Merry Christmas!

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See, I can post a happy post. . . .

No deep and pondering thoughts this post, just some pics to let you guys get to know us a little better.

We are all a little silly and we love to have fun.

Here is M. on the podium at her state gymnastics meet last year. Don't you love the beautiful smile?

Here she is while up at the cabin

And here she is at her 5th grade graduation:

Here is a very excited M. She found a chocolate chip cookie the same size as her head:

She is not the only silly one. Here is her sister, J.

The girls together:

Unfortunately, this strangeness does not limit itself to the children:

The lazy man's way to mow grass on a very steep hill:

At the aquarium:

On your mark:

Get set:

GO!!

We also like to take silly pictures of things other than each other.

A tiny froggy that M. found:

M.'s hair curling in the humidity:

Apparently silliness is contagious. Here is our BB curling up with the bear skin rug at the cabin:

And poor BB trying to figure out how she is going to sleep with those two hooligans sleeping under her:

So, I know this was not a very exciting post, but my last several posts have been so serious and verbose, so just wanted to lighten things up some.

Hope you enjoyed the pics.

As always, let me know you were here.

Pictures, gymnastics, and more

Sorry for the delay in posting.  March and April are insane months for us.  For March, we had gym meets the first and second weekends, then a retreat from church the 3rd weekend.  In April, J. had her state gymnastics meet the first weekend.  She did awesome!  She came in 5th All Around with a score of 36.075.  (A perfect score would be a 40 - which would be a 10 on each event.)

She has had an ongoing series of knee and ankle injuries lately.  The last one being that she landing a tumbling pass on the side of her foot, with her ankle rolled under.  It had a huge knot on it and turned many beautiful Easter colors; purple, blue, yellow, and green.  The colors were nice and vivid around her ankle and faded as it extended to her toes.  She went and saw our athletic trainer here at school every day for a week and a half and he would do some kind of e-stim boot therapy on it.  We were really hoping she would heal in time to compete at state.  She was hurting afterwards, but was able to do all 4 events.

She got 5th on vault with a 9.4.  Third place on bars with a 9.175.  9th on beam with an 8.5, and 11th on floor with a 9.00.  I am so proud of her!  

I am more proud of the fact that she did so much to help herself heal quickly and kept working through the pain.  This is what makes a gymnast - not the scores, not the placings at awards.  These girls work out 18 hours a week, go to school for 35 hours a week, keep up their grades, and do their chores.  For some, they are quite active in church.   They are usually leaders among their friends.  When they are hurt, they push through it.  I can personally say that there have been times where my daughter has saran wrapped ice bags to herself so that she can still work out.  She has gone in the bathroom and thrown up for one reason or another (sinus drainage, stress, etc - nothing contagious) and then has gone back out to the floor and finished whatever skills she was working on.  She competed twice last year with a fractured shin.  She has come home from practice and has had to have had help getting up the stairs because she is hurting.  She is not a rarity in the gymnastics world by any means.  They are all this way.  We had one girl still coming to practice with a stress fracture in her spine - she thought she just had a backache.  I have seen several girls doing conditioning with ice bags saran wrapped to their knees.  I have seen girls coming in and doing just conditioning when they have a cast on.  When they fall off of the beam or bars, they get back up immediately and do the same skill again and again so that they don't develop a fear.  I have seen them get hurt in the middle of a routine, finish the routine, and then not be able to get back up afterwards.  They have a work ethic like I have never seen before in kids.  They do their homework and dinner in the car on gym days.  Yet, when they take a couple of days off, they miss being there.  Since it is not a seasonal sport, they have these hours all year long, so the literally only get days off a year, not weeks.

Anyway, enough talking.  Here are some pics from the last couple of meets.  Keep in mind that you can not use a flash, the action is quite rapid, and the lighting is flourescent.  None of which allows for optimum pictures.

Here is J. and her friend A. getting ready to compete at state.  These are two of the most amazing young ladies:

J. doing her favorite event.  

J. doing her least favorite event:

J. and A. holding the team banner.  The team came in 7th!  Yay!

M. had a meet the same weekend.  She got her first 9 on beam.  Look at those pointed toes!

M. on bars.  She is such a flexible person that she has to really focus on staying tight.  She looks so much better on bars since she has learned how to focus on that:

This pictures look a little better as the lighting was a little better.  Here is J. hitting her handstand on the bar:

Look - her heels are together!  YAY!  (Since she is pigeon toed, this is a big struggle for her.)  

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the pics.  The photographer at state got some really good pics, I will post them when I get them.

My team has state meet this coming weekend.  I am so excited and nervous for them!  

The next weekend, M. has her state meet.

Then, we are done competing for a few months and will work on training for the next level.

We went to the mountains over spring break and I am working on an update that will have "prettier" pictures for those of you that are not into the gymnastics stuff.  I forget that other people have a life that does not revolve around gymnastics schedules.  

**For those of you that get email updates - I'm sure that you noticed that you only got the title of the blog and a link to get here instead of the full entry.  I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.  There were several reasons for this.  I realized that for people that do NOT visit the actual site, you and I both were missing out on some things.   You would not get to see any pictures that I place on the blog template.  You also would not get to see my blogroll on the side.  Those sites are absolutely wonderful and I encourage you to visit them.  Also, for you guys that don't blog, something you may not know:  Bloggers LOVE for their hit counter to go up.  We also love to get comments.  We like to know you were here.  There is nothing more rewarding for a blogger than to see and read that people were here - another reason to visit my cyber-friends on the side over there.**

As usual, thank you for stopping by!

Gymnastics pictures

Well, competition season has started. J. has had 2 meets and M. has had one. Below are a few pictures from their meets.





Before I get any harrassing comments on my pictures, let me provide the following caveats:





* All of the pictures are taken inside a gym





* Lighting inside gyms is not conducive to picture taking - think flourescent bulbs





* You cannot use a flash while taking pictures at a gymnastics meet.





Therefore, the pictures are not great. Some of them are not even very good. Some of them are outright bad. These are the best of the lot, though.





If any of you have any suggestions on how to improve these pictures, please let me know!





Thanks.








Here is J's dismount off of the beam:

















Split leap on the beam:









The bars are her best event. Below is her handstand on the high bar:












Part of her floor routine:













Back tuck in floor routine:






M. in the middle of her tumbling pass at her first meet:









Split leap:









Not really an exciting picture as far as action goes, but it turned out well. This is during the dance part of her floor routine:









Dismount on beam:











Scale:









In dance portion of beam routine:






Preparing for 1/2 turn:












Rebound:









Stretching out:











So, if you are not a close family friend or a gymnast, these are probably not that exciting to you. However, it is the icing part of a gymnasts life.





If you have never been involved in gymnastics, it is hard to understand. I am working on a post to tell you what the life of a gymnast and their family is like. Here is a quick snapshot:





J - 18 hours of practice a week


M - 9 hours of practice a week


This is every week. There is no off season. The girls get 1 week off a year. There is anywhere from 30 - 60 minutes of conditioning in each practice. This is hard work - and the meets are where they get ONE CHANCE to show off what they can do, so it is a pretty big deal to them.





Here are their stats from their first meet:





J: - 1st on all 4 events and 1st All-Around with team placing 1st


M: - 1st on vault, tie for 1st on floor, 3rd on bars, 2nd on beam, and 2nd all-around with team placing 2nd.





At J's second meet, she placed 1st on vault, 2nd on bars, 3rd on floor, and 4th all around with the team placing 1st.





This past weekend was homecoming at our school, so I will be posting some pictures from there soon.





Don't forget to leave me a note and let me know you were here.





Thanks for stopping by!

Camping trip

I realized that I never posted any pictures from our camping trip last month. So, without further ado, here they are.

Most of the clan that went:




For those of you that know my youngest, you know that she loves animals. All animals. Except for cockroaches, those freak her out a little. Here are her and her sister with a rabbit that was kept in the main office of the camp grounds.

Now, here she is snuggling up with the rabbit. She wanted to try to take it home. Naturally.

Here she is with a chicken. That she caught. By her self. She wanted to take it home.

Here is a huge grasshopper cricket thing that she caught. She wanted to take it home.

Here she is with a squirrel. A pet squirrel that one of the women there raised. She wanted to take it home. Notice a theme here???

(By the way, this picture was taken in the restaurant part of the office at the campground. Notice the dog sitting next to M. and the squirrel? It sat in the restaurant the entire time we were eating breakfast in the hopes that it would get some scraps. The bunny was right outside the restaurant part - in the store. There were a dog and a squirrel running around where we were eating. I'm not thinking the health department visits there much.)

There is actually a strange story about the squirrel. The lady in the picture came in while we were eating and told everyone to be on the lookout for an overly friendly squirrel. (Overly friendly? Is it going to come up and say "hi?" Is it going to jump out of a tree and land on our shoulders, causing much screaming and running to ensue? Does it have rabies and is going to come find us all and kill us? What are the characterists of an "overly friendly squirrel?") She apparently raised 2 squirrels from the time they were babies and one had gotten out that morning. She then proceeded to take off her jacket and this squirrel was on her back. (I envisioned the whole squirrel scene from National Lampoon's vacation at that point, but that is irrelevant. :-)) The squirrel that got away was named Nutmeg. Later in the day, this lady was wandering around the campground calling, "Nutmeg, Nuuuutmeeeeg." Needless to say, we would all get the giggles when we heard it. It was quite the strange situation.

The campground had a petting farm. The kids got to milk the cows. (We actually had the milk at breakfast the next morning - fresh from the cows, no pasteurization. Again, where IS the health department???)

(I felt sorry for this cow. There were so many pictures taken of it's nether regions and no one was looking at it's face. I felt sorry for it and took a picture of it's face. And then I petted it and told it how sorry I was that we were all up in it's personal space. She forgave me.)


Here is a picture of the scenery that you could see from our campground. Isn't it beautiful?? I just love, love, love autumn!

This picture is not from our campground, but from pretty close to it.





There were also built in trampolines there:




J. trying to help put up the tent. (Nice biceps, girl!)




M. walked out onto this tree that had fallen into the creek. She then decided to practice her beam routine one the tree. While surrounded by water.

By the way, notice the short sleeves? They were all well and good as long as the sun was up. As soon as it went down, it was beyond cold. One poor person on the trip woke up one morning with icecicles in her hair. M. and I ended up going and sleeping in the truck at one point. It was in the 30's at night. I don't "do" cold. Brr.

Scary self portrait of me sitting next to my baby girl.

Thanksgiving post and pictures are in the works. Hope to have that up before Christmas.

Thanks for stopping by!

Let me know you were here!