I made the team!

My list of "Life's Greatest Accomplishments" just got a little bit longer.

Background: Courtney requested, in honor of her birthday, that everyone at her party perform some sort of act/talent/feat. My feat was making the JV Cheer Squad! We had cheer practice last Thursday and Friday in preparation for Saturday night's debut at Courtney's birthday party.

With my utter lack of any form of cheer experience, my main contribution was procuring some cheerleading outfits, courtesy of Colleen, my colleague and Vaca High's long-time cheer coach. The skirts and sweaters also came with pom-poms, and then we threw in some orange polka-dot hair ribbons. I haven't worn anything from the juniors' section since probably the 3rd grade, so the skirts were a bit snug, but man, did we look adorable. And the crowd loved us! Unfortunately, the video of our actual performance came out WAY too dark, so here's a shot of us at practice:

For the record, this whole thing makes me feel like a TOTAL girl...which I'm kind of uncomfortable with. When I was in high school, we kind of made fun of cheerleaders. They would come to our volleyball games and try to cheer, but we always did our volleyball cheers louder than them and sometimes sort of drowned them out...but after this, I totally understand the draw of teenage girls to cheerleaders. We were the center of attention, we looked absolutely adorable in our little skirts and sweaters, pom-poms are SO much fun, and according to Vicky, now that we're the prettiest and most popular girls at school, we can make fun of whoever we want!

I heartily recommend finding an adult cheer squad in your community and joining up. It can be a new movement....and while you're all working on that, let me know if you'd like your own personal cheer. Seriously. The Berkeley ward is having our annual Sub-4-Santa auction to get presents for needy families, and we will be auctioning off personalized cheers for any takers out there.