Traveling Home - Sunday and Monday

We were going to stay at the hotel in Florida until Tuesday but we had had enough and it was still raining so we checked out Sunday morning with everyone else. We drove as far north and just past Chattanooga, we stayed over night. We had plans the next morning to meet some of our old play group friends in Knoxville and hang out and have lunch. Then I wanted to take the kids around Knoxville. Reed doesn't remember Knoxville but Millie did.

The Little Gym, both did gymnastics here for several years

Our favorite Mexican restaurant, someone told me it closed...I was so happy it was open

Our neighbors met us, Macy is so big!

Millie elementary school where she went to Kindergarten

Our house is for sale, Reed thought we should buy it

Beaver Ridge Preschool where they both went for several years

Yum

Play group with Miles and Audry since Millie and Miles were not yet even 1 year old!

Ceder Bluff Racquet Club where Millie first played tennis

Our amazing church, we loved All Saints and Reed was baptized here.

Celebration Time - Saturday

I love how excited the staff at the hotel was when we got back. They had been wishing us well all week and were bummed too every time our games kept getting canceled.

Finally time to enjoy themselves, no curfew and the rain slowed down to a light drizzle so swimming was on! I think the girls mostly just wanted to beat up on Rick. There was a limbo contest the girls enjoyed along with Coach Travis. I think they swam for about 6 hours that night.

Limbo Time

He loved the hot tub

Braket Play - Saturday

Saturday, not a cloud in the sky. Good thing because rain or shine, this was the last day to play no matter what. The girls were fired up and ready to show what they brought.

Score!

This poor girl tried to steal second on Millie.  Millie was having no part in it.  She's out!

Then it rained some (not even kidding) so the girls had a dance party and then we had our winning run by Brooklyn!

Safe for the WIN!

On to game 2 of the brackets. This was actually a team we have played before, they are from KY and we find them to be super annoying and rude. We very much didn't want to lose to this team.

Millie's safe!

Safe again

I think Rick's happier than the girls

And we didn't lose to them, that win put us into the championship game. We had to wait through one game and we would play the winner of that game. This is when it got interesting. It started raining. Who would have thought, it had been so pleasant all week (please note the sarcasm). Well, not only did it rain but it was another super hard downpour that was flooding the field. At some point during this with all the teams huddled under an awning for shelter, the directors decided to put an end to the waiting. The ended the tournament. So, since we were number 1 seed, we awarded us the title of champion and second place went to the team that was winning the game that got stopped. I can't say for sure who would have won the game between us and the 2nd place team. We would have played the Dragons who were the team we started playing in the second pool play game earlier in the week that got rained out 2 different days. We were very evenly matched teams and it honestly could have gone either way. The girls were of course very happy with the outcome and the parents were too but I would like to see us face that team sometime in the future and see how it would have played out.

You can't tell but that's a lot of rain behind them

Rain Rain Rain - Thursday/Friday

Things start running together Thursday and Friday. It was just rain and more rain with us checking the site every few hours to see if we would play. The tournament folks officially seeded everyone off of their first pool play game since many teams didn't get to play 2. Since that was the game we were up 13-0, that put us at #1 seed and we got a bye the first round. It worked well in our favor. They also had to change the format from a double elimination tourney to a single elimination tourney because there was only 1 day left to play, Saturday. They said they would not play games on Sunday no matter what because that was a travel day many teams needed and something about the City of Clearwater owned the parks and they were closed on Sundays.

It rained all day Thursday and Friday but not real hard so the girls were able to swim and enjoy themselves while I watched from under the patio roof, I hate being wet. It has not been a good week for me in terms of that.

Beating up on Rick was the favorite pastime of the girls

Thursday night, someone had a wonderful idea that the parents (some of whom had been drinking all day from boredom) should all go out without the kids and we should take the bus. Grandparents and older siblings watched all the kids at the hotel and the bus took us all out to eat. We had a lot of fun and we have never all been out like that without the kids. We should do it more often but we don't have time, we're always together but at the ball park. We all met in the hotel bar and when we realized there was a piano, we called Millie to come down and play for us. She was a hit!

On the bus