vikings of tomorrow * winter park

earlier this year,

drew's football coach wrote an essay,

entered their team in the vikings of tomorrow contest

and earned them a very fun opportunity!

they were given the chance to tour winter park

play a little football on the vikings practice field

AND

100 tickets to the packers vs vikings game!

today was their day to go to winter park.

unfortunately, ben had his tournament

so he didn't get to go,

but alex was invited to join them

and they had a lot of fun!

they got to tour the locker room

and see adrian peterson's locker

another locker they found interesting

was korey stringers -

he died during training camp in 2001

and they've kept his locker as a memorial to him

drew's favorite thing

was that greg jennings had Bibles in his locker

they toured the weight room

and then played a little football

 they got to take a team picture 

and have a chat with a vikings player 

the vikings gave them a swag bag with some goodies

i may not be a vikings fan ...

but they did a great job of impressing us today

and we are grateful that our boys got the opportunity that they did!

coon rapids tourney

this weekend's tournament was in coon rapids

with drew down at winter park

with stacey and alex

i was cheering ben on

AND

i became fill in book keeper

i actually had fun doing it -

but it did limit my picture taking for the day ;)

we started out playing anoka

it was a close game

but we won 33-29

this put us playing again soon

so we stuck around and waited for the next game

one of the things the boys love to do to kill time

is to play 'tip' -

they stand in a circle and play a game similar to hot potato -

they have to catch it in the air and release it before they come back down

it probably wears them out more than anything ;)

our second game was against alexandria -

another A team ...

their kids were HUGE!

we fought hard

but our shots just didn't fall

and we lost 15-26

stacey and drew made it back for this game

so i was able to just be a spectator :)  YAY!

losing to alex put us playing ANOTHER game that same night -

3 games ... back to back ...

YUCK.

the entire time i had been watching the brackets.

i knew that we had tickets for the vikings/packers game the next day

and was hoping that ben's team would win/lose

at just the right times so that ben would be able to play basketball

AND go to the game

WELL ...

our game against irondale didn't go so well

we ended up losing 22-44

that put us playing on sunday at 2pm.

seriously.

the worst case scenario.

ALMOST.

the team that we were set to play had been a no-show for the entire tournament.

after getting home on saturday night

we found out that they were just going to give us the win on sunday

and that we didn't even need to show up!

of course ben always wants to play more basketball

so more games is usually a good thing

BUT

this time we were SO thankful

ben wouldn't miss basketball AND we all got to go to the game together!

way to go 6B!

payday!

drew got his first paychecks ...

WOOHOO!!

charge!

this weekend was ben's first tournament for the 2014-2015 season

they played mendota heights for their first game

it was an A team playing down

which made it quite an unfair challenge

and we lost 20-42

BUT

for the first first game of the season they played really well

ben got the first 2 points of the game

AND

of the season

so he was pretty pumped

we had a bit of a break before our next game -

ben grabbed lunch

AND

lost a tooth! :)

we ended the day against centennial

it was a very close game

but we lost again

22-26

we ended the tournament

beating andover in a crazy long game

with 6 minutes left in the FIRST half

BOTH teams were already in DOUBLE bonus!

stacey has taken on a new role as book keeper this year

and he kept VERY busy

trying to keep track of them all!

we won 40-10

and i know the boys had a lot of fun 

the highlight of ben's weekend ...

he took a charge in every single game!!

way to start out your season, ben!

dinner of champions

yep ...

mom of the year.