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!

Dinner with royalty and more roller coasters

Last weekend was quite amazing - I got to do something really cool! I got to have dinner with royalty! The Sarah Smith crew were in town picking their son up from the airport, and several of us fellow Sarah followers met them for dinner. It was so much fun! Besides myself and the Smith's, Pam D and Vicki were there. I took my 2 girls and they chatted with Sarah the whole time. Sarah is right in the middle age wise of my girls. Pam and I discovered that not only are we from the same home town, we are from the same denomination of church. She actually goes to church with M.'s teacher! Vicki brought her 2 adorable little boys. They were so well behaved, and so so so cute! It was kind of weird in that we all knew so much about Sarah and her family, yet we had never met each other face to face. The restaurant was very nice to us and was quite interested in the whole situation. If you click on Sarah and Pam's names above where they are highlighted, you can read their version of the night. Since they are much better writers than I am, you will be much more entertained there than you are here, I promise.

Here are some pictures from that night:

Sarah and the adorable guard dog, Snowy:

The 3 blogging ladies, Pam D, Becky Smith, and myself:

J., Sarah, and M.

The whole gang, starting at the left and going around: Steve Smith, Pam D., myself, M., J, Sarah Smith, Becky Smith, Vicki, her beautiful boys and her husband, whose name escapes me at the moment.

Becky's son Nathan called to let her know his ETA back in the states. Notice the smile and the eyes glowing:

How cute is this little guy?

Sarah trying her first fried pickles. She is being quite brave here because she does not like pickles.

The men pretty much had their own conversation going:

Bravely trying an olive for the first time:

Knowing we were meeting in downtown, we were a little nervous as to what kind of restaurant we would end up with, but it proved to be quite nice:

Even if the decorations hanging from the ceiling were a little, um, strange. These were hanging right above the girls' heads. They kept looking up uncertainly, hoping they would stay suspended and not come crashing down on their heads.

Sunday brought a whole new set of emotions as the kids at church were told that their youth ministers are leaving. There were so many tears and so much anger. I worry over how the kids will get past this. So many of them have deep relationships with one of the youth ministers or with the other, or both. It is hard to understand emotionally. However, the leaders felt this was best for the kids as a whole. While I trust our elders, as I stated earlier, I wish all would have been handled a little differently. Hindsight is truly 20/20. We must remember to keep our focus on God and on continuing the legacy started by our youth ministers. Now is the time to start healing and start looking forward.

Also, during this past week, another friend of ours, Kristie, got some horrible news about her husband and his ongoing battle with cancer. This family has been dealt a "crap sandwich," as they put it, over and over again. Please go visit them and leave them some words of encouragement.

This weekend found quite a bit of snow in our area. We actually had a snow day today! The funny thing is that the temperature for this coming Saturday is supposed to be 70 degrees. Go figure.

Here a few snow pics:

So, this post was quite a potpourri of topics. Hope you stuck with it and weren't too bored.

Thank you for stopping by.

Let me know you were here.