Big Ten Football Champs

After a nice Thanksgiving dinner Thursday and a successful day of Black Friday shopping, Saturday ended even better. My beloved Spartans ended there special season beating Penn State at Penn State. I had a feeling on that day back in August when we went downtown East Lansing to "Meet the Spartan Football Team," that it was going to be a special season for the Spartans. Many didn't believe in the Spartans and underestimated them, but in the end they came away with a record of 11-1. That record earned them a share of the Big Ten Championship along with Ohio State and Wisconsin who also have 11-1 records. It's also earned the Spartans a BCS Bowl Bid which there's a lot of controversy over. You see there's a three way tie in the Big Ten and only one team gets to go to the Rose Bowl. Because of tie the bowl game is determined based on the BCS rankings. Well that means it goes to Wisconsin who is ranked higher than OSU and MSU. However, many disagree and I'm one of them on determining it by the BCS rankings. Wisconsin beat OSU, MSU beat Wisconsin, and MSU and OSU did not play each other. That ends up looking like this between the three teams: MSU is 1-0 (with their win over WIS), OSU is 0-1 (with their loss to WIS), and Wisconsin is 1-1 (with their win to OSU and loss to MSU). That means MSU is UNDEFEATED against the co-champs which you would think would mean they would go to the Rose Bowl. Well these are all new rules this year with the BCS, and had they not changed and had last years rules, MSU would be going to the Rose Bowl. The whole BCS thing really is a bunch of crap anyway. It's such a bummer, and you might say well, MSU should of beat Iowa which that loss hurts, but then had MSU won, MSU would be 12-0 and still would most likely be on the outside looking in at the BCS Championship Game. MSU gets overlooked more times than not and unfortunately get no respect outside of the Spartan "family." It's pretty sad when Coach D has really turned this football program around and is a well respected coach. So with that said, there's not much one can do, but sit and wait for the bowl game to be announced. Most likely it will be the Capital One Bowl against Alabama. We're still proud to be going to a bowl game and would love to end the season with a win. We shall find out Sunday when the announcements are made.

Enough about my bitching on the BCS and with that Big Ten Championship comes a celebration! Saturday night MSU opened up the Breslin Center to welcome back the team and coaches. Remember we went to celebrate the Basketball team after the Final Four? Of course we weren't going to miss this so we headed on over to the Breslin Center to congratulate the Big Ten Football Champs and celebrate with other Spartan fans. It was a Sparty party at the Breslin and such a great moment to be a part of! Coach Izzo and the b-ball team even came out to support the football program. We met up with my friend Jessica and her family and had a fun time! Here's a few photos from the evening. (Remember my camera sucks and is sloooooow so the pics aren't the greatest.)

Actually While waiting for the team to arrive Evan wanted to go say hi to Coach Izzo and give him a high five. He walked over to him all by himself. Here he is getting his high five from Coach Izzo (Coach gave him two high fives).

Coach Dantonio thanking the fans for all their support and congratulating the team on all their hard work!

Greg Jones (Evan's favorite MSU player), addressing the crowd and thanking them for supporting him on returning for his senior year~

Right before we were about to head out, MSU b-ball player, Draymond Green came out and was gracious enough to stick around for a minute to take a pic with the kids!

Saturday night we got the tree up. This year it's our first time having an artificial tree. Every year since we've been married we've either bought or cut down a live tree. Last year after Christmas we decided to go the artificial route and bought one on clearance. I do miss the real tree and the wonderful smell a real tree gives off, but I must say it was nice not to hassle with getting it in the stand and having to string lights! We didn't have a chance to decorate it though since we had to leave for the MSU celebration so that was for Sunday.

On Sunday we took the kids to see Tangled. Ever since Emmaline saw the movie preview on T.V. she's been saying she wanted to go see it. Finally after a busy holiday weekend we got time on Sunday. It was a really cute movie and Em loved it. Evan even liked it a lot too! After the movie we came home and got the tree decorated. The kids were so excited to help put the decorations on. This year I thought it was only fitting to put the MSU football front and center and top the tree off with a Spartan Santa hat! Our tree is definitely "bleeding" lots of green this year. Here's our tree for 2010!


A movie and decorating the tree on Sunday was a perfect way to end our nice long weekend! My next couple posts will be the recipes I promised to post!