Videos from National Showcase

After ten hours of driving a worn out Bronco II from Albuquerque to Colorado Springs. Five practice sessions and two competitions over three days...HERE BE THE VIDEOS! Rachel finished seventh, last, on her extemporaneous skate. She got real nervous while waiting for all the other skaters to go ahead of her and did not skate what she coreographed and did not use the one prop she selected. If she had skated what she practiced right before the the competitive skate she would have done much better.



Later the same day she skated the program that got here here. She did really phenomenal! She finished sixth out of eleven skaters in her group! Here is the video. The baby crying in the background belongs to our friends who were with us. When Rachel took to the ice Robyn and I cheered rather loudly and scared the daylights out of him.




Ya'll got the important parts. Now for the trip up here.

Monday at approximately 1:40pm we departed Albuquerque. We took a back road up through the Sandia Mountains to Santa Fe. The reason we did this was because the Bronco isn't in exactly new condition and we were overloaded a bit. (As in the Pope is a bit Catholic) The drive to Santa Fe went well. We stopped for a late lunch and then headed on to Taos. I Taos we needed to stop and get us water to drink. While we were there the Bronco decided it needed more rest. So...while we waited we decided to paint the car. Here are the results...

Just have a minute

I will post more later, but just wanted to give everybody that did not already know a heads-up: Rachel will be skating at the National Showcase competition in a few weeks. This is a really big deal as it is a National level competition (ice skating). It's not quite as big as the National Freeskate Competition (the ones you see on TV) but this is just as big a deal to us. This competition is for Artistic (fun programs that tell the story of a piece of music) skating...

more to follow. We are just really swamped right now (in case you can't tell by the times in between posts).

We'll post more video soon too.

Please take a moment to look at this:

I am not usually big on being an activist for anything as I am big on letting people find their own path, but this has come to my attention recently, and I believe in the cause too much to not tell everyone I know. Please consider signing the petition at http://www.parentalrights.org/

Update on the girls

Nutcracker went well for both girls. Rachel never actually got to dance as a Polichenelle, but such is the life of an understudy. Both girls had a great Christmas. Lauren's (real) mom has been declared cancer free and even has some hair back!!! We continue to keep the Guardianship of Lauren at her mom's request. Seems Lauren is really thriving with all the attentionof having 2 moms, and is actually getting up to grade level on her school work. (Thanks to an awesome teacher if I may be permitted to brag on myself a bit.) We in a lull of sorts right now as we are skipping the first competition of the season this year with the ice skating. This has given us some time to get caught up with school and family (more or less).

The next big thing is Rachel will be taking her first Ice Dancing Test this month (hopefully), and Lauren will be taking her first Figure Test in the next month(s) (as soon as a test location can be found, we seem to be short on test dates this year.)

The girls will not be performing in the annual dance recital with their dance classes this year due to a schedule conflict with a skating competition. They opted to compete instead. The next competition will be in May. Write for details as I don't post specifics on future events to this site.