go big, or go home

Mary had her first cheer competition and her first tumbling meet of the season on Saturday. Yup, both events on the same day, different city's, but same day.

And of course, both were scheduled to be held at the same time as well.  Joy.

Mary's tumbling and cheer coaches juggled things around, and found a way for Mary to be able to attend both, but it was going to be tricky.

Saturday morning was a rush of getting kids out the door to the gym with Ben, and getting Mary all ready for her cheer competition while dealing with a sick Molly.  Sweet Molly has had a nasty cold all week, and Saturday morning, it seemed pretty bad.  Molly wasn't getting enough air, and it sounded like the "Crud" had moved into her chest.

Ben got the boys out the door, as I tried to hold Molly and apply Mary's mascara and eyeliner (required for the cheer competition).  Poor Mary's makeup was a mess, so I finally just told her to try it herself.  She applied it perfectly!  I guess I underestimated my 10 year old when it came to applying make up. 

Next up was the hair. We were told to do a high ponytail with a "poof" in front. We are not "poof" people, and it took 5 times before we got something that somewhat resembled a "poof."  When all was said and done, we slapped a bow the size of my head on top of Mary's "poof", and we rushed out the door with Mary looking like someone walking straight out of whoville!

Oh, the things we go through as girls.

We started to get in the car, when I glanced down at Molly, who looked terrible.  I had to make a fast decision of whether or not to take Molly to the urgent care, or get Mary to her cheer competition.  I decided to call our neighbor who is an ER nurse to see what she thought.  She had us go to her house, where she listened to Molly's breathing and looked her over.

During that short amount of time we were out in the cold air, it had helped Molly's breathing tremendously.  Our neighbor said we could make it to the cheer competition, where I planned on meeting my mom, dropping Mary off for the warm up, and then taking Molly to a doctor.

Thanks to my GPS in my phone, the trip was smooth sailing, "(aside from numerous phone calls to and from our pediatrician, Ben and my mom) until we walked through the highs school doors, where we walked in to little girl paradise, and man's worst nightmare.

  There were high ponytails, mile high poofs, hot pink lipstick, glitter, screaming loud music, and cheering, flipping, and jumping girls EVERYWHERE!!!!!   It was quite the sensory assault. There must have been somewhere around 100 cheer squads there ranging from 8 girls up to 20 girls in each squad.  Not to mention coaches and parents.  I literally walked through a cheer squad and started choking on spray glitter.  There was a glitter cloud hovering over them.

There was not one shred of testosterone to be found.  Aside from one dad who had a shirt on that said (in the front ) "Cheer Chauffer"  On the back it said, "Duties:  load the car, load the girls in the car, listen to the music, watch the performance, plaster on a smile, and repeat."   It made me laugh out loud.

By some miracle, Mary's cheer coach found her and whisked her away through the glitter and screaming, to some place where they were going to warm up.  I spent the next 20 minutes bashing my way through hoards of people with Molly in her carseat, trying to find a place to sit in the blazing hot gym with music blasting so loud I thought my brain would explode out of my ears.  The entire gym reeked of hairspray.

I finally smashed my way into a seat, and prayed that Molly would not have get to a doctor.  I didn't think I could make my way back out of there.  Luckily, Molly was asleep.  How she slept in that place, I will never know, but she did, and I was thrilled.

My mom made it about an hour later.  I was so relieved to see her.

We watched lots and lots of squads perform/compete, while we waited for Mary's squad to compete.  It was actually so much fun watching everyone!  There were some amazingly good squads doing some crazy cool tumbling and really hard stunts.  There were also some adorable little squads with tiny 4 and 5 year olds doing cute little dances and stunts.  I found myself having a great time, aside from sweating to death in the hairspray sauna.

I got out Mary's ipod to make sure I knew how to record with it (Mary wanted me to record it for her), and it was locked.  I didn't know her pass code.  I tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked!  I frantically tried to find Mary, but there was no way to find here in the mobs and mobs of high ponytails, poofs, and big bows.  I did see her walk by once, but I was so busy gawking at the loads of makeup they had put on her, and her crazy high poof, that once I finally pulled myself together enough to call her name, she couldn't get to me.  Unfortunately, this performance was not recorded on her ipod. 

Luckly, I had my phone all ready to go though.

Finally, it was time for Mary's squad to perform.  Mary was so nervous, I thought she was going to throw up!  The poor girl.

They did great!  Mary is a flier, and she was so worried that her stunts would fall, but they all held solid, and she did great.  I was so proud of them.

Half way through the performance, Ben called my phone, and it shut off my video camera.  I ended up having to turn off the call, and then turn the camera back on.  I missed some of the performance, but had to laugh at the timing of it all.  With all of the hours we had been sitting there, and the tiny window of 2 minutes that Mary's squad performed, I couldn't believe that would happen to be the time I would get a phone call!  Crazy.

As soon as the finished their performance, my mom and I had to bash our way through the hoards of people, grab Mary, take a few fast pictures, and blast our way to the car.  She has less than 30 minutes to be in another city, changed, and competing for tumbling.

flowers from grandma

I frantically blasted my way into the bathroom that was truly under a such serious assault of spray glitter, hairspray and perfume that I could see the cloud of it before I even walked in.  I couldn't even breathe in there.  I made Molly a bottle as fast as I could, and we rushed out to the parking lot where...

I couldn't find our car.  Joy.

I pushed the beeper on my keychain while we walked all over, and finally found the car!  My mom decided to follow us.

I punched in the new address in my GPS, told Mary to do her best to change into her leotard in the car, and we were off.

It was lunch time and Mary was starving, so we blasted through a McDonalds drive through, and then made our way to Farmington.

Poor Mary was wiggling and squirming all over the place trying to get changed and feed a hungry Molly. 

Mary rubbed her makeup off as best she could, and took her "poof" out and her ponytail.  She went to grab the bag of hair stuff we brought for her, and realized that she had left it at the high school.  gggrrr

We pulled into the hotel where the tumbling competition was, and there was not one car there!  We had one minute left before Mary was supposed to compete.  I frantically called her cheer coach, her gave me the number of her tumbling coach, who told me I was in the wrong place.  aaaggghhhhh!

I put in the new address in my GPS and took off.  5 minutes later we pulled into a prison.  I was pretty sure the competition wasn't there!  Once again, I called the tumbling coach, and we wound our way through a chicken farm, a theme park, and a prison before we finally arrived.

Mary jumped out of the car and was ready to run in there, when I saw her bright white sports bra hanging out of her black leotard.  In tumbling, you can loose points for that.

Mary tried to wriggle out of it in the parking lot, but it wouldn't work, so I grabbed Molly and our stuff, and we all ran in to the building.  The bathroom was too far away, and we didn't have time, so my mom took Molly and Mary and I smashed into the elevator.  I closed the doors, pushed some buttons and told Mary to change in there.  She was half way undressed when the chime dinged and the doors opened.  There was Mary, half way undressed and a crowd of people waiting to get into the elevator.  I frantically pushed the button to close the doors, said sorry to the people, and we started going back down.  Mary was trying to get changed, but her arms were stuck in her leotard.  We got to the bottom floor, Mary's one arm was hanging out of her leotard and her sports bra was over her head, and the doors opened.  There stood my mom with Molly.  I waved, pushed the buttons again, the doors closed and we headed back up.

We did this a few times before Mary was finally free of her sports bra and ready to go.  We did the best bun we could with her hair, without any brushes or combs, and sent her on her way.

My mom, Molly and I collapsed in some chairs and waited for Mary to compete.

She was able to just compete with whatever group was doing the event at the time.  She was given a medal with her score on it, and then we had to find the papers with everyone's scores on them from her age division (they had competed earlier) and find out where Mary placed.

I was so impressed with Mary's ability to switch gears so quickly.  She was able to get her head together and focused on what she was doing enough to compete all three events the best she could.  She is a great athlete!  I love watching her tumble.

She tied for 3rd on floor, took 7th out of 14 on trampoline, and 5th out of 14 on double mini.  She did great!

She has the cutest warm ups.  You can see the pants, but she also left the jacket at the cheer competition.

Somewhere in all of that, we looked at the clock and saw that it was 4:00pm, and no one had eaten since breakfast!  My mom and I bought some food from the concession stand during one of Mary's breaks, and it actually was pretty tasty!  We found a place where we could change Molly, and another place where we could let her stretch out.  She was all smiles and giggles once she was able to stretch out.  She was an amazing sport through all of this, especially with being sick.

Luckily, with all of the juggling around, and the periods of being outside in the cold, we were able to keep Molly breathing comfortably.  Motrin also works wonders.

When all was said and done, we got back in our car, said goodbye and thank you to grandma (I love it that she was able to come, and that Mary will have memories of her grandma supporting her), and headed home.  It was then that I realized that I had left the can of baby formula in the bathroom at the cheer competition.  (insert forehead slap here).   The high school was closed by that time, so I prayed that Molly would sleep, and she slept the entire way home.  Man, we were blessed!

Our heads were completely spinning, but through it all, we had a great time!  I loved having a day with my girls, even if it was nuts.  Lots of memories were made for sure!

I was pleasantly surprised to come home to a house that wasn't trashed, and all of my boys who were playing a and happy.  To top it off, Ben had lined up a date for us that evening.  Yeah I know, he is pretty amazing. 

And just in case this wasn't busy enough, we get to do it all again in February.  Yup, double booked again.

Go big or go home!