Happy Easter!!!

Happy Easter Everyone!!! 

What a wonderful day!!! A day thats filled with Celebration, Candy, and Christ! The Easter Bunny came to our house this morning....oh Sarah, I love your young innocence!!! The little girl was more excited then on her own birthday! After that, we went to Mass. Now at my church, not a ton of people come to mass on Sundays, but today, the church was PACKED! I mean like standing room only! But this mass was especially special for me, because my family got to present the host (bread and wine/body and blood) to the priest. It's something I have always wanted to do, and it was a neat experience. The rest of the day was pretty mellow. An early dinner was enjoyed and my family just hung out. This was the first easter we haven't done anything with anyone, and I enjoyed myself. I hope everyone had a super special easter, and God Bless!!!!

P.S. If you remember anything about my family's easter egg competition, those photos will be posted soon....and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, your in for a treat!

Rain Rain Go AWAY

Its raining, Its pouring, 

the old man is snoring

I would sing that song, however I fear that it is a drastic understatement. Its raining cats and dogs, coming down in sheets, and if I didn't know any better, I would say the angles were crying in heaven. Old men are not snoring, then are wailing, wailing for the rain to cease! The point is, it hasn't stopped raining ALL WEEK. 

This shirt pretty much sums it up.

Yah, I know its Oregon, but why must we have so much rain? It's like April showers on steroids...hopefully leading to may flowers! The rain here seems to put a dead, dreary damper on everyone and everything. School seems longer, nights are colder, and don't even get me started on the day I forgot to wear a jacket to track. Long story short, it was awful. So sorry to be a negative nancy, but I'm just in one of those moods. Those yucky, blucky, rainy moods.

Bread!

Today, I was absolutely bored out of my mind. There was nothing to do! My parents were glued to the couch watching the masters...congrats Charl Schwartzel...and my sisters were at birthday parties. So I decided to bake some bread. Yep, you heard right. I made BREAD from SCRATCH. I feel like a baking expert:)!!!  So now I am going to share my fabulous bread recipe with all of you! Enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 Tsp. yeast
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
2 Tsp. sugar
4 cups flour
1 Tsp. salt

First, combine your lukewarm water.....NOT HOT.....yeast, and sugar in a mixing cup. Let rise for about 15 minuets. This is what a website said to do, however mine did not rise or change one bit, but I was still able to make bread, so do not fear if it fails to rise!

(what the Yeast is supposed to look like!)

Next, in a separate bowl combine the flour and salt. After the liquid mixture is done rising, combine it with the dry mixture. If you stir these two together you should get dough!!

(My Dough!)

Now you kneed the dough until it's soft and round, like the picture above. Note, it should be one solid piece. Once your dough is in a round ball, place it in a pan for cooking. Leave it in this pan with a towel over it for two to three hours. I know this seems like FOREVER, but it will allow the dough to rise even more and it's well worth it!

Finally put your dough in the oven (300 degrees) for however long you think it takes...honestly the times will vary! Your bread should begin to brown slightly at the top. After that, Bon Appetite! 

My Bread!!!

 I even made a turtle! (he is kinda deformed!)

Oh, and the most important step of all...just have fun with it! If your preoccupied with it being perfect, it will fail! So just let yourself go with it, and be ok with deformities, like my turtle!!! ;)

Volleyball!

 As many of you know, I Love Volleyball!!! It's a game of complete control, and you set the tempo. I play for the OJVA Red team, and this weekend we had our final Power League Tournament. Every team in CEVA volleyball has a rank, or seed. At Power League tournaments, how you play and finish determines your rank and the division you will compete in at regionals. This week we were ranked 83, just one spot away from moving up and entire division. With this being the last qualifier before regionals, it was crucial that we preformed well.  When playing in one of these qualifying tournaments, you start the day off in pool play, where you play against three other teams. Then depending on how you finish, you get put into brackets. The top two in the highest bracket, (first and second in that division) move up to the next division. The bottom two move down a division. In our pool, we were ranked second, and easily beat our first opponent, the number four ranked Pirates. The other two teams were more difficult, and both matches went to third games. But we continued to win and finished first in our pool, securing us a place to play for first, second, third, or fourth. By that point in the day, we were tired...waking up at FOUR in the morning and playing volleyball is no fun...so our only way to stay energized were these little jello things called shot blocks. 

They literally give you this little adrenalin shot, and after downing about four of them each, we were bouncing off the walls! The first round of bracket play was intense. Whoever won was guaranteed to move up a division! In a nail biting third game, we were able to pull out the win! You could hear our screams for miles! Our team continued on to win the tournament(and the little goodie bags that went with it!). It was amazing and I loved every moment of it! No matter how we do at regionals, I need to thank every one of these girls who made the season so fantastic! 

You Girls are Amazing!