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.

Happy New Year

I had two resolutions for the new year: begin an immediate sugar detox and write more.  I'm one for two.  I haven't missed the sugar as much I'd thought I would but as for the writing, well, that's why I'm making this very effort, even if it is two weeks late.

We had a great New Year's celebration.  It's tradition to celebrate with our friends, the Evans, but this year we did something a little different.

We started with dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory.  They have great gluten-free options and since Caleb can't seem to consume enough spaghetti noodles these days, we decided it would be the perfect dinner spot.

The girls posed with their American Girl dolls.

The boys have poses of their own but I can't make any sense of it.  Is that a boy thing?  I don't know.

We went to the movies next and saw "We Bought a Zoo."  I really did like it, but I don't think I'd classify it as a kid movie, which is what we thought we were going to see.

The night ended in Seattle, at our friend's office building.  There was a game room for the kids and a balcony with a perfect view of the Space Needle fireworks.  We always watch the fireworks on TV but seeing them live was SO much more fun!

All the boats on Lake Union looked so pretty and it was fun to hear them blaring their horns to welcome the new year.

We stayed until 1:00 a.m. but I'm sure the kids could've partied longer.  It was fortunate for us that our Sunday meetings didn't start until 1:00 p.m. so we could recover from all that late-night fun.

Welcome, 2012!

We Had Ourselves a Merry Little Christmas

The girls and I started our Christmas week with a little pampering. I told them I had a surprise for them but that they first had to earn it by doing all sorts of chores.  By day's end, I had a clean house and they had beautifully painted nails.  We were all happy.

The rest of the week passed in a flurry of Christmas cookies, holiday parties and merry-making.  Before we knew it, Grandma and Grandpa had arrived to celebrate Christmas with us.

We bundled up and headed to Bellevue to experience Snowflake Lane.  It's a festive kind of fun as long as you don't mind sharing the sidewalks with the big-city mass of humanity that converges near malls at the this time of year.

Then we went to the botanical gardens to see the prettiest light display.

These grapes were my favorite.

We made a Christmas Eve trip to the movies where we enjoyed Arthur Christmas.  Cute story.  Yummy popcorn.

Our traditional Christmas Eve dinner was altered this year to be gluten-free.  But steak on a stick, potato skins, cocktail smokies and spinach dip had everyone feeling satisfied.  We even had two different kinds of So-Good Cookies--some with gluten and some without.  We had gluten-free gingersnaps, too.

The traditional first gifts of Christmas were opened--pajamas, of course--and we were ready to begin our read and sing nativity celebration.

I'm choosing the omit the pictures that document Caleb's Asperger moments.  They may have threatened to spoil our Christmas Eve, but the Christmas spirit was still felt so we'll just focus on that.

Natalie decided she wanted to conduct the songs.

It's just not Christmas Eve without angel chimes.

I loved that Christmas came on a Sunday this year!  Since we're sleepers at our house, I knew we wouldn't be able to get our gifts opened before our 11:00 meeting started.  We decided we'd let the kids enjoy their Santa gifts and stockings before church and leave the rest of the gifts for after.  We also had our big breakfast on Christmas Eve so that we wouldn't have to rush that either.

On Christmas morning, I heard Jon say, "The kids are up.  I can hear them."  It seemed so dark and I was so deep asleep that all I could mutter was, "You've got to be kidding me!"  Our kids never get up early so I couldn't believe that they'd be up already.  But then I rolled over and looked at the clock.  It was 8:30.  So I decided that they had every right to be up.

Our church service was wonderful.  It just seemed so perfect to go to church on Christmas.

The kids were sure excited to go home and having waited to open our gifts just helped build the anticipation all the more.  We posed for a family photo before changing back into our Christmas jammies.

Natalie couldn't have been more thrilled about her American Girl doll.

Most of Alyssa's gifts were actually for the doll she got back in November for her birthday.

Caleb got more football helmets.  Evidently when you're that big of a fan you can't have too many.

He also got a foosball table.

We stayed in our pajamas for our traditional Christmas ham dinner.  Caleb ate candy all night long.
What a wonderfully Merry Christmas!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It just happens to be that the hap-happiest season of all is also the bus-busiest. 

We started the week with two concerts in one night.  Jon took Alyssa to her first orchestra concert while I took Natalie to play her part as a cardinal in "The Animal's Christmas Tree" program.

There's something irresistably adorable about first graders in costumes, singing their songs to their perfectly timed choreography.

Nat's concert was a lovely 25 minutes long and since the 5th graders were playing last, we were able to race across town to watch Alyssa.  We found Jon in auditorium and sat down just as the conductor was gesturing for the kids to raise their instruments.

I was anticipating a lot of squawks and squeaks but was impressed to hear real music coming from Alyssa's ginormous group of string players.  So fun to see--and hear.

Also this week was Caleb's Christmas choir concert.  My favorite part was "O Holy Night."  Not just because they did the song well, but also because they sang lyrics about Christ's birth at a school function.  I didn't know they could get away with that, but I loved it.

On Thursday, Alyssa graduated from D.A.R.E.  The kids sang some really great songs that they had written about staying drug-free.  Then they collected their certificates. (They had to stand in alphabetical order so, wouldn't you know it, she ended up behind the tallest kid in the class.  Can you see her little head in the second row?)

This is Officer Smith that taught the program to the fifth graders at our school:



The next day, Alyssa helped lead the school sing-along.  She and several of her friends took turns leading the actions on lots of fun holiday songs but on Jingle Bell Rock she took the microphone.

 

That night she worked with Tom Koll at gymnastics.  He's a celebrity of sorts in the world of Junior Olympic gymnastics.  He's the chairman of the JO committee, the creator of the compulsory routines and a judge of the highest ranking.  Tom looked at Alyssa's beam and floor routines and gave critiques on how they can be improved.

Saturday morning, Natalie and I got to spend four more hours learning from Mr. Tom's expertise as he worked with our Level 4 team.



Each of the girls on my team did one event for Tom.  Natalie did vault and even though Tom is the self-proclaimed toughest-judge-in-the-country, he gave Natalie a 9.4.  Now if she could just master that posture that he looks for on beam and floor.

Phew!  What a week.  Busy.  Very busy.  But so much fun. 

And we still have Christmas to look forward to.  A wonderful time of the year, indeed.