazing.) That was so exciting for us! Meanwhile, #7 Christian Academy in Japan upset the #2 and #3 teams in the quarter- and semi-finals. Saturday was the championship.

It was pretty fun preparing for, as Faith Academy has never made it to the finals of the Class AA Far East Tournament. Unfortunately, that's where the history-making ends. We won the first set, 25-20, but lost the next three 23-25, 22-25, 23-25. What a bummer. We played alright, but CAJ was en fuego. They played great. Sooooo, we took 2nd out of 20 teams. I need to keep reminding myself of that. I went into the tournament hoping for top 5, so finishing 2nd is terrific.

* I mentioned some highlights in the last post, but I'll touch on some other fun moments in the week. (Yes, they are mostly food. Get off my back.)
- Taco Bell
- Baskin Robbins
- Being called the "hot coach" by another team. =)
- Kmart
- Cold Stone
- Korean concentration games
- Sleeping in air-conditioned hotel rooms and playing in air-conditioned gyms.
- Mint Hershey's kisses
- Pumpkin Spice Latte's
- Veteran's Day BBQ at the beach

- Downtime at the beach reading The Host
- Shopping at the Guam Premium Outlets. Yes, Guam has an outlet mall. It's crazy that this little island in the middle of the Pacific ocean has all the US luxuries that we miss.
- Running into my 1st grade teacher! She and her family live on Guam and took great care of us.
- I wrote custom Mad Libs for our elimination games. They were pretty funny and helped relax the girls before games.
That's all that I can recall while hearing three different translations of "MOMMY" directed my way.
I just dropped my mom off at the airport this morning at 4am. She'll be en route for the next 26 hours or so. yuck. But I'm so thankful that she got to be here. Mackenzie keeps telling me little tidbits about her time alone with Grandma. They had a great time together. I just wish I had some more time with her! We managed to cram our favorite things into our couple of days together, so lots of shopping was had and lots of great memories were made.
Thanks for coming MOM!!! You're the best!



















