Meet Season

Megan's meet season has gone by quickly this year! We are so incredibly proud of how hard she has worked throughout her years of gymnastics, and sadly, this will be her last competition season. She's ready to hang up her leotards and try out some other things. 

She had her first meet in August and it was a fun Barbie inspired meet! 

In this meet she placed 4th on Beam, 7th on Bars and 6th All Around. 

She's gotten really good at doing her own hair this season! 

Floor continues to be one of her hardest events, but she keeps working so hard to improve her scores and correct her mistakes. 

She has so many medals! We are definitely framing a few with her competition leotards so she'll have a keepsake of her seasons. 

I missed her 2nd meet of the year while I was out of town for the Alabama game, but my parents and her aunt were able to be there to cheer her on. 

Her 3rd meet was definitely her best of the season! She placed 6th on Bars, 4th on Vault, tied for 1st on Beam with a score of 9.15 and placed 3rd All Around! 

Seeing her on the podium was definitely a proud moment! Right after I took this picture, they clarified that she actually tied for 1st! 

We will never forget all of her friends and team mates that she's trained with the last 3 years. 

The Judges Cup meet is always a fun meet of the year! There's always a theme and costume parade. Megan decided to dress as a gumball machine! 

She placed 9th on Vault and 9th All Around, 8th on Bars, and had a beam score of 9.225 which landed her in 4th place, but it was her highest beam score of the season! 

We grabbed some dinner and a milkshake after this meet! 

She competed in Corpus Christi the first weekend of October. She was excited that we were able to drive down and get a hotel the night before. 

Her bars routine looked great!!!

And you know, I didn't write down any of her placements for this meet! I keep track of all of her scores from every meet on my phone, but I was watching her meet, the awards, and the Texas OU football game at the same time! 

She did have her highest vault score of 9.1 though! 

And afterwards, we stopped at the beach for a few minutes, but the weather had turned cold and we didn't stay long! 

We did celebrate with chocolate cake though!!!

Megan has one more meet ahead of her this year. She'll compete in South State back in Corpus Christi on October 29th. She has to score a 36 total to make it to the state competition, and so far, she hasn't scored a 36 all year, but she did come close wtih a 35.2 one meet! I know she'll keep working hard and either way, we'll be so proud of all that she's learned through gymnastics! 

 

Our Last Days in Colorado

2 1/2 months after our Colorado trip ended, I'm finally wrapping up with our last blog post. Whew. Technology is difficulty sometimes. 

At this point in our trip we are staying just outside of Cripple Creek, Co. We were camping on the back side of Pike's Peak and about an hour from Colorado Springs. 

And do you know what's in Colorado Springs?

The Airforce Academy.

And of course, DJ knew a guy and it's never a true football family vacation unless you visit another university. So, he called up his friend, and we had a VIP tour to the football offices at Airforce. 

We also saw their ice hockey arena and chatted with a female GA who is learning to be a pilot and was interviewed by the national news. She was pretty bad ass and awesome to talk to. She may have also tried to convince the girls to go in to the airforce after high school, and in the back of my head, I was all like 'nope, not a chance."

We stopped by to see the B52 monument, because DJ's dad worked on B52s while he was in the airforce.

After our tour, we stopped for lunch. At a real restaurant, and we all had cell phone service. So while we were waiting on our table, I looked up and every single person was on a device. 

That evening we all kind of split up, had some errands, ate a quick dinner of whatever leftovers we could find at the campsite and went to bed. 

The next day, we visited cliff dwellings. Somewhere, behind the girls in this picture is Pike's Peak. We had talked about driving up, but you have to make reservations and it's $50.00 just to drive to the top. 

So, we explored cliff dwellings. 

When I was little, my grandparents took us to Mesa Verde and this is like a very mini Mesa Verde. 

Then we drove through Garden of the Gods. This would have been fun to get out and hike, but we were all meeting back in the afternoon and our time was limited. But, it was easily driveable, and there were so many people! So, we drove through, took a few pictures, and ketp on driving. 

Then, we all met up and went to the famous Mollie Kathleen Mine and all went 1,000 feet underground. 

I won't lie, we were all a little terrified, but the mine tour was cool. This is the 2nd time we've done a mine tour- I'm not sure I need to do one again, but it's fun for the kids to see, and the elevator ride down and up 1,000 feet was pretty petrifying in a good way. 

This may have been one of the only group photos we took the entire trip. 

We drove in to Cripple Creek, and took the girls to.......

A Parlour House!

This parlour house was one of the most famous in Cripple Creek and I was excited it was open. We walked in and the lady was like "I see young girls here, you all do know what this place is." And I was all, "Yes, it's a hotel." Wink, Wink. And she was like "no, it's a brothel." Gretchen of course knew what it was, and about halfway through the tour Megan and Amelia figured it out too. Adalyn still has no idea, but I was like, come on lady, we want to see this old house straight out of a western movie, but can you give us the G rated version, and she definitely did not. 

Apparently, business was good here. 

The rest of Cripple Creek was a bummer. It's a bunch of casinos and supposedly there are donkeys roaming the streets, but we didn't see any. There were also like 2 restaurants, and one wouldn't seat us because they were short staffed and we had too big of a group. The other was in the back of a bar, and those miners or casion goers were enjoying their happy hour. 

The next day we packed up and headed toward home. 

We had a quick overnight stay in Amarillo and made it home the following day. 

Our vacation was full of memories. I'm so glad we went. I hope this is a trip the girls will remember for a long time! 

Colorado Trip Adventures

On our final day in Buena Vista, we opted to take the girls downtown to a little lake area for paddleboarding. The lake was small, the water was easy, because while we thought we'd have more time on this trip to paddleboard, we really didn't. The other option was paddleboarding in the river, and I'm pretty sure we would've hurt ourselves. This little pond area in the middle of downntown was perfect. 

While we took turns paddleboarding, the little girls played at the playground. 

We had a blast until it started to sprinkle and if I remember correctly, we also ended up falling off. Not a graceful moment for sure. 

But after our paddelboarding trip, I had a spa visit that was heavenly. Especially because I'd been a few days without a good shower, sleeping on a hard bed, and had been eaten alive by mosquitos. 

While I was at the spa visit, the girls and DJ were packing up the camper. 

We ended our time in BV with a pizza dinner, and the next day we were off to our final campground of the trip. 

On that morning, we got up and drove Cripple Creek. We dumped the tanks, got set up, and drove in to Victor for laundry day! 

While our laundry was going, we walked around the town. I mentioned before, but I have a thing for cute little towns, and Victor was definitely adorable, but gosh there was nothing there- ha! 

President Rosevelt stopped and did a speech here on one of his tours, so that was neat. 

After we all did laundry, we went back to the campground for dinner. 

Look at that cozy camper in the woods. 

Sister-cousins. 

All the guys hanging out... when you go a few weeks boondocking, you don't bother shaving. 

That night, we cooked dinner and roasted s'mores and marshmallows around the campfire. 

At this point in our trip, our time was nearing an end, and I think we were all getting antsy to head home, but we also had some more exploring to do!!!