Girls' Travel Meet to Florida

That first week in January, the girls went with their coaches and teammates to Fort Pierce, Florida for their travel meet. It's their frist meet of the season, too - which is about a month earlier than usual! So skills are still being honed in on, but the travel isn't really about the meet as much as it is about the travel. :)

The girls flew out of Montrose on Thursday afternoon and had an entire day and night of flying, driving, etc. By the time they got to their lodgings, it was midnight (our time). Big day! Luckily Friday was beach day and the day was just spent lounging at the hotel and pool and beach - which was a walk out their hotel. The weather was perfect (80 and sunny) and the girls had a lot of fun.

Saturday was the meet day. When you weren't at the meet, you were getting ready or shopping at the mall. Team dinner that night. The meet went well, especially for the first (and early) one of the season. The girls didn't place particularly high, but overall did well and were fairly happy/content with their performances. Emmy had a good floor, but did fall out of her front tumbling pass. But she still pulled out an 8.775. Vault was good (well one of them ha) and she got an 8.75. Bar she is still working on her dismount and so had to do a drop off the bars basically and so her starting value was only a 9.4. But she was able to get an 8.3 which is really great actually. Beam she had one fall (the stupid full turn that gets her a lot!) and scored an 8.25. She ended up qualifying for state so at least that pressure is already off her!

Lucy did well, too. Her floor was an 8.85, which she was hoping for higher but still a good score. Vault she got a 9.0 and that was great. Bars she got a 7.25 and was, of course, super bummed about that. Bars is her weakest event, but she usually does a lot better than that. But this is her first meet as a diamond and the bar is higher (pun intended ha). So I think she loses more deductions on her elements than last year. Hopefully she can fine-tune it and score better. She has had a bit of a mental break on beam - unable to throw her back handspring . . . she's been working on getting over it for the past couple of months and is making headway, but not enough to compete it. So she didn't end up competing on the beam. 

All in all, a good meet for the girls. Here is Lucy's video of the meet. And here is Emmy's video.

Sunday they drove back closer to the hotel and then spent the afternoon at some lake place just playing on the toys in the water. A good trip for sure!

I got just a couple pictures from them:

The Seniors - Emmy, Rish (Marisha) and Liv (Olivia).

Driving in the car . . . Emmy and Liv in front and Gracie, Lucy, and Alaina in back.

Gordon!

We sure love Gordon! He turns 6 months at the end of this month. He's still a lot of puppy, but he is also really great. His biggest negative behavior: jumping up on his anytime he comes inside, we come home, etc. Working on that one . . . He likes to chew up anything he finds in the backyard, but surprisingly doesn't do that inside. I think he has attachment disorder - he wants to be right next to either Ben or myself. He wants to come into the bathroom, sits at the tops of the stairs (there's a gate that doesn't let the dogs up) when we go up, and scratches insistently at times when he's outback and knows we're inside (oh, another negative). But all in all, he's so adorable and we all love him to pieces. He likes to sleep in odd positions:  

Gordon and Bella cuddling up on a cold morning.

3 dog house - but they do so well inside, usually pretty chill. With the occasional mouthing matches instigated by Gordon.

We tried to recreate the little Lucy and Brigham picture with Gordon. Haha.

So happy to have Gordon as part of our family!