So graduation was awesome, my fam came out and we had a blast, not unusual for our family. They helped me clean and pack (I wouldn't have been able to do it without them), Friday we went out to lunch to a graduation/birthday celebration. Tucanos was PACKED, but Stef was smart and made a reservation. Then I got to walk across the stage and get my diploma cover and feel all cool. It was way sweet. I got to sit with a bunch of my friends and we had a blast talking about the people giving speeches and how it was taking so long, my cynical psych friends do make things like that much more entertaining. After graduation I got to spend the weekend out at Marci's to celebrate Eden's birthday. I can't believe she's 4! My nieces and nephew are all getting so big! Dean is literally exploding he's so huge! I miss him a lot, but at least we have video chat :]
So once graduation ended I was all prepared for a nice relaxing couple of weeks where I could read books on my new graduation Nook (thanks Mom and Dad!) and just chill. But I really fail at that. I picked up a few shifts at work and then spent a ton of time just seeing people because I felt like I had so much time. It became much more busy than I was expecting. It was all good though, because Thursday (the 28th) we hopped on a plane to Minnesota for the Sweet 16! It was finally here, our chance to go on farther than we ever had. We got to Blaine and met our host families (our was SO the best, thanks Moses's!) and everyone was just giddy with anticipation. Fridays game came and we played UCLA, winning 31-10. It wasn't our best game, but we played pretty well. The wind did not help our game plan, you could watch passes sail 5 yards farther forward than you had placed them. It was crazy how bad the wind was, but we adjusted and made it work. Now we were to the point where we'd never won. We'd never made it past that fateful top 8, never punched our tickets to the final 4. I was so ready. We were to be matched up with Navy, a physical squad that we knew weren't going to go down easy. It rained all of Friday night and the field we played on had huge puddles and swampy patches, but luckily the rain stopped just long enough to let us play without it. The wind was still going, but not as bad as on Friday. The game started and we knew this was going to be a tough, defensive battle. Both teams were in it to win it and both teams wanted to prove something. The forwards dominated all game, stealing almost every scrum (there were A LOT) and neutralizing their strength of attack. The backs struggled getting phases put together because of the wet conditions and wind, but about 25 minutes in, Kristi did what she does best. She sliced through practically half their team and touched down dead center to put us up 7-0. From there it turned into a battle of possession and defense. The score didn't show how much we dominated in possession and field position, but we struggled finishing. The last 10 minutes were the hardest as we were down a player (thanks Ela), but we held out. We knew time was out and as they tried to swing it wide we had two girls who made a very picturesque tackle into a puddle to send water splashing and Navy home. The game was over. We'd finally done it. We're going to the final 4. We knew the teams we were going to face were going to be hard, we knew the next two games would be the hardest we would ever see, but we knew it wa
s where we belonged. This is our year to show the world what WCR means. This is our year where the only things in our way are the teams we have to face. We leave Wednesday night for California. It's time.
