Ice Challenge '19: Where Chairs Not Dare to Tread

Hi gang.

By now, you folks are well-aware that our daughter, Abby, has been involved in gymnastics for the last year or so.  This only makes sense, seeing how she's always been a natural-born daredevil, doing handstands and cartwheels, crashing into stationary objects and incurring all sorts of bruises and scrapes for years. 

She's always enjoyed gymnastics (more or less because of Netflix's treasure trove of kid-friendly, American Girl movies based on the sport), but she's really gotten into gymnastics since she's been enrolled in the Midland Gymnastic Center, and over the last year we've gotten to watch her once a week tumbling, flipping, and doing all sorts of stuff on bars and matts and beams.

Today was her annual exhibition, which was perplexingly titled Ice Challenge 2019.  We invited several of the grandparents to come out to this, assuming that the Midland Gymnastic Center could accommodate multiple family members for each student participating.  The complex doesn't have much as far as spectator space goes, but we assumed they had somewhat of a game plan - it's not like they'd expect a hundred or so adults to stand around shoulder-to-shoulder, crammed together like they're at a punk concert or something, right?

Fool me once, Midland Gymnastic Center. . .

Umm. . . how about, 'NO.'

They had only set up about two dozen chairs on the ground level, with about ten additional chairs available in the usual parent viewing spot located on the second floor (which overlooks the gymnasium - generally where we watch Abby during practice sessions.)  While adults were jostling for position over these chairs - which were located in the far corner of the gym - I staked out a position on the edge of the hallway that provided a decent vantage position that enabled me to shoot any area of the gym floor without issue.  We still had to stand for an hour-and-a-half, crammed together among strangers, but at least we got some decent pictures.

Anyway, I ended up editing a bunch of pictures I took for some friends of ours, but I didn't get around to editing the pics of our child, so I apologize in advance for the less-than-ideal lighting and graininess (the lighting especially - I hate shooting inside gymnasiums.)  I'm also not captioning these up as much, seeing how they're all pretty self-explanatory.

Check it out, folks. . .

The Midland Gymnastics Center.  This place consistently smells of sweat and stinky feet.

Gymnasts.  There were a few different groups participating during our time slot today (they held exhibitions all day, in order to cut down on audience congestion.)

Abby (in the black and pink long-sleeve leotard), doing some warm-up stretches with her class.

I can do, like, twelve push-ups myself now.  In a row.  I'm pretty proud of this.

Some cartwheels.  The different groups spent some time just going back and forth across this large, carpeted area, switching between various round offs, cartwheels, flips, backbends, summersaults, etc.

Waiting for her turn on whatever the hell this thing is called. . .

Ah, yes. . . it's The Boulder.  I should've known.

On to the next area of the gym (the groups rotated so they weren't all crammed together into one place. . . like their parents and grandparents were.)

Kris gave Alayna her phone in order for Alayna to sneak out closer in order to get some video, but Alayna recorded a lot of video, so the file sizes are too large to upload here.  Again, sorry about that - yell at Blogger, not me.  You can see Abby falling into the foam pit in the background, here.

You can barely see here there in the back, doing some flippity-stuff on the bars (I wish I would've brought a telephoto lens with me.)

Now on to the beams. . . or whatever they're called.

Gotta love the dramatic poses. . .

At the end of the exhibition, they had each girl come up to accept a medal and take a turn posing like this so that their families could take a picture of them.  Most kids held the pose for a few seconds so that folks could have time to snap a few with their phones.  Abby (of course) threw up this pose and immediately turned around to return to her spot on the carpet in about a second. . . pictures and cameras be damned.  Miraculously, my dad was able to capture this at the exact moment she was in the correct pose - there was, like, a nanosecond of room for error with this.

Medals for participation.  Welcome to Midland.

Hopefully next year, if Abby's still into this whole gymnastics thing, Midland Gymnastics can try and order a few more dozen f***ing chairs for people.  My back is killing me.

- Brian

An Accuweather Winter Warning Wonderland

Happy 1214 Day, brothers and sisters.

Teaching definitely has its perks, folks - don't let anyone tell you it doesn't.  Without a doubt, one of the greatest perks has to be paid Snow Days.  A paid day off of work?  Don't mind if I do.

This stretch of Waldo is horrible.  I don't think salt trucks know it exists.

We're half-way through December, and so far things have been pretty quiet up here in Central Michigan.  Yesterday, however, we saw a full-scale winter assault blast the Tri-City area, dumping a crapload of snow on us in a matter of hours.  The morning was actually pretty uneventful, so the kids ended up going in to school and I had to go in to work. . . but by the late morning, the district higher-ups must have realized that the buses wouldn't be able to run their routes by the time school let out in the afternoon.  We were getting dumped on, inches per hour, so they made the call to let us out a few hours early.

Cowabunga.

A beautiful blanket of crap that makes my commute to work a living hell.

That drive home from Saginaw to Midland was downright brutal, so I opted to pull the girls from school early so I didn't have to go back out on the roads a couple hours later when they'd be even worse.  It was no surprise at all to anyone when they called today off, so while Kris had to fight her way to work through horrible road conditions (like a sucker), the girls and I got to enjoy an awesome (and paid) day off.

Check it out - the First Snow Day of the school year:

Most of our day off today was pretty quiet - we basically sat around the house and watched movies, played video games, and otherwise not attended our respective schools.  In the late morning, however, the girls decided they wanted to play outside in the snow, so I seized on the opportunity to try out my new 24-105 Canon lens.

Watson has a hard time staying above the snow, which, today, reached up past his shoulders.

These two attempted making a snowman, but it wasn't really packing snow and they gave up after awhile.

Still tearing around the backyard.  He usually avoids the snow, but it probably had something to do with the girls running around and shrieking like a bunch of Apache that made the dog run multiple victory laps across the yard.

Today would have been an amazing day to ski.  Not that we would have survived the drive to a ski hill or anything.

I'm across the yard from her, for reference - I love the zoom on this lens.

Portrait mode on this lens is okay, too, besides being a bit on the backlit side, here.

After about a half an hour or so, the girls got cold and we came inside. . . and resumed our previous positions on the living room couches, in front of the TV.

Hot cocoa.  Kind of a given after playing outside in the snow.

Watson alerts the family upon the arrival of his arch nemesis. 

This is what a snow day really looks like, America.

- Brian