State Gymnastics Meet at ISU

Apparently the State meets are usually held in Boise, but we lucked out because this year it was in Pocatello, which meant that we didn't have to stay the night in a hotel, we just woke up super early to drive there on time.  I didn't know what to expect on parking or if we would get lost trying to get there, so I tried to leave pretty early, but I had to fix Kylee's hair and feed Kaden so we were a little later leaving than I wanted to be.  We left around 6:50.  I had done most of Kylee's hair the night before and hoped that it would stay looking good enough.  With enough hair spray, it did. So I just had to do the bun.

We got there and parked easily and had plenty of time.  I sat by some of the other mom's with girls from our gym.  There were only six girls from our gym in the younger age group.  Most of the level threes are older.  Up until the week of the Meet they had Kylee's birthday wrong and had her scheduled to compete against 11-year-olds.  They called me and told me that they straightened it out.  I would've been pretty ticked to get there at 7:30 and find out that they wouldn't let her compete until 11.  Not to mention she was only 8!  So I'm glad that they handled it.

It was fun sitting with the other moms and chatting and cheering each other on.  It was here that I learned about the way they divide the age groups and why Kylee was in the older group in Logan.

The girls started on the beam.  Kylee did a really great job and she scored her highest score on the beam yet: 9.275.  The rest of the girls on her team did fine, but not as high as she got, all less than 9.

Then we moved onto floor and Kylee went first.  She told me later that Yulia had been talking to her before she went on and she said, "you doing okay? You  need a hug?"  Kylee laughed and said "no".  Yulia said, "good cause I wasn't going to give you one."  It made me laugh because Kylee is the least huggy person ever.  I will see her at school or in the hall at church and she will walk up to me, but just smile at me instead of giving me a hug like most kids would do (Dylan runs up and hugs me every time).

Anyway, she did a great job on the floor.  She got 9.075 and I was surprised it wasn't higher.  But all the moms by me were praising her.  Then Gabrielle went next.  Gabrielle is really good and has taken first place in the past and usually beats Kylee on a some of the events.  Her mother said she had been scored lower on the floor and they didn't know what she was doing wrong.  They had talked to the coaches and stuff and they coaches had said "we don't focus on the scoring" or something like that.  Well then what exactly do you focus on??  Anyway, her floor routine looked pretty great to me and they scored her 8.575.  We were all surprised but her mom's jaw completely dropped.  As the rest of the girls went on, they all got 8.4, 8.5, the next highest was 8.7.  This was just for our team.  I couldn't pay attention to all the girls or I would risk missing Kylee in one of her events.  Anyway, the rest of the moms kept saying how they were being super hard on our team- except Kylee who was doing great.  I didn't really know how to respond.  I don't know why she was getting such higher scores.  She was doing something the judges liked.

They moved onto Vault, which is Kylee's weakest.  Not that she doesn't do a good job, it's just such a strange routine and I don't have a clue about the scoring.  She has rarely placed very high on vault.  But then she came out with a 9.4!  Of course there were some other girls from different gyms who scored 9.7 or something crazy.  Gabrielle also got 9.45, but the rest of our team was a bit lower.

At this point I was thinking Kylee looked really great for getting a good placement on the all-around.  She usually does pretty well on bars.  She did well, but her shoot-through was a little rough and she didn't stick her landing.  There must've been some other minor things too, but she got 8.725.  I was a bit bummed, but we were still hopeful she would place well.

Some of the other moms had their phones open to meetscoresonline.com where they were updating the scores and placements constantly.  I was juggling Kaden and I wasn't that concerned about it, considering I knew we would find out in an hour or so anyway.  Well, they said Kylee was currently in first place all-around.  But there were still girls that hadn't done all the events yet so I wasn't getting my hopes up.  We were all finished and waiting for everyone else to finish so we walked to the awards room. One of the parents told Kylee that she was in first.  Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but Kylee doesn't handle disappointment well.  So I had to prepare her for the chance that someone would pass her up.  And sure enough, they did.

She placed V- 5th, UB- 5th, BB- 2nd (I swear she's gotten second like every time on the beam), and F- 3rd with an All-Around of 3rd place.  Not bad for the State Meet.  I was very proud of her.

She had fun hanging out with her friends too.  And got a free T-shirt (that's my size, but she thinks it's fun).

Then we headed home. After stopping for an Italian Cream Soda and a slice of Great Harvest bread.

I got a few texts from Ryan showing mw what him and the kids were up to:

Apparently they had enough fun that they asked when we would leave again so they could just hang out. Win-win.

Spring Break and St Patrick’s

We didn’t do anything exciting for either St Patrick’s Day or Spring Break.  My kids were convinced the leprechauns were coming, but I wanted to keep it low-key.  The leprechauns did come and leave a few shamrocks along with some shamrock stickers and some chocolate coins. 

And I made ‘green’ pancakes (using spinach).  They looked greener before they were cooked.  They probably would’ve looked more green if I had used white flour instead of wheat.  Oh well, it’s the thought that counts because the kids thought it was pretty cool.  I mean, they did have chocolate chips, so...

Dylan was sure there was going to be a big party in his school class for St. Patrick’s Day.  I tried to tell him not to get his hopes up.  Sure enough, they barely even talked about it.  I think the whole day was a bit of a let-down for Dylan.  But at least he had gold coins!

Spring Break was the last full week in March.  The people in my neighborhood take Spring Break very seriously.  Most people at least went to St George or Vegas.  Some went on cruises or to Hawaii.  We kind of wanted to go somewhere, but we couldn’t.  Not really.  Because Kylee had her State Gymnastics Competition the Saturday at the end of Spring Break and they are not allowed to compete if they don’t go to all three days of practice.  Why not just skip it?  Well, because it’s STATE, the biggest competition that she can do at level 3.  But also because we were told that we were required to go to three competitions plus State during our first year competing.  So I suppose they could kick her off the team if we chose not to go.  Not that they would have.  But we had agreed to their terms and it only seemed right.  It’s not like we had anywhere we were dying to go anyway.  I thought about going to Lava Hot Springs, but Kaden wouldn’t have been able to swim in the hot pools and it was chilly outside to just hang out without being in the pools.  We were going to go to their indoor pool but decided it was a waste to go there when the outside slides weren’t even open.  In the end, I ran out of energy and we all decided not to bother.  So we found things to do here.

The weekend that started Spring Break was really nice weather.  We had regional conference on Sunday so we had a lot of the day left to just hang out.  So we went to the park as a family.

The kids are capable of playing nicely together occasionally.

Sadie is surprisingly good at the monkey bars, and really not very fearful.  If they are low enough she will go without any help and just drop when she gets stuck.  The first time I saw her attempting some was at the park in Logan and I was too far away to run and save her.  I imagined her screaming after she fell, but she didn’t.  She brushed herself off and a few minutes later was back on them doing it again.  Funny girl.

Dylan took a little while to get the monkey bars down, partly because he was scared I think.  And partly because he’s heavier and more solid so it’s harder to hold himself up.  Or he’s just not very coordinated.  Whatever, he’s got it down now.

Always carrying this little guy around. Which is the main reason these are all phone pictures and not from my big camera. 

The next couple of days were not great weather so we went to ijump for Family Night on Monday.  We normally wouldn’t have chosen that night but we had a free family pass from when we had Dylan’s birthday there and they messed up the pizza order a little.  The kids had fun, though not really together.  Dylan loves dodgeball and Kylee doesn’t.  Kylee spent her time working on roundoff back-tucks or back-handspring back-tucks, etc, etc.

We also hit up the library, always a good time with my kids.

We had a couple free passes for Leo’s Place play area from the kids’ triathlon so we went there for lunch and Ryan and his dad met us there.  The kids had a BLAST!

We didn’t have much planned for Wednesday, and the kids were already butting heads, so as I was up in the night with the baby, my thoughts were on how to entertain the kids so they wouldn’t just fight or trash the house.  I came up with a scavenger hunt idea.  I thought they would really enjoy taking pictures so I came up with a list of things I wanted them to take pictures of.  They loved it, but it was really quite cold outside even though it was sunny, so they didn’t last all that long.  It was nice having them work together and play nice, though.

The weather got better at the end of the week.  So we packed up some food and a bike and scooter and we headed to the park.  Kylee chose to go play with Lexi instead of coming with us. She always wants to be playing with Lexi if she’s not at school or gymnastics and I’m not sure where the limit should be.  Anyway, we had fun just Dylan, Sadie, Kaden and me.

After running an errand or two, I took the kids to the snow shack.  I had seen someone post that it would be open for the first time and since the kids were playing so well and not just sitting in front of the TV, I decided to get one for them.  They loved it, of course!

Then I thought the kids could help me wash my car.  But even though they did try, they did no actually cleaning.  They had fun, though so that's good.

All in all, we had fun and it was a nice break for me to not have to get up at 7 to get the kids off to school since Kaden was NOT sleeping!  Little Stinker.

SLC with Family

We went to Salt Lake City to spend time with my family.  My mom and Tom came for a ski trip and rented a house.

Sadie loves Kennedy!

Dylan loved playing on the iPad with Marcus, and was introduced to Clumsy Ninja, which has been hours of entertainment for all three kids ever since.

We were planning on going tubing with the kids because they always enjoy that.  But the weather had been SO nice, it was hard to think of snow.  And I didn’t think the hill could possibly have any good snow when it’s over 60 degrees.  And I didn’t want to pack snow clothes for everyone if it was going to be crappy snow and not fun.  So Ryan came up with the idea to go to Hogle Zoo instead.  So that’s what we did.

We spent some time enjoying the beautiful morning before we took off to the zoo.  Kylee and Gabby have a lot of fun together.

 Kennedy is going into level 6 of competitive gymnastics this year.

 Sadie says, "take a picture of me!"  She loves the camera.

Then we headed to the zoo.  Sadie was obsessed with Kennedy the whole day.  Kennedy was very sweet to put up with her.  Sadie kept dragging her around and was really wound up.

It was a fun zoo!  We saw a baby orangutan!  It was adorable!  And the elephants were fun too.

Gorillas

Kaden got a ride with Ryan the whole day and snoozed half of it.

After the zoo we packed up and headed to Logan where we checked into a hotel so we could go to Kylee’s gymnastics meet the next day at USU.