Pie in the Face

 Daniel designed a scavenger hunt/puzzle for Matthew and James. If they couldn't solve it, they got to pie Daniel in the face; if they did solve it, he got to pie them in the face. They solved it, so Matthew got to put the (whipped-cream) pie on Daniel.  But then, Matthew volunteered that Daniel could pie him. :)

Elsa volunteered to clean up the fallen whipped cream.  :)

Four Square

 The grownups enjoyed the foursquare games as much as the kids did. :)  We did have to keep reminding James that diving for the ball was a bad idea on concrete.

Going South

 It wasn't as warm as last year, but we had some sunshine the day before Thanksgiving.  And as always, the kiddos are having fun with their cousins!

Judges' Cup

 James had his first meet of the season last weekend. (The host gym, Blaze, had just moved to a new facility.  It was beautiful, but the lighting was still terrible for pictures!)

Overall, he had a really good meet. He's still working on the skills for some of the routines, but so are a number of his teammates.

Videos are here (except p-bars, the camera went all blurry):
https://photos.app.goo.gl/KiijMtj1yyKSXGvg9 

His vault was his weakest event -- he landed low and fell forward (although he told me that he stuck his landing in practice today, so that's good progress!)  He'd also been landing on his behind on his front handspring on floor, but he was able to land on his feet in the competition, so we were excited about that!  On high bar, he's still working on his kip, but otherwise he did a really nice job.  And he did the best mushroom performance I've ever seen him do (five and half circles).  His rings routine was also strong, except he put his hands down on the landing. 

The competition is going to be tough this year because some of the boys in his division are in their second year of Level 5, so they're doing a lot of the bonus skills already (two back handsprings instead of one, a backflip dismount off the high bar, and so on). But James didn't seem discouraged by that. He came in 8th on floor, 5th on parallel bars (actually, tied for fourth, but they use the all-around as a tie-breaker), 6th on high bar, and 11th all-around.   

Their team came in second place. Last year they almost always won, so this was a bit of a surprise for them!  James said, "I did not come here to get second place. I came here to get first place!" I said, "Well, you'll need to stick your landings, then". :)