Fun Filled Tennis Weekend

Well we didn't win, BUT we had a fantastic time! We gave it our best, and we can still hold our heads up high!

Here is the weekend in detail. This is long, but I use my blog as a personal journal and would like to remember what happened this past weekend- sorry.

On Thursday I drove in from Tyler to Dallas and stayed with my fabulous friend Courtney. Jaran and Courtney met me and my team for a fun Mexican dinner at Ojedas. They had pretty good/strong margaritas! I then spent the night with Court and met her adorable puppy Cash. What a sweetheart! The next morning we woke up, somewhat early, and went to breakfast, with Cash, at Einstein's Bagels. Super yum as always- so glad Tyler is getting 2! I had practice with the team at 10:00am at Fretz park, then we all went to lunch at the also always yummy La Madeline. Then I booked it to Opus to drop off some paintings, then went to see my Memaw do her therapy in Plano. She is doing great!

After visiting with Memaw and my parents, I went to check in at the hotel my team was staying at, and then had yet another team practice. It was fun, but hot. Then we all went to Momo's Italian Cafe for dinner. We went stinky- how awful is that, but we did call and Momo said to come on! Kind of gross, but we needed to get to bed early!

We got up at 5:00am for our 7:00am match on Saturday at Northwood Country Club. How awful is that! We played the Valley, and we totally kicked butt. My sweet friend Jaran came to watch us. Me and my doubles partner Toni beat them pretty bad. It was fun. We had one other pair win, and one lost- so we won 2 out of 3 and won that round.

We went back to the hotel for a bite to eat- worst idea of the weekend for me. We had eggs, salsa and beans at the hotel restaurant. I never really eat breakfast, and I am not a huge fan of eggs- but I figured I needed to eat something. I should have stuck with my usual granola bar and some fruit. We played back at Northwood again and played Dallas at 11:30am, and I felt awful the first set. It was getting pretty hot at that point (the courts were 117 degrees!), and eating breakfast is no way to play for me. We lost the first set 5-7, which isn't too bad, and I snapped out of my funk in the 2nd set and we won 6-1. We had a tie breaker set, and we were ahead 8-6 until the girl serving to my team mate decided to serve it to me in the front right box! It totally hit my racket, and they got the point. That threw me off, and then the official "The Tennis Nazi" said that my partner called an out ball too late- which she totally didn't- and we lost the tie breaker set. It was a hard loss. My team won one other set, but the other pair lost in a tiebreaker, and we lost that round. Stunk.

So after our sad little loss, we went to the hotel and went swimming. A couple of the ladies wanted to go to the USTA banquet, but 4 of us passed and went to the Galleria to Grand Luxe. Oh it was so good! I had the Carmel Asian Chicken- to die for. We then went shopping around the Galleria- I fell in love with a few things at Coach, and then we all tried out the $4,000 massage chair at Brookstone. It was heaven, and we all felt better after our turn in the chair. Debbie got an adorable dress at Nordstroms, and then we went back to the hotel and crashed.

On Sunday we were all fired up to win. We played Fort Worth at Canyon Creek at 10:00am. Toni and I started off super strong. We won 6-1 the first set. The 2nd set we were not so lucky. Toni started to not feel so great, and we lost 4-6. Then the tie breaker set we lost 6-10. It was a really hard loss. If we had won this round we would might have gone on the to the finals. The rest of the team lost as well that morning. It was a sad time for us, and we were said we let our awesome coach down. He was SO sweet to come support us. Not many coaches came. He brought his 3 month old baby and wife. We really appreciated his support! He is the world's best coach.

After we sulked a bit on the ride back to the hotel, we packed up our stuff, showered and went to Freebirds as a final team treat. It was super yummy. Then a few of us went to Golfsmith and purchased some really cute tennis outfits to cheer us up. It helped! Then we headed home and decided to shrug off the weekend as great fun and great exercise!

It was our first tournament, and I think we did really well. We held our own and brought what we brought. I hope we do it again next year!

I will try to add pictures of the weekend soon. I never had my camera handy at the right moment!