competition | Lessons from my daughter

Today was the day!

Emily’s first cheer competition!

She woke-up at 1am feeling nervous and wanting her phone so she could listen to music!

I truly don’t know if she slept again but at 6:30am when I went in to wake her up, she was awake!

Before her performance, I went out back to see how Emily was doing, one of the other mom told me how Emily gave an interview to our local newspaper. Apparently, when the mom told Emily she did good on the interview, Emily replied; “Well, that wasn’t my first time!” LOL, that’s my girl!

The videographer (Jonathan) was a little shaky but here is our team’s performance! Keep your eyes on Emily at the end of the video, she wipes her eyes, I think the emotions of what they just did in from of a big crowd got to her. 🙂

Emily’s team’s performance on YouTube

And here are some pictures, these smiles tell the story better than I can.

We got there around 8:30am, left for lunch than returned. Awards were at 4:30ish

Emily got an award!

Look at her and B. holding their banner!

Our girls were so happy!

Thank you again to our coaches (Megan, Chloe and Celine) and to Julie who’s always there to fill in and help with the routine.

Thank you Cheer Olympia

Thank you for creating this opportunity for our girls.

One of our girl has epilepsy. She was nervous this morning and by the time she got to the coliseum, she already had 2 seizures and had another one while waiting to perform. Her mom calls them mild seizures. I don’t know how familiar you are with seizures but in my mind (someone who doesn’t know much about seizures), I can’t fathom going to compete as part of a cheer team after having 3 small seizures. That’s dedication! This girl, is one of my heroes!
Another one of our girl had 2 years of physio therapy before she could walk.
This is also true of Emily, doctors and therapists agreed she would never walk. She started to walk independently just before she turned 4.
One of our girl who is full of spirit, really flirty and sassy, needs one of our coach to hold her during the performance but this doesn’t stop her. She is a huge part of this team.
Another girl, who’s becoming a real friend to Emily, has attended her younger sister’s cheer competition for years… Now, her sister is there, cheering for her. She loves cheer so much that she joined 2 teams! How’s that for dedication!
- Emily and B cheered super loud for her when she took the floor with her other team. The smile on her face was awesome when she saw her teammates cheer for her.

Our girls are amazing and I am so glad they have found their cheer club!

Next competition is in 2 weeks and it’s away! Our hotel room is booked and we are getting excited for a road trip with our team!

Is this how the hockey mom and other cheer parents feel? It’s like we’ve entered an alternate dimension where our girls are integral parts of a team? Where they contribute, chat, share meals and now go on a road trip?!?!

My eyes are tearing up, just writing this, which makes it hard to type!

The motherhood thing has really turned me into a crying mess.

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Good morning Blogosphere!

The cars have 1/2 inch of ice on them and the driveway looks like a dangerously uneven ice rink. The road we live on is covered with black ice.

I made the executive decision that we are not going anywhere today.

So here I am!

Sitting on the couch with my coffee and laptop. Instead of going out to cheer practice, I will tell you more about my girl.

Do you remember how Emily told us she (we) had to make a salad dressing for her school culinary tech class earlier this week? If not, please check it out: Cooking with daddy!

The jar of salad dressing came back home without being open and Emily telling us that we needed to make a new one without “fish”…

When I picked Em from school on Thursday, her culinary tech teacher confirmed that we didn’t need to make anything. This is a class project.

What will be a school AND home project is the cooking competition Emily signed-up for.

A cooking competition!!!

I am not sure when it is yet and the rules are not quite defined still but from what I know so far, Emily will need to pick a recipe she for a main course. She will have 45 minutes.

I don’t know if she needs to make everything from scratch.

I don’t know if she can go see the space and tools beforehand.

All I know is that once we all agree on the recipe, she will practice at school during culinary tech and she will practice here too.

I also know that she will be allowed to have the recipe with her and will be competing against her peers who are also on IEP (Individualized Education Plan).

With that being said, I guess we need to get Emily involved in food prep at home!

Yesterday was Good Friday which meant no school for Em and no work for me so we made pancakes from scratch.

We started by making coffee…. actually Emily made us coffee.

I showed Emily the recipe, she gathered all the ingredients and most of the tools.

She doesn’t like the mixer. I don’t know if it’s the noise, the vibration or the safety lesson I gave her awhile back on how to use it but she’s not using it.

I guess we need to find a recipe without a mixer for the competition

She also doesn’t use the toaster on her own, she uses the microwave 10 seconds at the time and only use the stove to stir something we are preparing.

She’s never moved something hot off the stove or out of the oven.

I’m thinking we might want to find a really awesome salad as a main course for her competition!

Back to our pancakes, look at my girl.

Egg cracking… always FUN!

Emily’s technique is called “Egg crashing”. At least now we’ve determine that she should do it on the side and not directly in the ingredients she’s measuring.