Des Moines Tournament

This year Bryce is playing for the Norris Youth Basketball League on the A team. He loves it and would spend all of his time playing basketball if that were an option. This team requires quite a bit more time than any other team he has ever played on. They play through the YMCA and then on off weekends they play tournaments. He practices 2 nights a week and they have team building , watching film or extra practice a lot. They traveled to a couple small towns around us but the travel tournament that we had to stay at was in Des Moines. I was a little torn on how to handle this weekend because the boys were super excited about it but it was the weekend of Emmy's 4th birthday and I was feeling like we were short changing her by having to drag her to basketball all weekend. In the end we decided we would all go and just try to make it as fun for her as possible.

When you are the little one and sit in the middle you get to hold the giant tub of Chex mix.

This is a fun picture of how high Bryce can jump.

They had a fun weekend of games and played really well. They won one and lost a couple but it was close. 

Grady, Emmy's buddy brought her a cupcake for her birthday.

It was also Thomas's birthday from the team and his mom had brought a cookie cake and snacks. Emmy got to celebrate her birthday with the entire team.

Traveling with our family is always interesting and this trip was no exception! It appeared we were moving into the hotel not just staying for the night. When we got to our room we had a king bed and a pullout couch. This is not at all what we had booked. Not to mention that when we checked in they told us how booked up the hotel was. I stayed in the room with the girls while Robb went down to the desk to wait in line and try to figure out our room issue. While he did that the girls made themselves at home by using the bathroom and laying on the bed of the room that we planned on giving up. Sorry, not sorry about that! Robb finally got the room situation figured out and we drug all of our stuff to adjoining rooms on a different floor. The boys seemed to be under the impression that we had rented out the entire hotel and were running wild throughout the hotel with the rest of the team. I got Abby ready for the pool and followed her down and Robb was coming down in a couple minutes with Emmy. I was sitting in the pool area when Robb came walking in holding Emmy and a grocery bag of his drinks. He went to stop the door for someone and the giant bottle of whiskey that he had in the grocery sack fell though the bag and broke all over the concrete in the pool area. So this was embarrassing on so many levels! 1.We are the only "new" people on the team and it now appears that Robb is an alcoholic. 2. Why does anyone bring an entire bottle of whiskey to make 1 drink. 3. It clearly states no glass in the pool area and not only did we not follow that we now busted an entire bottle in the pool area. 4.We made the entire area smell like a bar. Awesome! So I was turning red and mortified while I crawled around the pool area looking for small pieces of glass that could hurt the dozen kids that were in the pool. 

The kids all schemed against us and although we have the most kids of anyone on the team we ended up with Grady sleeping with the boys and Abby invited Claire to stay who we hardly know.

When we got up on Sunday, Emmy got to open a few of her gifts. She seemed unimpressed with everything at first but I think she was just tired from her late night in the slumber party room.

The boys played a game that morning and it was pretty cute to see all the sisters hanging out. They set up shop with a  blanket, snacks and plenty of toys. The boys lost their game and we headed home for the evening. It was an interesting weekend. I feel like we are slowly getting to know the other parents and Bryce is feeling more comfortable on the team but I still feel like we are the newbies.