It's over. Finally.

Emerald Team Challenge. Three days. Fourteen sessions. Eleven hundred gymnasts from five states. Boys. Girls. Compulsories. Optionals. This is THE meet for our gym. Out of the four meets a year the gym holds, this is the big one.

Usually I volunteer my three required sessions, help with set up and tear down (also required of each gym family) and go home, happy to have done my part. This year was different. Less than two weeks before the event, the meet director asked me to take over running the parent club store and I said yes. Actually what I really said was "Sure, but I have never done something like this before, so I don't know how good it will be." That way, if it was bad it wouldn't be MY fault, right? Right.

With less than two weeks to prepare there wasn't a lot I could do other than look over the current inventory and organize it. I was able to order a few things that I thought would sell well and reorder some things that we were low on. I also had to make signs and price lists.

From Thursday evening at 5:00 until Sunday night at 11:30 I lived and breathed Emerald Team Challenge. I didn't even see my five youngest children from Friday afternoon until Monday morning.

Saturday evening I took a break from working at the meet and sat down and watched the meet from the spectator section. My eleven year old daughter got her best all around score yet as a level six, and placed 17th out of 40 girls in her age group. She placed 9th on floor.





Even with a fall from the beam she got a 9.05.


Thank goodness other people signed up to work in the store so I didn't have to sit there the entire time, but it was hard to let go and let someone else mess with my store. I didn't want to just go home and not be available so I stayed at the meet all three days. From start to finish. That way if there was a problem I would not be 40 minutes away at home. So I did score entering in 2 sessions, helped in awards, searched for missing goodie bags, picked up garbage, and helped in hospitality making dinner for the judges and coaches (I scored some lunch when I did that, which was nice because I hadn't eaten all day). Besides working in the store selling flowers, pins, grip bags, and other gymnastics items that little (and big) girls can't do without.

By Sunday afternoon I was so exhausted that after I talked to my little 3 year old on the phone and she said "Mommy, I miss you!" I started to cry because I missed her too. Normally I am fine with getting away from my kids for a while. I miss them, but not enough for tears.

I enjoyed doing the store. I don't know if they will ask me to do it again, but if they did, I would probably say yes. I kind of liked being in charge of something.



Last night I went to bed at 12:30am. I didn't wake up until 8:40am. Oops.

I think I will go take a nap.