Kansas City Gymnastics videos

Floor routine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-K3pyEtFyw
Pommel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdZkXpqabnY
Rings
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrRGLnTnTz4
High bar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC-m3lAgwxI
Parallel bars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhIMGr0OTnA

I managed to find his scores on the gym website.  He definitely had some competition, but gained a large amount on the pommel to keep him in the lead.

Greta's choir concert

Maggie and I went to Greta's choir concert last night.  She wanted me to take some video to show the folks back home, here they are......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkCmizbTC4g&list=UUAOWX-wOARFYsMlXtYv82vA&index=2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwzCqE2uc7A&list=UUAOWX-wOARFYsMlXtYv82vA&index=1

Weekend in Kansas City

Ben and I went to Kansas City this weekend for a gymnastics meet. Our first stop was heaven a.k.a. UGas to fill up the car.  You can tell he was pretty excited

We stayed at the Embassy Suites near the airport.  Ben loves everything about hotel rooms.  The first thing he had to do was check out the free lotion!!!!

A bunch of us went out to dinner at a BBQ place.  This was the plate of ribs that one of the kids ate!!!!

They covered themselves in BBQ sauce pretty successfully.  Ben and I had shrimp that was pretty good

Ben and Sean won the level 6 team award.

Not sure of the individual events, but Ben won first place overall

Science class

Ben is in the kitchen, teaching Maggie science.  I hear him telling her to be careful with something
I say "Ben, maybe you should put the matches away"
Ben waves his hand in my direction and says "Ugh, I'm a professor......."
well, all right then, I guess the house isn't in danger of succumbing to a science experiment (yet)

Affiliate Cup

This is Crossfit.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r6fLsQb5_gg

Crossfit 26 came 3rd overall.  What a great team!!!!

Don't do this......

Ben walked up to Starbucks after school, had a white mocha and read his book until I picked him up at 3:30.  Then he came home, sat me down, and told me all about how the principal from the middle school visited today to talk about moving to 7th grade.  He was so excited about choosing electives, having a locker and french fries in the cafeteria!!!

I am so not ready for him to grow up, but I have no choice.....

Busy day just running around

We had the pancake breakfast PTO fundraiser at Hudson yesterday. I dragged Greta and Vaiva out of bed and took them with me at 7 am to help out at the event. They need a set number of volunteer hours as part of the American Councils program and this was an ideal opportunity for them.  I was so busy at the event, that  I didn't have time to take any pictures or video of the pancake flipping, but the event was a huge success.  We had over 300 people and the line for pancakes was out of the room at one point!!!!

After that, we had to rush around to take Ben to gymnastics and then I took Greta and Vaiva to the mall.  Maggie and I ran into the Crossfit Affiliate games at Crossfit St Louis to support the 26 team for a while.  I'm glad I wasn't on the team, the workouts were killer!!!

After that, we went to pick Ben up from gymnastics and I took them to Bread Co to eat lunch (yes, more carbohydrates for the kids). 

By the time I got home, Greta called and wanted me to pick them up, so I got them and we went to Global Foods-a great store of us foreigners to get out fix of home foods!!!
After making dinner, I fell asleep in front of the TV!!!!!

Meet Me in St Louis 2013

The big gymnastics meet of the year was last weekend. Ben won first place in every event and overall. Unfortunately, as the boys get older, they tend to drop out and the SLGC team is the only one that has level 6 boys.  That means that he is competing against his team mates, but no others.  I can see why they lose enthusiasm when they have no competition.  Still, he looked very happy at the start of it.

They started with pommel as the first event.  I think it's Ben's strongest event, maybe because he always does well with it and so many other boys don't do well. 

This is a great picture of him on the rings-look at those arm muscles.  He is so strong these days

My new camera has a sports mode where it takes a succession of pictures.  I got some great ones of him doing his floor exercise, although they are a little blurred with the speed he's traveling at!!!!

He definitely looks like he's enjoying himself!!!

Oh look, he knows he won everything-SMUG!!!!

Maggie-the orthodontist's nightmare!!!

Maggie has been in the SLU orthodontic program for a while.  They had taken X rays of her mouth and decided on a course of action to try to remedy some of her problems so that when she is older she won't need to be in braces for too long.  She had a palate spreader put in a few weeks ago and has not been able to keep her hands off it since.  The last time I was going to adjust it, I saw that she had managed to pry the whole thing away from one side and it was at least half an inch away from her teeth.  Not sure if she managed to pry it off her teeth or if she moved it by sucking her fingers, but it was quite spectacular.  I told the orthodontist that I bet he'd never seen anything like it before.  He said it was quite impressive!!!!

Back to school

Everyone was back to school/work yesterday.  Ben was very excited to go back to school and see his friends.  Maggie was so anxious that she didn't sleep at all.  I made the mistake of telling her that her routine was going to change this semester.  She will be seeing different specialists this semester because Special School District has taken over her math and reading tuition. 
It's amazing how much our lives change when school starts up again.  I feel like I went from having all the time in the World to running to stand still.  As I was driving over to pick Maggie up, I realized that I dislike school way more as an adult than I ever did as a child!!!!
Time to think about homework, making school lunches, girl scouts, PTO.......

It's almost time.....

The Winter break is coming to an end and I think we are all ready to get back into the work/school routine.  Ben even posted on facebook and said he was ready to go back to school and was missing his friends.  We have been catching up on our sleep BIG TIME!!!  Ben has been sleeping almost 12 hours every day.  They are going to be hard to wake on Monday morning.

We went to the City Museum this past week and met another school family there.  I took this picture of the slides in the cave area, they never cease to amaze me

The kids spent a long time in the caves this time.

We also went skating at Steinberg.  It was really cold this time, but of course the kids don't feel it at all.

As you can see from this photo, Maggie spends most of the time rolling around on the ice (and eating it!!)

NYE 2012

We went to the Webster Groves recreation center last night to hang out for a little while and watch the fireworks display.  We took Anna Lemley with us....

We went over to Anna's after the fireworks and even managed to stay up until after midnight!!!!!

Not moving too quickly today though.....