And so it begins...!

We drove to the Port of Baltimore to say goodbye to the van yesterday. I miss it already!

And movers come tomorrow, so I am packing suitcases that we will live out of for the next 2 months. As you can see, they are pretty huge!

Mark and Cleo leave Sunday, after packers and movers and Regional Championships all this week. I'm tired just thinking about it.

Pack to packing I go...

Woo hoo! Getting so excited now. We bought massive suitcases (I'll post pictures of Rowan inside one soon!) and cleaned out the playroom. Getting c-l-o-s-e-r!! To bide the time and distract me from just worrying about everything I need to do, I have been perusing Flickr's Korea photos. These are from there- not mine! Above, Seoul.

What I am looking forward to most- FOOD! I totally plan to eat my way throughout the country. I've gone so far as to make a list of regional specialties from all over Korea, and the plan is to travel and eat, travel and eat.

First stop is Namdaemun Market in Seoul, as per the girls' request. I made the mistake of saying it opens at like 3 am, so if we were messed up from the time change, we could go there. So now the girls are banking on a 3 am trip to Namdaemun. It's beyond description really- you'll have to wait for photos.

More great photos of Namdaemun are here if you are bored!

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Namdaemun%20market&w=all&s=int

A great Ohio meet this weekend!

We were in Columbus, Ohio for a rhythmic meet this weekend, and it was great! Here is Gryphon, with medals- wahoo!

Rowan won 1st in every event and all around, first time she's ever totally swept all events, though she has been 1st all around before. She sort of looks bored in this picture, I believe she is thinking "Yeah, yeah, I know. I totally rock."

And...they got a *trophy*!!!!!!!

Now, our gym has lots of trophies, but not one of them for the rhythmic team. They are for the artistic girls and boys teams, which seem to get big honkin trophies for everything. Rhythmic never, ever gives out trophies. But they did team awards at this meet, they combined the top 3 scores from each team in the level, and our team got 2nd place! So now there is a trophy, woo hoo!

Next meet is (gulp) Regional Championships. Then maybe Junior Olympics and then...Korea!

Rowan photos (aka circus freak)

I really love the cool "s" shape her body makes here. Not so much the rug in the foreground, but I'm hoping a frame will cover it, because I can't crop this any different. Whoops.

This looks sort of easy. But when I tried it, my foot was like 3 feet from my head. Go ahead, try it. Ouch.

These are too blown out, but good shots otherwise unfortunately. Gryphon is a dream to photograph- nice facial expressions. Rowan always looks crazy or mentally challenged. All the other shots of these poses are- you guessed it- in the crazy category.

I am pretty sure that if you do this stuff long enough, eventually your body just stays this way. And you have to walk around bent in half, with your head hanging to your bum. Lets hope I'm wrong about that.

These photos were *so* fun to take. I am constantly amazed at what her beautiful little body can do. You should see the girl's abs- she has a 6 pack!! So much fun.

New leotard for Gryphon

Gryphon has always swam, but this past fall she decided to take a break (we hope) from swimming and try rhythmic gymnastics with her little sister. I bought her a used, not so great but serviceable competition leotard off eBay. Unfortunately a few weeks ago it somehow (cough cough Mark! cough cough) got put in the *dryer* and shrunk. It was a polyester blend, and polyester shrinks. Badly. And we had 9 days until a meet!

So a wonderful woman at the gym made her a plain black one, and I painted it with fabric paint and put a gazillion rhinestones on it. I must say, I am super proud of it- it looks so beautiful and its very unique. The cherry blossoms turned out wonderfully- they are also covered in rhinestones. Gryphon loves it!

I set up the tacky photo studio in the basement and took some photos of her in it today. They turned out pretty good considering my "studio" is lamps with the shades off, aluminum foil over cookie sheets for reflectors, $4 worth of nylon for diffuser screens, and some sheets!

I haven't edited the photos of Rowan, but they will follow sometimes soon. For now, enjoy gorgeous Gryphon and her brand new leotard, courtesy of her Bedazzling Momma!

Fun at Great Wolf Lodge

To celebrate Mark being done in Norfolk (he was there all of January and February) we went to the Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg, VA for the weekend.

That place is *so* cool! The waterpark is amazing, and they also have neat games and stuff to play.

The kids and Mark on the Tornado.

This bogey board ride wa neat- you flop down and try to ride the board against the really strong current. Most kids, especially little ones, got flung back and off. Gryphon did better than average on it and was able to steer soem through the waves back and forth.

Rowan was apparently a surf champion in her past life- she rose on her knees, and steered, and stayed on a really long time! Then she tried to STAND UP (the whole place was yelling "no! no!" at her) and actually surf. Its not a surfing ride, by the way.

"That was wicked!!"

We spent the whole time in our bathing suits or pajama pants, it was a great mini vacation. If you have one in your area, I highly recommend going!

Ford's Theater

Ford's Theater re-opened this past weekend, and of course we had to take Gryphon, who loves all things Lincoln.The girls listened to a lecture by the park ranger I call "Civil War for Dummies" . I suppose it needs to be for the foreign visitors, though! The Presidential box was eerie- hard to imagine Lincoln being shot during a loud moment of the play, John Wilkes Booth leaping to the stage, the chaos.

They even had Lincoln's coat he was wearing that night on display, complete with sort of macabre historic bloodstains.

Then we hit the Korean restaurant (gotta build up Mark's kimchi tolerance before we hit Korea!) and just had a great family day.

Happy Birthday to meeeee!

Look what I got for my birthday:

Roses!

And snow! The first snow of the year!

And...a houseful of muddy, wet kids and all their snow pants, coats, gloves, hats, boots, socks and other flotsam and jetsam!

Happy birthday, Momma! ;)

Fun videos to share!

Here is Rowan rocking the freehands (no apparatus) routine. She cleaned up at this meet! 2nd all around, and 1st in hoop (finally- she's been so close!)Gryphon totally rocked the hoop event, a clean, no mistakes routine that earned her 6th place (thats really good!).

We drove out with a gymnastics buddy, Becky, to freezing cold Ohio for this meet. It was literally a degree- yuck! Gryphon was great fun to watch, she is super expressive and just a joy to watch. The girl has some serious flair. She wasn't nervous at all, I am in awe of her confidence and moxie, this was her first meet, and she's been doing this all of 6 months.

A quick gymnastics meet update:

I dunno if anyone cares, but the score mix-up at the meet was ironed out, and Rowan came in 3rd all around. Pretty cool. Cooler, if she got proper scores *at* the meet (they switched one of hers with another girl!) and got that 3rd place medal instead of the generic "great job" medal, but still cool.

Go elasti-girl, go!

New York in winter

We had a gymnastics meet in Rahway, NJ, this weekend. The girls and I went up early on Friday, and hopped aboard the train to go into NYC.Rowan saw a rat the size of our house cat in the subway, but we think the NY subways have "personality" so I guess that just adds to it.We got off at Columbus Circle and headed into Central Park, which was freezing cold but still so neat. Of course our purpose was to see NYC #1 attraction: the statue of Balto, hero of the 192? serum run in Alaska.

We also walked around and rode the carousel, climbed on rocks, all the typical Central Park stuff. But it was cold, cold, COLD!

After the park and some 5th Ave exploring, we ate dinner at a cute little diner and warmed up with hot chocolate. We sat by the window and people watched, great fun in a city like New York!


We took the train back to Rahway and did some swimming with the girls' teammates, and got up early the next morning for the meet.

Rowan did *fabulous*. New York has the most rhythmic gymnasts of any area in the US, so the competition at this meet is the stiffest all season. And she did wonderfully! It was really fun to watch. I know its not all about "winning", but sometimes, it sure is cool to see your kid come in at the top!

Above, warm ups (Rowan is in orange) and below, the hoop awards- Rowan got 2nd! (Out of 16, pretty cool!)

We are really going to miss NYC and this fun meet. It was sad for the girls to say goodbye to Balto, knowing they wouldn't be back for some time. I am glad they have the opportunity to visit all these neat places, though. The trade-offs of military life, I suppose!

We're off to Ohio (not such a glamorous location!) for a meet next weekend, Gryphon's *first*. Stay tuned for more pictures, and possibly video. I had more technical difficulty at this meet with video- namely, Gryphon did the taping and she taped other people, not her sister. Which is cool, now we can watch them. But we can't watch Rowan!?! Oh well, I tried all year last year and only successfully taped 2 routines at the last meet, so I can't really hold it against her! But hopefully, there will be video of next weekends meet for both girls!

Christmas a little bit late!

I left my camera cord in Virginia, so I couldn't post any photos during Christmas while we were in St. Louis. We also had a flooded basement to come to, so things have been a little crazy here. Now back in the groove (sort of at least) so here are the belated Christmas posts.
We went downtown and saw the Capitol tree (from Montana this year) and the White House tree. We will miss having this stuff in our backyard!

The White House tree and Washington monument in the background.

Then it was off to St Louis, to stay with Mark's parents. The girls enjoyed seeing the cousins, especially Adam who was home for Christmas for the first time in many years.

Gryphon rounded up the little cousins and her sister and put on a Christmas concert.

Cleo liked being "Christmas Cleo" with her jingle bell collar. Sam ran around yelling "Its Christmas Cleo!! Christmas Cleo!!" every time he caught sight of her. Too cute. Sam has one tone of voice only- loud. It is adorable!

Christmas morning brought the much-anticipated Wii, Santa was predictable this year. ;) We did make the girls go on a scavenger hunt for it though.

Goosebumps Horror Land was a big hit with Rowan- Gryphon and I prefer Animal Crossing. Its a totally pointless game, and its great. If you play, give us your friend code so we can visit your town! We don't have the Wii online yet but will soon.

Merry Christmas to everyone, and here's to a happy 2009!