Thanksgiving Break

Well after traveling to Denver two-to-three times in the past month (twice for the girls' competition, plus and extra time for Emmy and I for Emmy's doctor's appointment, plus an extra time for Miles as he had a field trip to Denver one weekend!), we decided to stay home for Thanksgiving.  We came home that week on Monday from a great weekend in Denver and then Ben had to work Tuesday and Wednesday.  I ended up helping Csilla with a camp she was running at the Rec. Center those two days and so my kids had fun participating in that.  It made it busy for me and I wasn't able to get my Thanksgiving grocery shopping done until later Wednesday.  Call it cutting it close for sure!

We had earlier signed up to host the missionaries, but they ended up being in another area on Thanksgiving, and so it was just our family.  Plus Michael.  Michael called up Miles earlier in the day asking if he could come over and hang out.  So we invited him to stay all day, including dinner, etc.  His mom left a day or two before to take care of her daughter who had just delivered a very, very preemie girl (the baby ended up passing a day or two after Thanksgiving :(  ).  The kids had fun watching the Macy's Parade and a bit of the dog show.  We rode bikes down to the new middle school's playground and the kids played for a bit.  It was cold though - especially on the way home.  Brrrrrr.

All the family helped out with Thanksgiving dinner: Ben was in charge of the turkey, I did the rolls, the boys made two pumpkin pies (one for us and one for our local organization that puts on a free dinner every year), Ben and Emmy made a plum pie, Miles made the sweet potato casserole, Jonas the cranberry salad, Emmy the green bean casserole, and Lucy did the stuffing.  Everything was delicious!  We had a fun game of Catan that evening and then ended with a movie.  It was a super nice day!

On Friday morning Michael wanted to go to Walmart to get a Black Friday deal on an X-box.  So he convinced the boys to want to go too.  :)  So Ben and I and the boys picked up Michael and dropped them off at Walmart, while Ben and I exercised at the Rec.  When we were done we picked up the boys - Michael was able to get his thing, and the boys had each bought a box of Christmas lights.  :)

On Saturday Ben helped the boys do a major clean-up of their room.  We should have gotten a before-picture, but didn't!  They literally spend like 5 hours going through things, throwing away junk (Jonas throwing away more than Miles . . .), organizing, buying a wardrobe thing at Habitat for the boys' extra legos, etc., etc.  It was a major undertaking and now the boys' room looks pretty darn great.  (I can't wait until we can re-do their walls and get them some nice carpet!)

The boys took a break during the room clean-up to go and watch the 4th quarter of our high school's semi-final football game.  Unfortunately, Montrose lost 42-0.  I was thinking that was what the U vs. BYU game would be later that night . . . We enjoyed watching the first half of that game immensely.  But BYU couldn't pull it off in the end.  Oh well.  Congrats, again, to the Utes.  :)

Anyways, it was a good break from our "normal" lives!

Here are my TWO pictures of the entire week:

 Here are the kids (including Michael in the middle) getting ready to feast.  :)

The boys and their CLEAN room.  :)

Emmy's Level 4 State Gymnastics Meet

Emmy's state meet was two weeks later - on November 17th.  We, again, stayed with Jim and Diana - but this time the meet was less than 10 minutes from their house.  So that was awesome!  We also got to stay until Monday - bonus!  Besides the meet, we again had a fabulous time with Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Joe and Aunt Britt, and our super cousins - Emma, Grace, and Nicholas (we missed Sam as he is far away in Brazil on his mission).

Anyways, back to Emmy's meet!  She was scheduled for Sunday, but Coach requested a change of date and so she got in to the Saturday morning session.  She, like Lucy, competed without any other teammates (her other 2 teammates competed later that night).  Emmy said she actually liked competing alone!

So Emmy did do better than her first meet - like by 2-plus points.  So that was awesome.  She looked really good to me!  Unfortunately, her scores weren't great.  Our girls are missing something the other gymnasts are getting . . . I don't mean to blame the Coach (we do love Coach Kirk . . .), but he is not getting it quite right.  Six of his seven gymnasts competing at state were in the bottom 3 or so for all-around.  Now Emmy could definitely push herself more and so she can do a lot to improve as well.  It was just a little sad and hard to see those scores.  It made me want to cry for my little gymnasts.  I could go on and on about things . . . like how this was Emmy's 2nd meet of the season and 4th meet ever - whereas most other girls had competed in 10 meets just this season alone!  But I'll stop at that.  Maybe that's for another post.  Maybe not.

Luckily, Emmy was much happier this meet than her last meet.  She scored pretty well on floor - receiving an 8.7.  So she felt proud of that.  She has to do level 4 again as she didn't score the 34.0 in all-around that is required to move up.  Which is okay to her, thank goodness (it wasn't okay to her the day before, but I think she realized that a lot of the other girls who were scoring higher were competing in their 2nd season of level 4).

Okay, blah, blah, blah.  On to pictures! 

Emmy's vault picture was blurry.  She actually did better than she usually does!  She does not have a great vault, unfortunately.  But it wasn't too bad!  Then it was on to bars.  She didn't tap the floor on her low-bar kip.  Unfortunately, she arched a little bit and didn't make her casts to 90-degree angles.  But overall, I think it was pretty good.

 The on to the beam.  She stuck her cartwheel - yay!  She had a few slight wobbles - nothing too bad.  A few bent legs - nothing too bad.  But her leap and jumps definitely need work - but she'll get it!

 She's so beautiful on the floor.  Her front-handspring was the best I've ever seen (except for that darn loose leg - you'll see on the video!).

As Emmy compete in another session than she was assigned to, she was not allowed to receive any awards.  She would have been last-ish in the events (she was probably competing in the toughest group that Saturday morning), but it still would have been nice to have gotten some recognition.  The meet directors told her they would mail her a plaque, so I hope so!  If Emmy would have competed in her scheduled session, she would have done a little better.  Just FYI.  :)

The seating was horrible at the meet and so my videos aren't super great.  But whatever.  Her rotation was bars, beam, floor, and then vault (so you know who to watch during the video!)

 We went out to lunch as a family afterwards - to celebrate our two awesome and hard-working gymnasts and their great efforts at their respective state meets!

The two gymnast/sisters.  :)

Later that evening the girls and I went back to the meet to watch Emmy's two teammates, Natasha and Jhoselin, compete. Natasha did well - taking 1st on floor and 4th all-around.  She made it to advance to level 5 - yay!  Jhoselin did similar to Emmy, although Emmy did beat her.  We (Emmy and I - Lucy left a little earlier with Ben when he came to give me some headache medicine!) got home at 10:30.  It was a long, but awesome, day.

 Fun girls!

 So cute!

 I was proud of them all!

Lucy's Level 3 State Gymnastics Meets

So it has taken me F O R E V E R to post these!  At least to post Lucy's!  Darn life keeps getting in my way.

Lucy's state meet was on November 3rd.  It was her second meet ever.  She actually didn't do as well as her first meet, but still did alright!  I think she looked pretty great - and definitely adorable.  She "fell" on her beam dismount - I put "fell" in quotes because the dismount is like a fall off the beam.  But she went off the wrong side of the beam and so it was a mistake.  It was a bummer because it of course brought her beam score down - which then lowered her all-around, too, of course.  She ended up being close to last in each event, including all-around.  But she was happy and had a good time and it was a good experience for her!

Both meets were in, or close to, the Denver area.  So we were lucky and got to stay with Grandma and Grandpa Maxwell.  Lucy's meet took us about 75 minutes of driving from their house, so we had an early morning that Saturday as Lucy had to be at the gym at 7:45.  Here I am getting Lucy's hair all done up.  :)

 There she goes!

Okay, so this is annoying but the pictures are going to be all out of order.  I am taking pictures from my phone and Ben's phone and I am too lazy to fix the order of them all as it would take me another F O R E V E R.  Lucy got 11th on vault - out of 16.

 15th on beam.

 12th on bars.

 Hmmm, I think she got 14th on floor and all-around?!

 Lucy showing off her cute earrings that Emmy bought her.

 Lucy waiting for her turn on vault!

 Vault!

 

 Bars!

 Beam!

 Floor!

 

Coach Kirk and Lucy!

Lucy and her fans.  :)  But only some of them - Ben and I were there of course, as well as Grandma Diana and Grandpa Max.

Another fun, and stressful (for Lucy and her mother!) gym meet!