Gymnastics Doesn't Stink

Our theme of the new year thus far could be summed up with one word: gymnastics. Sure, it hasn't been the only thing, but it's been our Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Saturday-and-some-days-in-between thing.

Last weekend was Natalie's first meet of the spring competitive season.

She's actually got pretty good skills, even if she doesn't yet have the body awareness to keep those toes pointed.

Evidently most 6 and 7 year olds don't get that pointed-toe thing because out of 17 girls her age, Natalie placed 2nd!  Her first medal.  It was a big moment.

 We rode the ferry home, which was a fun treat after a long day of competition.

Yesterday was another meet day, and another big moment for our other gymnast.  It was Alyssa's first meet as an optional gymnast.

These are a couple of shots of warm-up:

 Lys did great!  She did fall on beam, which is typically her strongest event, so that was a big bummer.  Were it not for that fall, she would've won the meet.  Instead she placed third, a mere .05 behind 2nd place and only .25 behind first.

She did an awesome bar routine that earned her a 2nd place finish on that event.

The video of her bar routine is a bit hard to see, so we'll share this footage of her floor routine instead.  She does have a little fluke stumble at the very beginning on one of her dance moves, and there's still some fine tuning to do, but I think it's a fabulous start to level 7.  Congrats, Lys!

We got a short break in the middle of the day and then had to return for my team and Natalie to compete.  Her scores weren't as high this week, but she still came away with another second place finish.  Our team, by the way, finished first in both meets! :)

Most of us think this is all pretty darn exciting.  But there is one among us that doesn't share the sentiment.  Can you guess who made this hangman game in church today?

Gymnastics definitely doesn't stink!  We get one Saturday off before we're back to competition.  We--well, most of us--are excited to see what this season has in store.