Kara and Hot Springs, AR cheer competition

It looks like Kara has updated her blog! She seems to be doing well! She was having some nausea early on in the week so they did an endoscopy on her to see if there was any evidence of GVHD in her stomach. The biopsy came back negative. My step-dad brought Skylar down to her Saturday night so she is happy to have her back! Check out her blog for more info about her clinic visits last week.

Madison and I got back from her last cheerleading competition of the season last night. It was a lot of fun! We got there about 10:15 Friday night and checked into the hotel. We shared a room with Hannah and her mom Amy and Jordan and her mom Laura. Luckily it was a decent sized room! HA! The girls were pretty wound up and we ended up going to sleep after midnight. The alarm clock went off at 7:45 Saturday morning. We had to curl the girls' hair and meet the rest of the squad at 10:00 for makeup. Their competition time was 1:04 so we had a couple of hours to kill before they went on. The coaches took the girls and all the parents went into the convention center to watch other squads until our girls took the stage. There was only one other squad in their division (large, youth, level 2). The other squad was from a large gym and they had 41 girls! They took an automatic deduction since "large" squads can have up to 38 girls. They were pretty good but our girls were better! The other squad had a couple of stunts fall so we were pretty sure we were going to be ahead at the end of the first day (which we were!). After our girls performed we went back to the room and had them change out of their uniforms and headed out for lunch. We all agreed on Chili's so that's where we went! After we ate we went back to the hotel and the girls wanted to swim in the indoor pool. We hung out there until almost 8:00 then went back to the room to relax and get ready for bed. We had to meet at the same time on Sunday so we went through the whole hair/makeup routine again! We were so excited for them! They performed their routine with minimal mistakes. The other squad was better on the second day. We weren't sure who was going to win! At the awards ceremony all the squads gathered onto the stage and waited for the results. It seemed like forever until they got to ACE's division. When they announced who was in 2nd place and it wasn't ACE, all the girls and parents started jumping up and down screaming! We were so happy for them!!!! At the end of the ceremony they announced who was the Grand Champion (the highest score for all level 2 divisions). We were not expecting them to announce ACE! That was icing on the cake!!! The girls were SO excited! All the hard work and practices every day certainly paid off! After the awards were over we went back to the car to head home. We had already checked out of the hotel early that morning. It wasn't too long before the girls passed out and slept for a good part of the trip. Here are some pics of our fun weekend. I don't have any pictures of the performance itself since cameras were not allowed but we did order some pictures from the photographers there that I don't have yet!

Decorating the van

Settling in the hotel room

Getting hair and makeup done

Stretching out

Goofing off

Chili's

First place and Grand Champions!

Coaches Jimmy and Ty with Madison