Fort Lauderdale, FL

Last week I went to Fort Lauderdale, FL, with our Iowa High Performance teams.  They competed at the USA Volleyball High Performance Championships.  To make the teams, the girls had to tryout for a spot at our camp in June, and then at camp we selected the players for the teams--it's a competitive process, and we had great talent on our teams!  This year we brought 4 teams to play in the tournament.  Part of my job is to do the administrative work for our HP program--manage the budget, book hotels and flights, collect payments, etc.  I went along as a chaperon, and spend most of my time in the gym watching volleyball, and doing laundry.  

Scott took care of Laurel on the weekends, but the week I was gone corresponded with RAGBRAI spending the night in Oskaloosa.  RAGBRAI is an annual bike ride across the entire state of Iowa, with approximately 23,000 bikers taking part.  When they overnight in your town, you have 23,000 bikers camping in tents and RV's, sleeping in people's houses, drinking, and partying...pretty crazy in our little town of 11,000!  Scott was in charge of inspecting all the food stands in Oskaloosa and along the route the next day, so we knew he would be working late and would find it very difficult to get Laurel from a baby sitter at a decent time!  So, Laurel spent the week days at my mom's house!  She had fun with Grandma and Grandpa, and even slept well for them...although they were not able to broaden her food horizons at all.

Anyway, back to Florida.  With 4 teams playing different schedules, it can be difficult to find any time to do anything besides sit in the gym!  The coaches did an awesome job taking care of their teams during the days and for meals, so we had a couple opportunities for the Iowa Region staff members to go out to supper at a restaurant by the beach!  I did not get to spend hours soaking up rays or swimming in the ocean, but I did get to walk in the ocean a couple times!

a self-portrait of me standing in the ocean at night.

see, my foot is in the water!

 The teams had a couple days of practice in Des Moines before we left, and then competed at the tournament.  Not much time to practice as a team!

Iowa HP!

Getting ready for Opening Ceremonies

 Usually at HP events I also have the task of taking lots of action pictures and posting them to facebook.  This year, Scott was hesitant to allow me to take our nice camera on the plane all the way to Florida...which made it very difficult to do my job.  Have you ever tried to take volleyball action shots with a crappy point and shoot camera?  It just doesn't work.  Not to mention that Scott had fiddled with the settings on the camera, so it took me 20 pictures to figure out what he changed and take a picture that was even focused!  Fortunately, my boss had brought her nice camera along, and took over the picture taking and posting duties.  She did let me use it, so I was able to take some pictures...however, I don't have any of those pics saved on my computer, so I get to post a couple of the better ones that I took.

The coaches asked this team to sit at a court and watch the team that they would be playing next.  There were boys teams playing on the court behind them.  Guess which team they were watching!?

The last night in Ft. Lauderdale I was up until about 1am collecting uniforms, preparing plane tickets, doing room checks, etc.  I then got up to leave at 3:45am!  I only slept in the plane for about an hour, and finally got home at 3:30pm.  I was so tired, I fell asleep and took a 2 hour nap on the sofa, and then went to bad at 9pm.  I still have not caught up on sleep.  

You may remember that at the beginning of the month we did a "house blitz" to get ready to put our house on the market.  We did meet with the realtor right away, and decided to start looking at new houses prior to putting ours on the market, as we think it will sell fairly quickly, and we don't want to be homeless!  We went looking at houses twice prior to my trip to Florida--we liked one a lot, but decided against it as it is a manufactured home on piers, and the resale value would be pretty much nothing.  The day before I left we looked at a house that had come on the market that morning, and really liked it!  We were not ready to put in an offer without talking and praying about it, and then I left and Scott spent the whole week working long hours.  Surely it would not sell in only one week!  We looked at it online last night, and of course it is on the "Active CTS" list, which means they have accepted an offer, and are continuing to show it while they wait for financing, inspection, etc. to go through.  The lesson is that in a small town, when you find a house that you want, you cannot wait because the market is very limited.  Not a problem for me, but more difficult for Scott, who does not like to make quick decisions.  So the house hunt continues!