Hannah the Athlete

Hannah had ice skating evaluations yesterday and is now in the "advanced" portion of her "intermediate/advanced" class. Unfortunately, she still insists she's going to quit because of her arm. I really hope that she reconsiders because she's really good at it. She has gotten to the point where she glides on the ice and can push herself along pretty quickly. She's also really good about picking herself up when she falls down (which isn't very often). We've already paid for the summer and I told her that she has to finish it out but she says that after the summer, she's "done forever." *sigh* We've got five or six weeks to change her mind but I'm not going to make her do it.

I thought that yesterday was her last gymnastics class through the park district but it's actually next week. Ugh. She had her first lesson at KGDC (the new place that's only about 10 minutes from the house) and she loved it. First off, this place is huge. They have two full floor exercise mats, 5 uneven bars, about 8 balance beams (possibly more) and 2 vaults. They also have a huge foam block pit that the bigger girls were practicing uneven bar dismounts into. The instructors are also really good at what they do and set up meaningful ('meaningful' is the key word here) exercises for the kids to do. Hannah learned that she has to "present" (arms up) before she begins and when she ends something and that when you jump, your arms go up, too. She learned more in 50 minutes this morning than she's learned in 3 months at the park district. She was so excited when we left and said that she "loves this gymnastics!"