Welcome to Deutschland!

We welcomed last Wednesday before sunrise in order to get to the airport on time with the boys/girls basketball teams as well as the cheerleaders for the European Tournament of Champions in Germany. It was a long day of traveling, as we sat in the Rome airport waiting for President Bush to get out of Frankfurt's airport so we could land there. We did get to see Air Force One as we were landing in Frankfurt though!

So, we got to our motel, but soon found that we couldn't check in until 5:00 when the reception desk opened again (it was only 3:30!!), so we scoured the area on foot, in the snow and cold, for a place to eat lunch/dinner, but there was nothing since we were in an industrial area. So, the kids had delivery from some place while the coaches plus Phil and I loaded up into my rental car to drive to the coaches' meeting. Funny thing, no one really knew how to get to the base, so we got lost, as would happen quite a few times that night! We eventually found the place, but then proceeded to get lost on the way back to the hotel and have a flat tire on the Autobond (picture cars whizzing by poor Phil at 100 mph+). We hereafter referred to that day as Day -1, since we all wanted to erase it from our memories as soon as possible!

Days 1,2,3,and 4 were much more uneventful and hardly qualified to be a new title in the "Series of Unfortunate Events" books by Lemony Snicket! The boys played 2 games on Thursday, then qualified to play another game on Friday morning for the chance to play that night. They lost on Friday to the team from Rota, Spain, so they were done playing then. The girls b-ball team played 2 games on Friday (they had a bye the first round), then played for 3rd place on Saturday morning. They lost, so overall they took 4th place. The cheerleaders did not place (at least not 1,2, or 3), but I didn't watch their competition, so they may have come in 4th or 5th, I'm not sure.

Apparently, this was the first time that all the European teams have played in a championship tournament together, so it was a big undertaking, and the kids got to experience teams they had never played before, so that was good for them. They are a great group of kids, and we just had fun getting to know them a lot more!