We came, we saw, we conquered

We came:

This past weekend was a first for several of my friends and I. A first visit to the city of New Orleans that is. We actually went for a soccer tournament, but many of us had never been so we of course explored the fun that the first weekend of Mardi Gras had to offer too. The drive on Friday was a bit worrisome because the first 4 hours were straight through a rain storm, but thankfully the rain subsided for a pretty yet extremely cold weekend.

We saw:

We didn't have a whole lot of daylight hours free (pretty much none in fact) due to the soccer tournament, but we saw what we could at night. We enjoyed the first weekend of Mardi Gras parades near bourbon street, plus some other bourbon street festivities. I even rode a mechanical bull for the first time. I can certainly check that off my bucket list - ouch! Not recommended for people without thick pants or jeans on I ended up with tons of bruises on my inner legs from clinging on for dear life!

We conquered:

We played 5 soccer games in 2 days.
Day 1-
Game 1: against a team in all black, and let me tell you did they look rough and they played about as rough as they looked. We ended up winning 4-1 and I scored one of our goals.

Game 2: against a team that had matching everything, and let's face it in an adult women's league that's a little odd so we were nervous that they were "legit." They were actually the worst team we played, we won 3-1 and I scored all 3 of our goals! (let's face it that doesn't usually happen for me.)

Day 2-
Game 3: against a team from Austin and I actually used to play with one of the girls on it (about 3 years ago). The soccer world is smaller than I thought. There are many probable causes for our poor performance, but I'm sure a big one is that everyone had gone down to bourbon street the night before for the parades and such. Anyways, we lost 2-1.

When that game ended we were all exhausted. We walked over to the boards and watched them post the scores, top 4 moved on to the semi-finals. Seed 1 would play seed 4 and seed 2 would play seed 3. We ended up being the third seed so we played seed 2 for the semi-finals. Seed 2 ended up being the same team we played in game 2. On top of that, our semi-finals game was literally 10 minutes after our last game had ended.

Semi-finals: game 4:
We won 2-0 and I scored one of the goals.

Finals: (45 minutes later) we unfortunately lost 3-0, but second place is good in my book.

Photos of the Day:

In honor of Valentine's Day I have been taking pictures of all the hearts I see around me.

Quote of the Day:

I have been meditating on Psalm 33 for a while now, and the words are touching me in a profound way. I won't put the whole thing on here, but I will put several of the verses which I feel God has directing me towards recently:

4: For the word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does.

5: The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.

18: But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love.

20-22: We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.
In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.
May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.

God is faithful in ALL he does. How could I possible doubt any situation he puts in my life when I have this assurance in black and white? He is FAITHFUL. The earth is full of God's love - God's perfect, unfailing, unchanging love. God has his eyes on those who fear(respect) him. He sees you.

Exercise Note of the Day:

After New Orleans I am sore from the soccer and quite bruised from soccer and bull riding, but I'm working on breaking in my new running shoes, slowly but surely. 1.75 miles yesterday morning - slow and steady wins the race.