Regionals

This past weekend we went up to Minneapolis, MN, for the Region 4 Gymnastics Championships (region 4 consists of 6 states: IA, MN, NE, ND, SD, and WI) . They were held at the University of Minnesota. The NCAA Men's Championships were also that weekend (same venue, in the evenings), so on Saturday night, Calvin and I went to see the individual event finals. WOW. Some amazing stuff!

Calvin competed on Sunday morning. There were 123 level 5 gymnasts of all ages, and about 30 or so in his age division (age 9). The meet style was Capital Cup, which means the gymnasts warm up on an event, then compete on that event, etc, etc. Since there were so many gymnasts, they were divided into two "flights", and while flight A was competing on their events, flight B was in the other gym warming up.

On to the videos! Calvin was in flight A, and started on rings. He scored 13.9, good for 16th place:


Next was vault, where he scored 14.4, and 6th place:


On p-bars, he scored 13.5 and 15th place:


He scored 14.5 on high bar, which was good for 5th place:


Calvin changed into his sport glasses for floor (he broke his regular glasses on Easter, and was wearing his backups). He got a 15.1 and 7th place:


He had some difficulty on pommel. He got a score of 13.1:


With an all-around score of 84.5, he got 11th place. (He's the 3rd gymnast on the right):


Practice is year-round, but it'll be nice to have the break from meets. Now it's on to Caleb's soccer games, which start this Saturday!

Seedlings

I've been dreaming and planning my gardening projects for this summer. One of those projects is ripping out some grass and building 3 raised beds for our veggies and strawberries. The grass was torn out 3 weeks ago, the lumber has yet to be purchased.

I live in Zone 5, and stuff usually doesn't get put out in the garden until Memorial Day. This year I am ahead of the game and have started my seeds:

Don't they look cute? We've got roma tomatoes there in the front, broccoli on the left in the back, red sunflowers there on the right in the back (yes, I know sunflowers can get sown directly in the ground. Every time I do that, the squirrels dig up the seeds), and watermelons there in the front, in the paper egg carton. I'll be thinning these out and putting them in bigger pots probably next week. I bought some heirloom tomato seeds today, and I hope to find tomatillo seeds soon. Barring that, I hope to find tomatillo plants come late May.

BTW -- anyone know anything about urban beekeeping?