Ruby Falls

We had such a fun morning at the Chattanooga Classic!  it was a GORGEOUS day, about 70 degrees and sunny outside.  We went to the hotel to change clothes, then walked to catch a tram and found a Mellow Mushroom for lunch.  After filling up, we decided to try out Ruby Falls since we had never been.  We walked back to the hotel, got in the car and went.

Walking around downtown Chattanooga.

Getting ready for our walk through the caves

The girls were actually really excited about going.  The building looks like a small castle, so of course they thought that was pretty cool.  You take an elevator down 206 feet, then go into the caves to walk.  It's a 1/2 mile walk to the waterfall, then 1/2 mile back.  By the time you make it to the falls, you're more than 1,200 feet under Lookout Mountain.  We ended up at the very front of the line, so we could hear everything the tour guide had to say.  Luckily our guide was a college student who was super friendly, because Madelyn asked her questions the entire hour that we were walking.  It was HILARIOUS!  At school Madelyn has been learning about geologists and different rocks and minerals, so it was really cool to be able to apply that learning to real life.

The walk was beautiful.  There were tons of stalactites and stalagmites and beautiful pools of water.

As we neared the falls, they have the light off as you go into the large room so that all you can hear is the water.  It's the tallest underground water fall, and it was just breathtaking!!!





 At the end of the walk, they have a nice outside playground and an area to get some awesome views of Chattanooga. 

We let the girls play for almost an hour before heading back to the hotel for showers.

Clint and I talked about where to go for dinner, and wanted to try a local restaurant that was within walking distance downtown.  We got on Yelp and found a place called Tupelo Honey that was only a few blocks away and had rave reviews.  We put our jackets on and walked around downtown to get to dinner about 7:30.  The food was AMAZING!!!!!!!!!  They brought out complimentary homemade biscuits with blueberry jam, and of course, Tupelo honey.  We must have really chowed down on them, because a few minutes after they had been devoured a waitress came by our table and told us they had made too many orders of fried green tomatoes, so they gave us an order for free.  YUM.

All of the food was delicious, and we really just enjoyed talking about the day.  Madelyn and Aubrey have learned (from their silly Dad) about wet willies, so Madelyn surprised Clint with about 15 of them during the course of our dinner.  I was lucky enough to snap a shot of her awesome reaction every time she surprised him. 

LOVE how giddy she is!!

That entire day was just about as close to perfect as they get.  Everyone was happy, there were no attitudes or major meltdowns.  We walked back to the hotel and got in bed.  Right as Madelyn fell asleep, about 9:45 all of a sudden the fire alarm in the hotel went off.  Poor Aubrey was terrified!  We put on jackets and shoes and walked down the stairs to head outside.  Luckily, they Convention Center, which was about 10 steps from the hotel, was unlocked because it was COLD out by then.  We watched and reassured Aubrey that there probably wasn't a real fire and everyone would be fine.  3 fire trucks came and cleared the building within about 10 minutes.  We found out later that it was from someone smoking in the stairwell! 

Overall, we had another FABULOUS weekend in Chattanooga!  It's becoming one of our favorite cities to visit.  Good thing, because we'll be back in January for a cheer competition :-)

Until next time....





Chattanooga Classic

After work on Friday, I met the family at home and we headed out for Chattanooga.  We all love Chattanooga, and have been excited about this trip for months!!  We weren't able to head out of town until about 5:30 and lost an hour traveling, so we didn't check into the hotel until around 8:30.

Madelyn was competing first thing Saturday morning, so we decided to just order some take out and eat in the room right before bed. 

I woke up about 6:00 Saturday morning, got Madelyn up, loaded up her competition bag and started working on her hair.  We only had to walk a few steps from the hotel to the convention center, but we wanted to be sure to get there by 7:30.  Unfortunately, Clint took the girls downstairs to eat the complimentary breakfast at 7am, and learned that on weekends they don't serve breakfast until 7:30.  OOPS!  So Madelyn had a bag of fruit snacks and goldfish for breakfast before her big competition.  Not off to a good start....

Before walking in to the meet.

 We've seen a huge improvement in Madelyn's gymnastics over the last few months.  She always scored pretty well when competing in the spring, but we really feel as if she could be scoring more 9s now.  The last 2 meets she had were small, in-house type meets.  She did pretty well, scoring between 8.2 and 9.4 on everything.  None of those meets included awards or placed the girls.  She was SUPER pumped to finally be working towards some medals. 

They split Madelyn's team into 2 groups, and she competed against 6 other gyms as well.  Her first event was bars, which is usually her favorite.

Nailed her landing!



She did great on bars!!  You could tell when she got off that she was happy.  Her score flashed a 9.1.  We were super pumped!!!

Next up was beam.  At Madelyn's very first gymnastics meet in January, she froze on the beam and forgot half her routine, earning her a score of only 7.5.  Since then the balance beam has always been her weakest event, and the one that makes her most nervous.  However, I feel like she also has been working the hardest on beam lately.

It was finally her turn, and I think I held my breath the entire time.  The only picture I got was of her right after the saluted the judges.

She did GREAT on the beam!!  As soon as she hit her dismount, I ran over to watch the scoreboard.  I really felt like that was the best I've ever seen her look on the beam.  I waited, waited and watched the judges signal for the next girl to start.  Madelyn's score never showed up.  At first I though maybe they were just taking a while, but the next girls' score flashed and Madelyn's had never appeared!! They were rotating to the next event, so I ran over to tell Madelyn's beam coach that they never flashed her score.  She was concerned, but assured me that the judges had written it down somewhere.  You know me though, I am NOT a patient person so I was MAD!!!  An hour later, right before the awards we finally learned that she had scored an 8.8!  That's her best beam score in a meet, so we were THRILLED!

After beam was floor exercise.  Throughout the meet I had been checking in with the other half of our team, and found out that not a single girl on our team had scored a 9.0 or above on the floor exercise!!  That's highly unusual, as we generally have several girls scoring in the 9.4-9.6 range, so we knew the judges were being extra tough.  Madelyn did her thing, and looked pretty good.  In my head, I estimated she would probably get about a 8.5.  Her score flashed and it was a 7.9.  As soon as Madelyn saw it you could tell she was upset, so I was quick to give her a thumbs up and assure here that she had done great.

The last event of the day was vault.  When we were at River City in the spring, vault was usually Madelyn's highest score.  However, at Let it Shine they don't practice it nearly as often.  I was pretty nervous because during warm ups, her first vault she missed the mat completely and didn't even do her handstand.  NOT GOOD.  However, on her first vault I saw her run with an extreme amount of power, and she even blocked when her hands hit the mat!  We knew then that she did well, and sure enough she scored a 9.275!

Overall, Chattanooga Classic was a super exciting meet for Madelyn.  She earned her first gold medal for her vault.  She also earned her first ever silver medal for her bar routine, 8th place on both floor and beam, and earned 4th place in the All Around.  What a great day!!!!!

First place!!!!!!

2nd place isn't too shabby either!

I love this one because she looks so happy and doesn't at all seem concerned with the fact that she got 8th place.  We tell her over and over that as long as she knows she did her best, she should be super proud!!!!

Her team won 2nd place!!

Woodland Middle School

A few weeks ago the girls went to a cheer clinic for Woodland Middle School.  Basically it was a parents night Out at premier, hosted by the Middle School cheerleaders.  They taught them some cheers, and even allowed for them to come and cheer throughout one of the football games.

As soon as we found out the clinic was being offered we knew that Aubrey would want to do it.  When I was asking her about it, we were surprised that Madelyn spoke up and said she wanted to go as well.  She usually makes it very clear that she is a GYMNAST, NOT a cheerleader!!!  I think it helped though that some of her best friends from school were going to be there.

That Saturday night, we dropped the girls off at the cheer gym and went to a local brewery / restaurant called Granite City for dinner.  The food was amazing!!  I had one of the specialty martinis and Clint ordered a beer sampler.  It was so nice to be able to enjoy dinner for several hours without the girls whining that they're ready to go.

So last week was the big game.  At first we didn't plan on taking the girls to the football game to cheer.  It was on a Thursday night, which was the same night as Madelyn's last practice before her meet in Chattanooga.  But we ended up taking Madelyn to 2 private lessons the night before, so we decided to let them cheer at the game and Madelyn could be late to practice.