Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter everyone! Holidays remind us how much we want to eventually make it back close to family; they just aren't as exciting alone! Nobody was here to hide Easter eggs for me!
Today has been pretty slow... Mikel is at work and I'm at home cleaning and getting motivated to do homework. Mikel has been getting progressively more hours from work so that's been nice for us.

As for school, I only have three more weeks of this semester left! Yea!! It's always nice at the semester for classes to end so I can start looking forward to something new; by the end of the semester, I'm usually ready for change! Now I just have about 3 papers to write and 1 exam left before I can move on from this semester.

Mikel had more excitement in his basketball class last week than he would have liked... a student compound fractured his ankle! Ew ew ew!!! It's a good thing it was not in my class! Mikel handled it really well, of course, and luckily the student wasn't too freaked out about the whole situation.

We are excited for the weather to start getting warmer around here so we can spend more time enjoying the outside! Can't wait for summer!!

we're in the finals!!

Mikel and I decided this was probably something we'd never seen again...

MSU pulled off another upset and beat UConn in the Final Four in Detroit to advance to the National Championship game on Monday. Unfortunately, Mikel had to work but they were all listening to the game on the radio and he was able to wander through the electronic section every once in a while to sneak a peak.

I watched the game at home but as soon as MSU was shooting their last free throws, I grabbed our camera, hopped in my car, and drove downtown East Lansing. I had a feeling it was going to be pretty wild so I wanted to soak it all in (from the inside of my car). I figured it would be much more exciting seeing it in person rather than on the news! I had a hard time taking pictures with how dark it was but I got a couple shots (although it still doesn't do justice to the madness)!There were thousands of people running down the streets yelling and screaming, doing MSU cheers, and hugging and high-fiving random people. I actually paid 60 cents to park in a public lot just so I could get out of the car and take some pictures and video. While I was on the sidewalk for less than 2 minutes, I got a couple of high fives from random people and one almost hug.
There were probably 20,000 people on the streets of East Lansing celebrating the victory along with A LOT of police in cars, on street corners and on horseback. Police were even handing out high fives!

There was one last place we had to check out after Mikel got off work at that was Cedar Village. That is a student housing community area that has a TON of houses and apartments crammed in a very small area. This is where 'Cedar Fest' has happened and it apparently gets pretty wild. Here's an article about the "peaceful celebration".
Here's just a short video we shot from the end of the street. I tried to zoom in at the end to show all the people but it got pretty blurry....

The national championship game is Monday night so I can only imagine how productive Tuesday morning classes are going to be!!

GO GREEN GO WHITE!!

This is the picture from the MSU athletic department website of MSU's open practice in Detroit. There were 30,000 people there to watch a 50 minute practice!!! That's so cool! They are opening up the Breslin Center tonight so people can go in and watch the game- it would be fun to go but Mikel has to work so I'm not going to go by myself. I will have my camera ready in case things get exciting around here!

Other than that, we only have 4 weeks of school left! It's technically 4 weeks and then finals week but my finals week will be over on Monday so my semester is over on May 4th. I'm enjoying this semester for the most part but by the end of the semester, I'm always ready for something new.

This summer is looking pretty busy. Mikel will continue working at Sears and looking for openings in the athletic department; we're hoping for some turnover! I get to teach one class, Healthy Lifestyles, for the first 7 weeks from May 18th- July 2nd. I also was awarded a research development fellowship to work on a research project which will be an awesome opportunity! I originally heard that I did not get it but all the sudden last week, my advisor got a phone call and they wanted to offer me one. I'm not sure if someone didn't qualify or backed out-- either way, it works out for me!!
After that, I've got some volleyball camps to coach and it will be fun to get back into the gym! It also looks like Mikel will be able to make a trip to Idaho while I'm there. We found such cheap flights so we had to do it!

Things are busy but good around here!!

basketball pep rally

Last night as I was doing homework, I on the tv that there was a pep rally for the men's basketball team when they got home at 10pm. Since I had to pick Mikel up from work at 9:30 anyways, we decided to stop by and check it out.

The team had just arrived back in town and still had their backpacks and warm ups on. It's amazing what the school can put together so quickly at 10 on a Sunday night!

When we came in, a replay of the basketball game was on the big screen and everyone was watching and cheering like crazy!

Sparty and some of the cheerleaders were there to great the team as well...


This is a video of the team coming through the tunnel. It's not the whole thing but you can hear the crazy crowd and see how many people were there...
Once the team came through the tunnel and the crazy applause ended, they showed a highlight video from all of their tournament games thus far. This is the team looking up and watching the video surrounded by press...Izzo, the head coach, and his family were surrounded by media while the highlight video was playing too...

Both Coach Izzo and Travis Walton, one of the seniors, addressed the crowd...
And the team did some sort of dance thing that apparently is a replay of something they did at midnight madness at the beginning of the season...
Overall, I'm glad we decided to check it out. I'm continually amazed and impressed by big time sport programs! The whole thing only lasted about a half hour but they turned our probably close to 9,000 people on super short notice.

The Final Four should be pretty fun this weekend especially because they're playing in Detroit!

I'm also glad we have a nice new camera to capture good pictures of all the cool things we're seeing!

and then there were 4...

We had such a great time when Josh was here! We got to show him around the city and the school and investigate new places to eat! Mikel and Josh went to a place called Pinball Pete's where they have a lot of older video games and was pretty much Chuck-E-Cheese for adults. This is a picture of their winnings...Mikel got fake teeth, handcuffs, and a harmonica while Josh made out with an eye patch, whoopee cushion, and a harmonica. They were nice enough to play me a song with their matching harmonicas when they got home!

We definitely didn't get as much sleep and I didn't get as much school work done as normal but it was awesome to see Josh and have some time to relax and have fun. Unfortunately, I have 2 papers that are due Wednesday so I'll have some extra work on my hands but it was totally worth it!

March Madness has added to the excitement around East Lansing because MSU just upset Louisville (the overall #1 seed) and have made it to the Final Four which is being held in Detroit this year! Should be an exciting week around here- the semifinals are on Saturday. GO GREEN GO WHITE!