7th Grade YAFL Trip to ABQ

Well this trip to Albuquerque (ABQ), New Mexico, turned into a series of unfortunate events. Mason played football for Bayfield Middle School and that ended the first of October. One of the assistant coaches then got the idea for us to keep practicing and go down to ABQ for the 7th grade state YAFL tournament, even though we did not play in the YAFL league this year. We played school league and YAFL is independent of school ball. So because everyone else was in on it, we had to be to! So the tournament was this past weekend and while it was fun to get away, here's where the disaster started......

1. We are all staying at a very nice Marriott hotel. We check in and instead of getting the double beds that we registered for, we were given a king size bed.......for 5 people. Many other families were done like this as well so there were no roll away beds either. We had a pretty miserable Friday night but slept well on Saturday because we were so tired from the lack of sleep on Friday...

2. Once down there on Friday, the coach wants to know if everyone brought their birth certificate which is needed for everyone to be able to play. While he told some of them to, others did not get the message. We didn't have Mason's but had someone coming to the house for the dogs anyway and they scanned it and emailed it to me. The coach was going to have to make the 3 1/2 hour drive back to Bayfield to round up the BC's that were not there so we could play. However, because he was willing to do this, the tournament director agreed to accept what we had and let the others slide. So now we can play.....

3. We play Rio Rancho, an ABQ team that creamed us last year in the 6th grade tourn and hung with them well this year. We end up getting beat by 5 points and were 2 yds from making a touchdown close to the end. Very disappointing.....

4. We go to check out, and our room has been charged $25 extra for Wi-Fi (Wireless Internet).......MASON!! He used it on his Ipod. Wi-fi is free everywhere we've stayed! Now we are at one of the nicest hotels ever and we get charged per day.....UGGGGG!! I will start a campaign against that hotel. I mean, if you don't have enough double bed rooms when people make the reservation, tell us only king is available so that we can find another place to stay comfortably. But no, their philosophy is let's get them here so they're stuck with the bill whether they stay or not....BAD BUSINESS!!

5. Sunday's game scheduled for 1 pm....the team forfeited. Now what? It was up in the air for a while, but one of our players had a cousin on the El Dorado team and they agreed to play us after their game. So while the game didn't count, we were thankful for their willingness to play a 2nd game and get home later.

6. We lost that game as well by 5 points and 2 yds away from a touchdown when the time ran out. UGGGGG!

So football is officially over now. There were some good things that came out of the weekend like a little shopping, Mason made 3 touchdowns, and the celebration of Mike's 42 birthday!! We ate out and he got steak and a free dessert and got sung to by the staff!

Here are some pics of the weekend....... I LOVE THIS SHOT!

There was a time that we never thought we would ever see a picture like that! Mason has always been good at baseball and basketball, but because of his heftiness when he was younger, he was not a fast runner and being a wide receiver was out of the question! Now he's thin and is the fastest runner on the field! Amazing!

Here he's fixing to catch a pass and make a TD!

Miss Haven got to go to Build-a-Bear and this is what she picked out....

It's Clarisse, Rudolph's girlfriend! Thanks Nuna and Mama Kaye!! (This is where your birthday money went to)

If you have never been to Albuquerque, it has this beautiful mountain/rock over to the left and the city was formed around it. It is so gorgeous and this picture does not do it justice but here is the view from the field we were on......