Junior Olympics, baby!

And, Rowan's 8th! She got to sleep in, and we surprised her with a very impromptu breakfast party in the hotel lobby. Grammy and PaPa stopped and got 2 balloons, which we put on her chair. Olga and Val, from the gym, and their mom Natalya joined us, it was so cool. Then it was off to the room to put on the warpaint (lots of sparkly make-up) and head to the college for the competition.The competition was kind of a blur, I cried all through her ball routine and didn't even really see it, because I knew it was the Very Last.There was a fire alarm in the middle of age group awards, which was interesting.

Rowan won her age group for her ball routine (I did get to see it, on video!), I forget hoop (5th??), and not so hot on floor.(Normally one of her best!) They only awarded out to 12th place, so their was a whole lot of girls who got no awards at all, and I was worried! She ended up 3rd all around, in her age group. But overall, she didn't place in anything but ball, 6th best in the whole country. Which certainly doesn't suck!It was sort of a downer seeing the podium though- a lot of girls on it for the overall awards were girls she had been beating all year. Given all that is going on in her life right now though, it was no surprise she wouldn't be at her best. And how surprising her best event was *ball*, which has been far and away her very worst all year. You just never know, I guess!

She is hidden behind the 5th place girl in this photo, the over all (every Level 4 who qualified as one of the 10 best in their region) ball awards.

More to come- we're pretty sad right now because it was final goodbye day to Olga, Val, Brianna, Nicole, Becky and Coach Konstantza. I know we'll be back, but good grief, this just sucks.

What we've been up to!

Lots of gymnastics- here is Gryphon enjoying the best part of practice, snack time.

Lots of goodbyes- here are Rowan and Libby, who met waaayyy back when Rowan did artistic (regular bars and beam) gymnastics. They are such good friends. Libby wrote Rowan a journal full of entries that will just break your heart.

Gryphon and Gracie- who met waiting with their moms for their little sisters to get done with the gym! They bonded over a mutual love of all things Harry Potter.


As for Mark, he has been hanging out at palaces, like this one. Also scouting the Russian section of Seoul for a gym, and walking Cleo, and oh yeah- working. Our household goods are in Korea already, as is my beloved van! So that's great news...except the small shipment that was supposed to be there "early" is no where to be found, and it has all the girls bedding and ALL my home school stuff in it, so....not loving that!

Tomorrow: leave the house for good, last gymnastics practice, stay at a hotel. Leave early Thursday for Virginia Beach, where grammy and PaPa will join us. Watch Rowan kick butt. ;) Watch Nicole kick more butt. Drive back Sunday, stay in a hotel at Dulles with the cat, and we're off. I already have a playdate at the Yongsan pool lined up for Wednesday afternoon with some area homeschoolers, so lets hope our plane gets in on time!!

I'll be posting as much as I can, on our big adventure!

Cleo is in Korea!

Due to complete morons at Delta Airlines, Cleo had to fly to Korea unaccompianed, as cargo. I was NOT happy about this, as you can imagine! We got her kennel all set up, with a guinea pig bottle for water and a pad for any accidents, and made the reservation as soon as Mark got a phone number in Korea.I wrote in Korean all over the cage, as you can see, just in case!

The girls and I drove Cleo up to Dulles, to a big loud warehouse. I was pretty nervous- she had to be there 4 hours before her flight. I put her on the scale, in her cage, and went into an office to do paperwork. When I went back to say a final goodbye, she was actually laying down, calm! That made me think m-a-y-b-e, just ,maybe, she would do all right. When we got home ,an hour later, I called, and they checked on her and...she was laying down! No barking, no stress. Started to feel better.

I obsessively checked the flight status (15 hours in the air!) and Mark was under strict orders to call me as SOON as he had eyes-on her at Incheon. He did, about 4 am, and she was ...you guessed it...laying down in her kennel! Korean workers kept coming by, reading her name off the kennel (in Korean) and talking to her, "Oh! Cleo! Cleo!". Glad I thought of that! :)

Mark got her home, bathed her, and she crashed. She had a few days of jet lag- crashing at 4-5 pm and waking up early wanting out, but has been just fine! I've seen her on Skype, and she seems pretty happy hanging out with Mark. We can't wait to join them!

Here she is, in our house in Korea, on our bed!

We have a house!! In Korea!

Mark has been taking pictures for us sicne he arrived in Korea Monday night, we run to the computer first thing every morning to see what he's sent. Here is the big hotel on Yongsan where he is staying, the Dragon Hill Lodge.

And in today's batch of photos- our house! I wanted pictures of just whatever the housing looked like, but it appears he got a house already. Our door is the upstairs door on the right.
Rowan wanted to know about parks, this playground is right next door.

The interior (I won't bore you with them all) is white tile floors (eeeeww) but otherwise not too bad. Small, outdated, but overall about what you'd expect for military housing. This is looking into the kitchen from what will be the school/play room.

We can't wait!!

Regional Championships!

OK, so the photos are from the video camera, and they suck. Also if they are sideways, they stay that way! But regionals went AWESOME!

First Gryphon, who had her best scores ever! Her first year goal is "not last", just like Rowans was last year. And she made it, all year! RG is not something you just decide to do one day, it takes years of very painful stretching to get flexible enough to do the skills. She's been working all year though, and she has come a long, long way. We're super proud of her!

And then Rowan swept all of the Level 4 events- hoop, ball and floor, no one came close to her scores. Of 54 girls, she is 1st in everything. Regional Champ! So that means she's going to Junior Olympics in Virginia Beach on her birthday!!

I knew she would make the regional team, thats the top 10 girls (regardless of age- up to 15). There are 6 regions in the US, and the top 10 from each region's championships go to Compulsory Junior Olympics. She *had* beat every girl in our region at one meet or another, but never all at the *same time*. Well, she did it today, when it really counted! Her floor routine got an 11.4 out of a possible 12, the highest score I've ever seen in Level 4 this year. She totally brought her A game. Knowing how hard she worked, she deserved every bit of it, too- this has been a tough year. We're very proud of her drive and hard work!

And now the fun video! All the routines for both girls are on Youtube, go here: http://www.youtube.com/user/camibami

But I will put a few on the blog, too!

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! ;)