Gymnastics Meet

Gymnastics meet season has started, which means that Hadley is back on the beam (and floor, vault, and bars). 

The meet was just at our gym, so it was pretty convenient. She's been practicing most of these routines for months, and this was her first chance to get judged on them. It's kind of like what you see in the Olympics, where they break up into small groups and rotate around to each apparatus. I'm not sure how they group the girls, because they are definitely not the same size or ability. Hadley is 4th from the right below - she's getting to be one of the bigger girls!

Here are her routines, so you can feel like you were there. She's in a division known as XCEL Bronze, which is the entry competition level, so the routines are definitely like building blocks and skills can be added piece by piece to make them more difficult with higher starting values.

Her scores were Floor - 9.1, Beam - 9.4, Vault - 9.4, Bars - 8.6. Bars are her least favorite, and her stumble on her landing didn't help, but we were proud of her results. Anything over a 9 is a blue ribbon! We have a few more meets on the schedule (~1x/month), so we will see if her scores improve over the season. Her goal is to move up to the next level, Silver, by summer. She's already made huge improvement in her scores from her last (and only other) meet.

And everyone gets to do a Gold pose at the end.

 

Yes, That's the Book for Me

Well, we've been virtual schooling for over two weeks, and it's going pretty smoothly. There is still a lot of down time throughout the day, but that's fine with us. At least lessons seem to be progressing, and assignments have been related to the teacher's instruction. Hadley has learned how to email the teacher to ask questions and set alarms for herself based on when she needs to login to her next meeting. Isn't that how you remember 3rd grade?? Other than that, I've got them doing some typing lessons (all this online assignment submittal stuff has made that a new priority!), and H is working on her gymnastics at home.

The only other thing we've had going on was to get H's 3rd grade Bible from church. This was a big deal because we hadn't set foot in church since the pandemic began (or worn our nicer clothes for about the same duration). Picture time!

She was handed a wrapped Bible by the pastor, and her name and picture were up on the big screen!  

I think they said there were about 40 3rd-graders at church, so they had to split them up into smaller groups throughout the afternoon. This is usually done during regular church service, but we haven't restarted in-person church yet.

The Bibles were wrapped in 4 layers of different paper, each symbolizing the importance of the book they were holding: brown paper = ancient, gold = valuable, comics = stories, white tissue = pure gift from God. Each kid also got a pretty sugar cookie because cookies! It was nice to have something to dress up for and look forward to. Not great to document it in facemasks and a nearly empty sanctuary. Strange times indeed.

Snowy Days Are Here Again

We've gotten about a foot of snow in the last week from a record-breaking storm, and the temperatures have been cold enough to keep it around. (The first few snow days were all followed up by rain days, which melted all of the accumulated snow pretty quickly.) But the last day of school was the biggest snow day of all! It's made for pretty, snow-covered trees, but the roads have been a mess until just recently because it's been too cold for even the road salt to work.

Anyhow, the kids had fun trying to find the curb after helping shovel the sidewalk,

And making fresh tracks across the pristine yard. Can you tell that Owen still enjoys falling and rolling around in the snow?

When it's 10 degrees F outside, sometimes I supervise through the window!

It's been so cold that even the cat, Tibbs, has been requesting fires in the fireplace. She shows up whenever someone is on the floor by the fireplace in hopes that it will be turned on. What a pampered, lazy creature!

The kids have been sledding nearly every day. We've joined them a few times, but it's nice that they can go a few houses down to a hill all by themselves now, too! We've tried just about every combination of family members on our one sled. I think Santa may be bringing us a new one this year!

Sometimes we don't even need a sled to have fun! The snow is just too dry to really make any snowballs or snowmen without adding water and strategy though. That leaves just some good, old-fashioned family snow wrestling... 

We acquired some cross-country skis (or country skis as Hadley calls them) this year, since Owen enjoyed doing that last year. We've already gotten out a couple of times, and it's been very enjoyable!

Owen brought a friend one time, and after doing the loop around the park, they did some climbing on the park fountain. I was a little nervous, since they were wearing their ski boots, but they had no issues at all and were like little mountain goats up there.

Hadley has some little ones that strap on to her snow boots too, so we could go as a family. It's so nice that we can do this in the city parks, just a short drive from home!

In other news, we continued the annual tradition of seeing a local production of the Nutcracker. This time Hadley joined us! She's been a twirling snowflake at home ever since, although she was dozing through most of Act II. It was especially fun since the kids have been studying the Waltz of the Flowers in their music class. They did their puppet show along with the music during the ballet. So cute!

Hadley performed in her school program one evening. Unfortunately, she was in the back row, so I didn't get a good picture, but we did squeeze another year out of her Santa-esque dress. Between the school and church programs, she's picked up a lot of new songs, most notable is the one in which she cheerfully sings, "Halle-moon-ya!" (She's also been enjoying practicing her lowercase letters over the break.)

One morning, we took in the Christmas exhibit at the museum. The kids had a blast dressing up in pioneer gear in the children's area. Fingers crossed in that we haven't seen any lice yet from the coonskin cap that he wore for half an hour!

Finally, I'll leave you with handsome Owen in his new birthday sweater. Happy holidays!

Chasing, Craters, and Cartwheels

Last Saturday was pretty nice weather, so we did a family fun run for Owen's school in the morning (one mile run, two of us walked it)...

And then headed out to Craters of the Moon after lunch. It was kind of perfect out there: hardly any people, quiet surroundings, and the sun came and went with storm clouds just off in the distance. We tried a different trail this time, though we had to cut it short for an obligation back in town that night.

It was interesting to see the green life peeking from the lava rocks, especially the delicate, little wildflowers all over.

And Hadley nearly hiked the full 1.8 miles herself! She also posed like this by herself. :)

We've also been enjoying the few warm-ish days we've had outside.  We're looking forward to a summer full of activities and sunshine, hopefully!

Lastly, Hadley wrapped up her spring gymnastics with a showcase on the floor, beam, bar, and vault. She absolutely loved it! 

Let's just say that floor is not her best apparatus, but it was the best video! She's in the back in black and pink and the "big" elements were supposed to be front roll, cartwheel, backwards roll.  :)

Oh, and we painted her toenails for the first time.  She was so excited!