Academic Excellence

Congrats to Ellen! She has worked hard...and has achieved "academic excellence". Due to all of her hard work, we, her family, get to go eat dinner tonight and watch the awards presentation. Im sure it will be long and drawn out and probably somewhat boring, but so very worth it when they call Ellen's name to come get her certificate. Good job sis...keep up the good work!

Help!

I twisted my ankle pretty badly on Wednesday night...well, I blame Carl! We were at wrestling practice and I wrapped my leg around Carl's, like he was showing the girls to do, and he proceeded to throw me, like he was showing the girls to do, only somehow my leg got in the way and twisted around in a weird way. After lying on the mat for about 10 minutes trying not to cry, I hobbled out to the van and went home. I could tell immediately that it was bad when I couldn't even push down the gas peddle on the way home without excruciating pains shooting up my calf. Waaaa!! I made my way down to my bedroom (in the basement) and elevated & iced my poor throbbing ankle.
It felt pretty good the next morning so I eased out of bed attempting to put a little bit of weight on it....NO WAY! The pain was immense so I hopped the rest of the way into my bathroom. It was then that I realized there was no way I could make it upstairs. I was stuck in bed for the day. Normally this wouldn't seem to be such a bad thing ... but the dogs needed to go out and I was hungry... this wasn't good. About 30 minutes later Meg's nurse called saying she was sick and needed to come home...well I cant get to the car, let alone drive! so I told the nurse that I was stranded in the basement and she arranged to have someone bring her home. This was great news...at least I wouldn't be stuck home alone! Megan was truly sick and proved to be no help to me at all so I called and requested that Ellen walk home from school to nurse us. Ellen cooked for me and took care of the dogs....it was wonderful.
Today my ankle seems to be a little better....I put just a little bit of weight on it this morning so I packed up my stuff and had Carl help me upstairs. I didn't want to be stuck home alone in the basement again today! At least I can crawl to the kitchen and let the dogs out or get something to eat if I need to. The only bad thing about being up here is the fact that the kids didn't clean up after themselves at all yesterday and the house is in shambles. I am planning to sit here all day and make a list of chores that need to be done when they get home from school....I have nothing better to do. :)

Missouri Rookie State Wrestling Tournament

The 2009 Rookie State tournament was held in St. Joseph MO this year and I was pretty excited for Madison to be wrestling in it. It is a tournament held for 6 & unders and first year wrestlers from all over the state of MO. It was at our last girls tournament in Emporia KS that Ellen mentioned that she would be interested in practicing and possibly wrestling in the next girls tournament at the end of February. A few weeks ago she said that she wanted to be entered into the Rookie tournament too even though she would be wrestling boys. I still cant believe it....Ellen is so weird about wrestling in front of boys, let alone against boys....but we applied for her USA wrestling card and entered her into the tournament.
So this past weekend me, Carl & one of his wrestlers, Jenny Germany (who just took 2nd at Nationals) took the girls to St. Joseph for the big event. It was crazy there....there were 15 mats and more kids than I had ever seen at a meet before. Ellen was first to wrestle between her and Madi and she was up against a pretty tall kid that was nothing but muscles. She got pinned pretty early in that match and afterward told me that she was so nervous that she was on the verge of crying throughout the entire match and felt like she could throw up at any time. At least now that she had wrestled her first match, she had that out of her system! Madi had her first match and did pretty well but ended up getting pinned in the second round. Ellen wrestled one more time and fought pretty hard...it was much better than the last one, but she still ended up getting pinned just as the first round was ending. Madi lasted longer in her second round as well but also got pinned. Madi's best friend Levi however took 1st place in his weight group and left as State Champion for 10 & under 120lb group! Yay Levi! All in all, it was a VERY long and stressful day for me and the girls...but a lot of fun. Now we cant wait for Feb. 28...MO Girls Tournament in KC!!!

2009 Girls Wrestling Camp

Girls wrestling camp will be from June 28 to July 2 2009 this year at Missouri Valley College in Marshall MO. Madi and Ellen will be participating this year and I'm really excited about it. I need to start planning activities early this year. We plan to have some great energy at camp this year. Hopefully camp this year will exceed camps past and may just involve another famous flour fight! Those are always fun...especially right after swimming! Nothing mixes better with flour than water...to make for a big pasty competition!
For more information on Missouri Valley College Girls Wrestling Camp contact Carl Murphree at murphreec@moval.edu .

Busy Times

A lot has been going on lately. Madi is in a wrestling tournament every weekend, which involves getting up @ 430 a.m. to travel...sitting on hard bleachers all day...then travelling home. Its exhausting and generally takes a day or 2 to recoup afterwards. She has practice 2-4 times per week in the evenings and of course the holidays + Ellen's birthday came and went in between.

Whew....

Sometimes I feel like I barely have time to breathe, let alone keep up with a blog! Maybe its a good thing that I dont have many people following my blog!

The girls got a Wii for Christmas, along with the Guitar Hero World Tour bundle with the drums & microphone. They also got a Wii Fit (which I have taken control of) and some other games. We spend so much time playing Wii! The entire family (minus Meg most of the time) is in the livng room together playing tennis & golf...bowling, skiiing, doing yoga....it is SO much fun...and great to spend time together as a family. This was a great investment!

Madi had a tournament in Jefferson City yesterday and kicked butt! I told her on the way there that I knew at some point the fighter in her would come out and then she would realize that she can beat these boys and yesterday was that day. She had the first kid an inch away from being pinned for over 30 seconds until time ran out. It ended up in a tie and the kid won the tie breaker but Madison fought til the end....I was so proud of her! We are looking forward to a couple of all girl tournaments coming up...Ill keep everyone posted!

Weekend Activities

Here are a few pics of Madi's 1st wrestling match!

Here she is warming up...

she was so nervous that she walked out onto the mat biting her fingernails.

They shook hands and off they went...


Madi wasnt being very aggressive, she spent more time trying to defend herself


This kid had no mercy...we found out later that he was a state champ last year.

And theres the pin....it didnt last long...but everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.

I was a nervous wreck the entire time!

This kid came up to her after the match and said she did a good job and patted her on the back.

I thought it was sweet....he knew how nervous she was.

The Rockettes!!!

We spent all day Saturday in St. Louis. It was such a great day! Em & Chris have an awesome apartment on the top floor of this huge building. It was really cool. We all exchanged gifts and then went down to the fabulous Fox Theatre, where Em works, to see the show. We went into the private entrance and the place was breathtaking. I cant put into words how beautiful this theatre is. All of the details were overwhelming and we hadnt even seen inside the theatre yet...this was just the hallway! The lobby area was amazing...the enormous ceiling and great detail in all the painting and woodwork. There is no way I could justify it with words.

We had private club level seats, which were big comfortable chairs around a little table. Our waiter kept our drinks full through the entire show and the kids had french fries, candied nuts and rock candy suckers during the performance.....and the performance...WOW! It was so fun....the Rockettes are amazing. The wooden soldier part was my favorite. It is unbelievable how they do some of the stuff that they do. When they all fell down on each other, like dominoes, we couldnt beleive it...it was wonderful! One of the best parts of the show was the live Nativity scene. They had Mary on a real donkey....the set was spectacular! The wise men's clothes were beautiful and the camel's were so sweet! Madi swears she saw one guy whispering harshly to his camel and was all worried about it.

Anyway...all in all, we had a very amazing, fun-filled, exhausting weekend that words cant even completely describe.

Rockettes....Here We Come!

Thats right!

We're going to see the the Radio City Christmas Spectacular featuring the world famous Rockettes!!!

Emilee works at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis and has acquired several tickets to this wonderful show and invited Carl, me, the girls & my mom to go see the show on Sunday. Em even said that we wont be sitting in general admission seats...we will be sitting in the Fox Club Seating, with a private entrance & waitresses come around throughout the show to bring dinner & drinks. I cant express to Emilee how very grateful we are...this is a once in a lifetime opportunity & I can hardly wait!