Fire & Ice Gymnastics Meet

After a long, 12-hour ski day the day before, I managed to get Ella in bed last night by 8:30 due to how early of start she had today.  Ella competed in her second gymnastics meet called the "Fire and Ice" meet at a gymnastics facility in Lacey.  We had to be there by 7:45 for an 8 a.m. warm up, so I woke her up at 6:30 today so that she could get ready and I could do her hair before pulling out of our driveway at 7:05 in the morning.  Needless to say, no one else in the family joined us as everyone was still sleeping when we left.

Luckily, when I woke up Ella, she immediately told me that she had woken up several times throughout the night due to how excited she was to compete today.  I just think that it is the cutest thing that Ella is so excited about competing in her gymnastics meets instead of being nervous and afraid.  Due to there being no traffic on Sunday morning, we made it to Lacey in good time and actually arrived a few minutes early which is pretty unheard of for me.  I then enjoyed watching Ella compete for the next three hours in all four of her events.  Since she earned an all-around score of 34.9 at her last meet, we set the goal of earning a new, all-around score that was over 35 points.  Ella did such a great job on all four of her events that she earned an overall score of 35.8!  She got a 9.4 on vault, a 9.2 on bars, an 8.65 on beam, and an 8.55 on the floor.  As a result, she improved her all-around score by almost an entire point.  I was so proud of her!  I could tell that Ella was having such a great time out on the floor and just enjoyed the entire experience.  Since I decided to take video of all four of her events instead of taking pictures, I only snapped a few photos of the entire meet.  Here they are below...

Ella waiting for the judges to signal to her to walk out onto the floor to begin her routine.

Ella sitting with her teammates right after finishing her floor routine.

Ella's awesome vault score of 9.4 when it flashed up on the scoreboard.

Ella dressed back in her warm-up suit after the meet was over waiting for the awards to be handed out.

Ella posing with Kensi, one of her friends from her gymnastics team.

Although Ella didn't earn a trophy since she came in 8th for her age group and they only awarded trophies for the top six gymnasts, Ella was still happy to stand on the award blocks for a picture afterwards.  Since the name of this meet is Fire and Ice, we got a kick out of the two, different colored balloon arches.

Ella showing off her certificate and ribbons at the end of the meet!

Good job, Ella!  We are so proud of you!