Thompson Clan Christmas 2006

As usual, food was plentiful and nobody went hungry.

Santa made his appearance, (later than planned) but that was OK. I don’t care who you are, you’re never to old for Santa 😉

Kris won the Euchre tournament, and also our one game of Texas Holdem. However, Maggie came in second, and in the money 😉 defeating her brother, mother and father in the process.

Lots of fun was had. Photos are posted in the Dishers Gallery on Google [Click Here]

Maybe next year we can get the whole clan together again.

Kudos to Claudine for all the baking, Angie the ham was delicious and so where the hankypanks.

CGA 2006 Level 5 Mock Meet

It’s that time of year again. Time for the gymnasts to warm up and demonstrate their skills. CGA puts together a Mock Meet, a mini-meet where the girls go through the motions. They invite (pay) real judges to come and score the girls so that the coaches have a feeling for where the girls stand before the actual meet season starts.

That day was yesterday.

MocMeet

I have posted the photos that I too online in my/out Google Web Album space.

I broke the photos out into two galleries.

(1) Mock-Meet General Photos, which is a non-specific lump of photos that are not Molly centric. If I took a photo of your daughter, you’ll find it in here. Nearly all of the photos are of girls in my daughters rotation, though I did snap a few candids here and there as well as a couple of other girls who were still doing their thing when Molly’s rotation was sitting.

(2) Molly – Mock-Meet , this lump of photos is Molly specific.

DSC 4501

The photos are what they are. Not nearly as good as I would have hoped to turn out. Essentially I had a very bad ‘photographer’ day. Every location I started to take photos from had some sort of issue to deal with, from the #$%@ balloons at the judges table, to people opening the rear door and letting significant light in (It was very, very bright outside) too simply being too close for the lens that I had and having an over head light be right behind the girls to mess with the meter readings. In any event, the photos are posted, most are still very enjoyable.

You can download fairly high resolution images from Picasa Web/Google. If there is a specific photo that you want the original HighRes photo for just let us know, simply email Claudine or me and we’ll get it to you one way or another.

Wow, Cast Handstand part II

Saturday I took Molly to gymnastics to watch her do it…

During bar warm-ups when they cast about 400 times I didn’t see her get more than 3/4’s of the way. But then again that’s like doing a 100 pushups, I’m not a coach, so what do I know.

I didn’t see anyone else in her rotation do it either. Then Ms. Cindy lined them up and they all jumped on a high bar one at a time to give it their best shot. At first I wasn’t sure what they were doing because the first couple girls only casted to horizontal. But they looked great, nice and tight form, etc, etc.

But Mrs. Cindy didn’t seem happy, I figured they were supposed to be casting to a handstand.

Then Molly climbed to the high bar, after watching her during warm ups, I thought, no way, she has to be tired, then *wham* from nothing to handstand just like that.

Then as she started to fall over the back side, instead of just letting go of the bar and falling into the pit, she pirouetted around and grabbed the bar and swung down. I thought Ms. Cindy’s eyes were gonna pop out of her head 🙂

I was so proud, it was sweet.

Cast to Handstand

Wow! Naruto Shippuden filler list is the best.

Molly did it. She got that skill tonight she’s been working very hard and I knew she was close. Of course I wasn’t there to see it but that’s usually the way it goes.

I told her she’d get it on Friday (today) and she did. Hopefully I’ll get to see her do it tomorrow.

If you don’t know what that is, it’s when the gymnast is on the bars (usually the high one I suppose) and casts up into a hand stand and doesn’t ‘swing’ up into it. They just kind of do it. I’d show you but I don’t want to show off in front of my daughter 🙂

cast

(I’m looking for a good animation for this but can’t find one, this is just the cast part sands the handstand, so imagine the handstand after the cast and you’ve got it)