Darn those Diplomat's!

Although it has been a week since McKenna and I went to Arizona I have really wanted to do a post about our trip.  First, I will say that the week of this trip I ran more miles than I EVER have in a week.  I did a grand total of 72 miles, which I am sure is nothing compared to what most of you do but to me it was a big deal.  Here is how my week of running went:


Monday:  I did 10 miles at the gym.  After work as I was driving home I decided that I wanted to go for a run outside.  Jake said he was going to go pay our car payment but I insisted that I run it there so I did 7.5 miles.  It was a bit further than I was hoping for but it felt good.
Tuesday:  9.75 miles at the gym.
Wednesday:  After our 2 hour workout at the gym Holly and I decided to go for a run to pay one of her bills, there really is no better way to pay bills ;)  We did 6.75 miles!  Holly was a champ and pushed her hilarious 2 year old in the jogging stroller...we do NOT live in a flat area!
Thursday: 8 miles at the gym.
Friday:  I decided to get my long run in before we left for Arizona, we were scheduled to do 17 but I only got 14 in :(  I was just glad I got a workout in before sitting in the car ALLLLLLL day!
Saturday:  I woke up early and headed one door down to the hotel gym for a 10 mile run.
Sunday:  After sitting in the car all weekend and eating pazookies, I decided to do 6 miles on the hotel treadmill while Kenna swam with her friends.
I must admit that I went a little overboard and over trained myself.  I have decided that it is much better for me to stick closer to 50 miles a week.  I know a lot of people run way more than 72 miles a week but I know my limits and I went over that limit :(  I paid for my stupidity all last week and only ran 48 miles.  I had a hard time looking at that number, I wanted at least 50 but I resisted the urge to get those last 2 miles in.  I knew I had over trained and that I was better off with a low mileage week.


Now onto more entertaining things...I hope.  So the reason for our trip to Arizona was so that McKenna and her team could do a gymnastics competition, McKenna is a level 7 and is soooo fun to watch!  Holly and her boys made this for McKenna and brought it over right before we left.  They are so sweet!

Needless to say she had plenty of snacks for the road!

We drove down with Brinlee, her teammate, and her mom Marcie.  We left Springville at about 8:30 a.m. and drove all the live long day.  Sure we stopped 763 times, or 5, but still why does Arizona have to be so blasted far away?  We went through Las Vegas and let me tell you that that was the ugliest drive EVER!!  From Vegas to Chandler there is NOTHING but a few million cacti, sure they can be entertaining to look at but only for so long.  Some kind of "beautiful country" that turned out to be ;)  I was really looking forward to driving over the Hoover Dam, we have been there before and I thought it was so amazing.  I was expecting to see this...

Instead I saw NOTHING, you couldn't even tell you were driving over the dam dam, it was "a dam shame!"  Hee Hee Hee, that's what Marcie's husband said when we told him about the sadness!  Here is a picture of the new dam bridge, it looks like you would be able to see the dam but you can't!!  Okay, enough of the dam non-sense!

We stopped at Wickenburg for some Micky D's, there were slim pickin's in Wickenburg!  We tried to keep ourselves pretty well entertained but by the time we got to Chandler we were all CRAZYSAUCE!!  That was the WORST drive of my life and I did not want to do it again in 1.2 days!


When we walked into the hotel I felt right at home, it was a short people convention!  Oh wait, it was just a lot of gymnasts and their short families.   It was kind of weird being surrounded by so many small people, that just doesn't happen everyday!  Unless, I'm at a family reunion that is.  The pool was a sight too, tons of buff little girls hanging out!


Saturday was spent sitting by the pool in the lovely 70 degree weather, shopping, laughing, eating....Oh wait, I nearly forgot something very important.  Way back in the summer one of my co-workers told me that I just HAD to go to the best store EVER!!  She said it was like the Nordstrom Rack only cheaper, what could be better than that??  So I told Marcie about it, we typed the address into "Char", the GPS, and off we went.  We drove at least 25 minutes to Phoenix to go to a store that was nothing short of Deseret Industries.  It was HORRIBLE!!  All we could do was laugh, we had driven all that way for ab.so.lutley NOTHING!!


Saturday night we met up with all of the AirTime gymnasts, their families and Coach Meagan for some supper at the Old Spaghetti Factory!  It was a fine time, I was really hoping to go to BJ's so I could partake of a pazookie but alas all the girls wanted OSF...what did they think, that this trip was for them or something ;)


Sunday morning we woke up early to get over to the Fiesta Bowl, it was in this huge "tent" thingy and it was freeeezing cold.  The meet was very well organized and went very smoothly.  I had no idea going into the meet that the girls would be competing against all of the top gyms in the COUNTRY.  There were teams there from Alaska to Texas and everywhere in between and beyond!  The girls held their own but it was kind of a rough meet for my sweet little Kenna Korn! 


They had beam first and as soon as they started warming up I could tell that she was freaking herself out, she was breathing heavy and I could see the fear in her eyes.  She was the last girl to warm-up on beam and she feel about 80 times, okay I exaggerated but she fell A LOT!  I felt horrible for her, she started crying and so did Marcie and I, OK we just got a little teary but it was hard to watch.  Poor little Kenna was a mess, I wanted so badly to go out and give her a big hug and tell her that everything would be okay.  When she actually competed she did her back handspring perfectly but fell on her blasted full turn, I was just glad she did the back handspring!!  I was so proud of her for getting up on that beam and going for it even though I knew how scared she was.


Next up was floor, I wasn't too worried about floor other than the fact that her coach wanted her to do a "full" instead of a back tuck and she was nervous about that.  She nailed her routine, she looked great!!  Her score took forever to come up, I couldn't figure out what was taking so long.  Then her score came up...7.9!  WHAT???  She looked awesome, surely I must have missed something.  None of the other moms could figure it out either.  Another girl actually fell on her routine and got a higher score.  It took all that I had not to walk up to the stupid judges and slap their faces...jk I'm not a physical person :)  Apparently, Kenna had done a level C trick and they are only allowed to do levels A and B!  Seriously, they gave her a crappy score for doing a trick that was too hard?  It's not like what she did was dangerous, yet they took off a whole point just for doing a switch leap.  That was frustrating, in case you couldn't tell.

Vault and bars were pretty uneventful...thank goodness.  Overall, she had a good time and I thought it was good to see where our girls were in comparison to other girls from around the nation.  It was a fun meet!  McKenna got 8th on bars!  The competition was tough, especially in her age group, you had to score well over a 9 to place at all!  I think our girls did great and it was fun to spend the weekend with them.

Here is a team photo

After the meet we decided we had better get to BJ's for my beloved pazookie that I have been craving since September when I first experienced the deliciousness! 

Then it was back in the car to look at the weird cacti.  We decided to stop in Mesquite on the way home, the drive is just too long!  One of the other gymnasts and her parents decided to stop in Mesquite too.  As we were traveling along we texted them to see where they were.  They had left about an hour before us, yet they were in Vegas at about the same time we were.  Brinlee was reading a text they had sent.  Here is what I heard...those darn diplomat's sent them to Laughlin!  WHAT???  Here is what was actually said...the darn google maps sent them to Laughlin.  Darn those diplomats anyways.


In Vegas we stopped at Pei Wei for dinner and I got the best fortune EVER!! 

So we did and here is what we found...

blath·er·skite/ˈblaT͟Hərˌskīt/

Noun:

A person who talks at great length without making much sense. Foolish talk; nonsense: "politicians get away all the time with their blatherskite".

Well, if you know me at all then you know that blatherskite describes me pretty dang well :)

That pretty much sums up our weekend, it was so much fun...I could have done without the 10+ hour drive to and fro Arizona.  This was the first girl's weekend McKenna and I have had together and I loved it!  I did miss my boys greatly though.  I have been away from Jake for weeks at a time but not Kobe.  I did have a hard time being away from Kobe for so long, Boston is going to be HARD!!!  At least I knew he was at home with Jake having all sorts of fun!

Talk about being a blatherskite, sorry that was so long!