Nationals in Branson

Well we made it to Branson in one piece. Beautiful down here. You can certainly tell we are from the North because my mother in law, all 3 girls, and I saw a blue tailed little lizard by the pool and we’re super fascinated.

Heading around St. Louis

We got in Fri night. Saturday night we checked in our teams and found out our times and opponents to quiz. There are 77 teams in our division competing. 5 teams came from our state. We had placed second at our state finals so we become Indiana 2 here at nationals. They do a random drawing for what is called the matrix…if you’re not familiar with that term, it’s a bracket system using double elimination to dwindle down the competition until there are 2 left competing for the coveted first place.

Top half of the round in bracket

This morning, Sunday, we played our Indiana 1!! So it was Indiana 1 against Indiana 2. We lost. So that is our one loss. We will get another chance to play Tues morning. We will play either Alabama 1 or Texas 5. So we shall see.

Our condo…hop and a skip from the pool.

The Chateau on the Lake
This is where the competition is being held.  (Image found on the internet)

Beautiful place isn’t it?

I’ve been, as always, trying to learn a lesson or two along the way. One that I’ve learned is that those coaches and coordinators that went before me had alot more on their plates than I had realized. Now, being in their shoes, I see things in a different light. Being a coach of a team built out of your child along with other’s children is tough or touchy at times. You do not want to appear to be favorable to your own child. And you do not want to offend other’s children. And you certainly do not want to offend the parents.

I had to make a few tough decisions this year along the way that I know made me stronger. Because I’m one that wants to please everyone and the decisions I made would one way or another “bother” a child and/or a parent. All in all, it went ok. And I’ve been asked to coach again, lol, so I must’ve done some part of it right.

My other life lesson….well I’m still learning it. How many of you can testify how challenging it can be to travel with family? Seems like each year our family goes on vacation we have a few hairy days in the beginning. The drive… hairy. The unpacking…hairy. The constant togetherness…hairy. Everyone talking and speaking their wants at the same time…hairy!

Being the mom, I wanna fix and control the environment and boy do I try. I keep reminding myself that this happens every time and that it smoothes itself out after a couple days. Okay…any time now y’all! I look inside myself during these times wondering if I’m the cause. Is my attitude somehow controlling the whole attitude? I don’t know. But I will get up and try again. We humans can be so wired in what we want, how we feel, what we think that we end up bulldozing those we love the most.

Inside the Chateau

Abigail: “Mommy, what’s that thing called again?”                              Mommy: “a gazebo”        

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