Volleyball Sister's Weekend

My sister Carrie was able to get great tickets to see NCAA Regional Volleyball Championships in Des Moines through her work for a great price (and great seats!), so my sisters and I decided we should have a sister's weekend!  Our husbands agreed to being in charge of the kids, and our parents used some of their points to get us a free hotel room, so we were set!  The Regional semis were on Friday night and the finals on Saturday, so we met at our hotel late Friday afternoon, ate some Papa John's pizza, then watched a couple volleyball matches.

Warmups for Illinois vs. Minnesota.  Our seats were in the second row!  Minnesota won this match,.

The second match was Penn State vs. Hawaii.  I expected Penn State to win this one, but the unranked Hawaii team came in ready to play and won the match in 3!  It was fun to watch and the Hawaii fans sitting next to us were infectious.

After the matches we went back to our hotel, ate more pizza (none of us can get Papa John's where we live, which is a real shame), and talked.  We were hoping to amazing sleep since none of us would have small children climbing into our bed or crying during the night, but our AC unit in our room sounded like a small vacuum, so it wasn't the miracle sleep I was hoping for...but I did stay in bed until after 8am, so that was great!

On Saturday morning we drove over to West End Salvage.  I had been there before, but Carrie and Lynn had only seen the show on tv and never been there.  It is fun to walk around and look at all the stuff, but honestly, none of us could afford anything there.  Well, we all got delicious lattes, so I suppose we could afford something!

Heading into West End Salvage

 Next we drove over to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, then headed over to the Valley West Mall area to hit up Kohl's, World Market, and Half Price Books.  That area was packed, so I was happy to be done shopping...I just don't like large crowds.

We decided to eat an early supper downtown at Fong's Pizza.  The place is decorated like a Chinese restaurant, has a tiki bar complete with cheesy ceramic cups, and serves all kinds of funky pizzas.  We split the Pad Thai Pizza, the Crab Rangoon Pizza, and  White Pizza, as well as a girly adult beverage in a lovely ceramic fish.  The Crab Rangoon pizza was the best! 

After supper we headed back to Wells Fargo Arena to watch Minnesota vs. Hawaii in the regional finals.  Hawaii started out a little slow, but then really started playing in the third set and made it a great match.  Minnesota won in 4.

It was a great weekend with my sister watching volleyball and just being together!