State Champs!

4A State Basketball Champions!

So I know this post is a little late, but I did give fair warning when I started this blog that I couldn't promise I'd be good keeping it up to date, so I don't even feel bad.

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to help coach an amazing basketball team at Timpanogos the past couple of months. I was the head JV coach and the assistant coach for the varsity. The two teams practiced together every day so I got to know all the girls really well. From the very beginning I knew this was a special group of kids. I felt like from the beginning of the season we had just the right mixture of young, up and coming talent and solid senior leadership. The girls also got along really well (quite a feat for any group of high school girls that spend 12-15 hours together every week) and I loved being around them.

We played well all season, only losing a few games here and there, but I never really felt like we totally lived up to our full potential. We almost never had any blow-out games, even when we were playing teams that we should have dominated which is always frustrating to see as a coach. All season long, we'd show flashes of brilliance, but those flashes never lasted long enough to put teams away. We ended our season placing 2nd in regionals, which allowed us to advance to the state tournament.

We entered the tournament un-ranked, and as far as I know, our girls were the only people in the state that were predicting that we'd have a shot at getting to the title game. Our first game was against Woods Cross. That game was a nail-biter all the way to the bitter end. Both teams struggled scoring, mostly due to the crazy pressure defenses both teams played all game. Here's a link to an article about that game if you're interested.

The next game was against Bonneville, who came in to the tournament ranked number 2 in the state. Once again both teams struggled scoring, but my girls never gave up and pulled ahead in the end to win 31-25. Here's that article. The funny thing about that win was that I had no clue that our game was considered an upset until I saw the newspaper articles that had been written about our game. In my eyes, my team was the favorite coming in to every game.

Our semi-final game was against Skyline, a team that we had beat in the pre-season, when they were without their main scorer. This game was very different from the others, we finally started knocking down our shots and took much better care of the ball. We also were very balanced offensively and had three players score in double figures. We ended up winning 55-49. Here's yet another article.

Finally on Feb 25th we had made it to the state championship game. The girls seemed confident and took it all in stride, but I was an emotional wreck! The final was made even better by the fact that we were playing against a team from our own region, who we had both beaten and lost to in regular season. The game was back and forth until right before half, we were up by 4 with about 15 seconds left. Our senior point guard brought the ball down the court, crossed it over, stepped back and drained a 3 pointer at the buzzer from a good 2 feet behind the arc. Not to mention she was being double teamed at the time... Taking a 7 point lead at half was huge for our confidence coming out in the second half. Both teams struggled with foul trouble on some of the best players, but our team was able to adjust and 2 of my JV girls stepped it up big time in the final to help compensate for some of our starters having to sit. One of the biggest plays of the game was made when our sophomore small forward stepped up and took a hard charge from the opposing team's best player and leading scorer, fouling her out of the game. Once she was out, the other team struggled finding their offense and we were able to pull away. We ended up winning 62-47, which was one of the biggest differentials we had all year. Here's the article about the final

A couple of my JV girls after the final

Our parents did a great job decorating our team bus, and then making the necessary adjustments after we won :)

Overall it was a great year and an amazing end to an amazing season. I also can't believe how lucky I am. As a player, I never came close to a state championship, but in my first year as a coach my team wins. The best part about all of this is that we are still a really young team and will have a lot of our best players returning next year. I'll keep you all posted next year as we attempt a Back-2-Back state championship run!

Thank U!

I mentioned in an earlier post at how well Taylor did on both his GMAT and GRE scores. Well ever since he sent those score to the University of Utah, they've been desperate to have him come to their school. As a result, Taylor was invited as one of 8 people to come to the U last weekend as part of their recruitment weekend. Luckily, he was allowed to bring one guest and he decided to bring me along. :) The whole weekend was wonderful.

We started off on Thursday night by going to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory in Murray. We had a gift card to the restaurant from Christmas time as a result of winning the highly controversial Remington family gingerbread house contest and the Cheesecake Factory in Murray is the closest one. We had a delicious dinner and then drove the rest of the way to Salt Lake. The U put us up in a Marriott right on campus and paid for everything while we were there. I had to teach on Friday so I headed back down to Orem while Taylor went to meetings all day where they presented their programs and gave them a taste of what life was like as a student at the U. I made it back up to Salt Lake that night just in time to join him at a nice dinner

at a mexican restaurant (also fully covered by the U).

Saturday morning we woke up early, ate our free Marriott breakfast buffet (it normally costs 13$ a person!) and headed up to the Canyons resort in Park City. The U paid for us to rent skis, get a lift ticket and even paid for our lunch at the resort! The day was beautiful, maybe one of the best days of skiing I've ever had. The resort had had new snow that week so there was nice powder, it was sunny and clear and it wasn't overly crowded (It helps that the Canyons resort is HUGE!) We skied all day and then headed back to our hotel to get cleaned up.

The beautiful view from the top of the mountain

This is Taylor in his natural state on the mountain :)

We went out to dinner that night with my best friend Janelle, who I don't get to see as often since she moved to Salt Lake. We stayed our last night in the hotel and then came home Sunday morning in time for church. It was a great weekend and a fun little retreat for us. I guess these are just some of the perks I get for marrying a brilliant man like Taylor!

Dream Jobs

Every kid gets asked from the time they can talk what they want to be when they grow up. Usually, their answer to this question doesn't become real until somewhere around their sophomore or junior year in college. I however, was lucky enough to figure out what I wanted to do with my life much earlier. All of my life, I can only remember having two answers to this question when adults would ask me. Before 4th grade I remember telling people that I wanted to work at McDonalds. This desire stemmed from two things: number one, as a kid, I just wasn't all that aware of what jobs were out there and the only people I saw at work were the ones who gave me my McNuggets when we would go to McDonalds. Number two, those people at McDonald's were responsible for bringing me and millions of other kids their Happy Meals, who could ever want a more noble job than making millions of children happy? I'm sure this dream scared my Mom out of her mind, but she never downplayed my dream, only smiled and nodded when she heard my response. Then in 4th grade, my answer changed. That year I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. I don't really remember why this desire hit me so hard, maybe it had to do with the hours of "School" that my siblings and I would play at home, but I remember thinking that there was no other job I'd rather do. Fast forward to 9th grade, when I was in my first Biology class at Skyview Junior High. I had the crazyiest, quirkiest, smartest biology teacher I have ever met: Mr. McCarty. The guy was insane. He wore 5 different shirts (one for every day of the week), wore the same grey zip-up sweatshirt every day, and smiled like a goof ball for the whole class period every day. I loved him. His class was fascinating to me. I remember how much I loved going to that class, how I loved the millions of dissections we got to do (I now wonder how he had enough money to allow us to do 10+ dissections in one year), and most of all, I loved listening to his lectures where he would almost explode with excitement as he explained the basics of biology. From that year on, my decision was made. I was going to be a biology teacher, and I was going to be just like Mr. McCarty.

Right around this time I was also realizing how important sports were becoming in my life. I was playing basketball, volleyball and softball and loving every minute. I was always a little different from the rest of my peers though, I loved not only playing sports, but also learning about strategy. I watched my coaches very closely throughout the years and kept track of what separated the ones I would have done anything for from the ones who I felt were unfair and demeaning. By the end of high school I had a complete picture of what my dream job would look like some day. I would teach High School Biology and coach at the same high school I taught at.

Fast forward another 9 years and I am currently employed as a high school biology teacher and I am the JV girls basketball coach at the same school. I also have the opportunity to be the assistant coach for the BYU women's rugby team. Not too many people can say that they have their dream job, the one that they have said they wanted since they were a kid. I count myself lucky to have been able to have the opportunities given to me to be able to work towards my dream. Even better yet, I have my dream job and it is still my dream! I love getting to work with "my kids" and teaching them not only about biology but how to be good people and how to better their lives. I love getting up and going to work and making a fool of myself in front of my students in an attempt to get them to care about mitosis or ecology or genetics. At this point in my life, there's nothing else I'd rather do than what I'm doing right now. I'm living the dream! ;)

2 Great Years

On December 19th, Taylor and I celebrated our 2 year anniversary. It's been an amazing 2 years, with not too many dull moments. :) Back when Taylor and I were dating I remember thinking, I know that if I marry Taylor at least I'll never be bored. Two years later, that realization has come back to me again and again, mostly in good ways. :) In order to celebrate our anniversary, we went up to Heber City up Provo Canyon. Our first stop was Soldier Hollow where we went inner-tubi
ng. As you can see from the pictures, there wasn't much snow in the area, in fact, the only snow around was collected into the runs that we took on our tubes. It was a lot of fun to get to ride the runs and even better that they had a motorized tow rope to pull us back up to the top.

After tubing we checked into our hotel, got ready and went out to dinner. We had planned to go to a place that I had found online with really good reviews, but turns out that place didn't exist anymore. Instead, we ended up at a chinese place and the food was delicious. Taylor got

one of the funniest fortunes I've ever seen, it said "To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target." Classic. Overall, we had a great Anniversary and it was great to get to spend some time away with Taylor. I'm still so amazed that I was the one lucky enough to end up with him and I look forward to the rest of eternity together. No matter what happens in the future, at least I know one thing... I'll never be bored!

A Kurt Bestor Christmas

Funny Story: So Rachel won these Kurt Bestor Christmas Concert tickets on the radio, which is amazing because 1. who actually calls in for those things and 2. Who actually wins those things? But somehow she pulled it off and got these tickets. Unfortunately for her, a couple of days before the concert, she realized that she and Brad wouldn't be able to make it... So Taylor and I did them a favor and took the tickets off their hands. :) We had no idea who Kurt Bestor was and had no idea what to expect from the concert, but hey, we figured it was a free date! We drove down to Salt Lake and as you can see, we had great seats! Walking in to the concert we knew we were in for a treat because we were at least 20 years younger than the average person there! It ended up being a nice concert and it was a fun way to get into the holiday spirit. Thanks Brad and Rach!

After the concert we took the chance to walk around and see the lights on temple square. This picture doesn't even begin to convey how pretty it was, OR how cold it was. We didn't stay too long, but it was fun to walk around and see the lights. We made it back that night just in time to attend our ward Christmas party for a free dinner. It was a pretty impressive date for a pretty impressive price: FREE!

Cute AND Smart!

This year has been a busy one for Taylor. He's finishing up his last year of undergrad, working part time, studying for all the tests he needs to take for grad school and still finding time to be a great husband. He took the GRE in September and did awesome on it. So good in fact, the mechanical engineering department at BYU has pretty much guaranteed his acceptance. For most people, that would be good enough, but not Taylor. He's decided that he not only wants to get a masters in ME, but he might as well get a masters in business at the same time! A couple of schools (Including BYU and U of U) offer a dual masters program that only takes 3 years and having the dual degree significantly increases your chances of getting a job after you graduate. So, that meant that Taylor had to study his brains out once more to get ready to take the GMAT for applying to the business school. After a month of studying like crazy, he finally took the GMAT this week. No surprise here, but he killed it! He beat the average for both the U of U and BYU programs by 40 points! We went to a dinner the other day for prospective U of U grad students and it was fun to watch the program directors drool over him when he told them what he got on the GMAT and GRE. :) Now the next step is applying to schools and waiting to see who is smart enough to accept my brilliant husband!

Christmas is in the air

Christmas is my favorite time of year. Even though I hate the cold, I really love snow and I just think the world looks nicer with Christmas lights decorating everything. We've
been really busy since Thanksgiving so we finally had the chance to decorate our tree and put up some of our other Christmas decorations yesterday. Here's our cute little tree, it makes our living room feel so Christmasy!

Rachel and Brad also came over for their weekly Sunday dinner. I made tortilla soup and then we decorated gingerbread houses. Rach had the brilliant idea of buying halloween gingerbread houses when they were on clearance after halloween. So even though the gingerbread was staler than cardboard, we had fun decorating the houses.

Notice the coconut wreath and christmas tree. Taylor actually cut a star out of a gumdrop!

Next week: Christmas baking!