April Showers Gymnastics Meet

In our family, gymnastics is a family event. We all go to support Leilani at her meets and make a family day out of it.
The kids are pretty good. They only watch their sister (not anyone else) and the rest of the time they color, eat and play with small toys.

Benjamin is the hardest to keep entertained, of course. At this last meet he kept stealing his sister's hat and playing in the water fountain (thus the beret on his head and the wet shirt). I took this picture to show the amazing sandwich he made out of crackers and lunch meat. We took lunchables for the kids and he used two crackers and all the lunch meat at once. We kept waiting for him to drop it all over, but he managed to eat every bite!
This ended up being Leilani's last meet. She qualified for Sectionals, which was supposed to be on Saturday the 26, but they just changed it to Sunday the 27th. Since we don't do Sunday meets, she will miss it. It was a hard decision, though, because we got some pressure to let her go. She missed three meets this season because they were on Sunday too. We haven't had to miss that many before. The head coach pointed out to me that this is a competitive sport and that is what they do...compete. If they are not going to compete, they might as well not be on the team. I understand that, and I hope this isn't going to turn out to be a major problem. It has been fairly easy so far, because her soccer coach, volleyball coach, softball coach and gymnastics coach have all been understanding of our position. In fact, we do not have one Sunday game this soccer season! That is a first. Her soccer coach is so awesome - he tries to work around his players who can't play on Saturdays for religious reasons too. I just feel like we need to take a stand and hold to our standards as long as we can. Maybe at some point exceptions will have to be made, and we will just let the Lord guide us as we make these decisions. Anyway, I guess we will see what the future holds. Both gymnastics coaches said they would not hold her missing Sectionals against her, so she should still be moving up to Level 5 in June. Her team took 3rd place at this meet. Leilani did not place on any event, but they did combine all ages into one group and only placed the top three. She just didn't have as great a season this time as she did last season. I was so absorbed in watching the meet, that I totally forgot to video her bar routine. I feel really bad, because it is probably the best one she has done. Oh well. You can watch her beam and floor routines below if you want. We are very proud of her!