Family Circle Cup 2010

The Family Circle Cup has been a highlight in the spring for a few years. The tournament is a professional women's tennis event. I had attended the Cup when I was younger with my Dad and Aunt Tammy. So, as soon as I moved down here, I immediately found out how I could be a part of the excitement and volunteer.

I arrived at the tournament on Friday for the quaterfinals. Some of the matches were quite exciting, and some of them a little slow...personally I think men's tennis is much more exciting than women's:) I volunteered as an usher for the weekend. I was the youngest usher by about 20-30 years, so I had fun talking with all the older ushers. They all loved me, probably because I was so much younger than they. We had great conversations during the matches. Most of them were Christians, so we shared experiences and talked about what Christ had done over the years in their lives.

On Saturday, the semi-finals took place in the morning and afternoon with some pretty exciting matches. Then Saturday night was a special exhibition event. They brought in John McConroe, Jim Courier, Anna Kournicova, and Monica Seles to play for the night. The players all had a microphone, which made for some pretty interesting grunting noises from the players. Aunt Tammy had received some extra tickets for Saturday's match, so I invited my friend Chad from camp to come watch with us. We all had a great time and enjoyed some pretty interesting tennis.

The finals were on Sunday between Samantha Stosur and Vera Zvonerava. We were all excited for a great match, but it turned out to be a blow-out. The match was over in about 50 minutes. The final score was 6-0, 6-3. Overall, it was a great weekend! I think I managed to watch about 24 hours of tennis in 3 days, so I've gotten my fill for quite awhile.

Thanks for reading! Love you all!

Easter Vacation to GA.

This past weekend, Leah and I took a short week of work and headed down to St. Mary's, GA on Thursday night. The drive was supposed to take us 3.75 hours and we were supposed to get there before the campground closed at 10pm. We left camp with a spare 15 minutes and prayed that we would get there on time. We were within 15 min. of the camp when we ran into construction. We were completely stopped and started getting anxious about our arrival time. We called the campground and a nice woman named Kat had grace on us and gave us directions and the code to get in the gate after it had closed. We were so thankful! We were amazed at how much grace and kindness the woman had shown us. In the morning, we participated in a Bird walk and saw some cool southern birds, including an endagered species called a Wood Stork.

We then headed up to Jekyll Island where we rested on the beach for the afternoon. It was a fun little island. We went on a bike ride before dinner where we found an abandoned ampitheater that looked like Sea World without the pool. It looked like no one had been there in over 10 years, we felt like we were on a old movie. Leah has those pics and I will put them up later if I remember.

On Saturday, we headed to the Hostel in the Forest. The facility had 9 treehouses and about 5 lodges. There was a green, spring-fed pool, pond, lake, and a glass house. It was a bit of a shocker for me when I quickly realized the facility was run by a group of hippies. I had never met hippies in real-life before. I will admit, I was quick to judge and kinda freaked out when we first got there. I realized I was anxious because these people were so different than I was. After Leah calmed me down and spoke some truth into my life, I was able to relax a little and enjoy our stay. It was fun waking up in the middle of trees. In the morning, Leah and I paddled out on the lake with a canoe to have our own sunrise Easter service. It was a service that I will not soon forget.

After our adventure at the Hostel, we headed back to the Jekyll Island Beach, as if we hadn't gotten enough beach time already :) We headed back to Charleston and celebrated Easter with Aunt Tammy, Aunt Diane and Bethany who were in town for the week.

Overall, we had a great time enjoying each other, the sun and getting some much-needed R&R.