Be Flexible Thursday

Thursday has become our here, there and everywhere day.  It starts out with dropping Sage off at school and then at 9:30am I take Clare to gymnastics.  I usually try and knock off some errands in that 40 minute window.  After lunch and Clare's nap, we pick Sage up from school, run home for a quick snack, a change of clothes and then whisk her off to her hour long gymnastic class at 4pm.  We meet Brent back at home a little after 5pm and then head off to our home group bible study (kids included) that goes until 7:30ish.  I always feel exhausted by the end of this day but it's worth it to me to be able to contain so much in one day so that the rest of the week is much more relaxed and freed up. 

I took the camera to both of the girl's gymnastic classes yesterday.  They go to Red River Valley Gymnastic which has an amazing facility and they both seem to really enjoy it.  The funny thing is that Clare's class is the only one going at that time and usually there is only about five kids in it (although yesterday there were just two) while Sage's class time has many classes going at the same time and yesterday I counted up to 70 kids and I know there was even more than that.  However, they've really mastered handling that many kids and the student to teacher ratio is still low enough that you never feel the sense of chaos.  It's incredibly impressive and I think I should maybe start taking some notes! It's fascinating to me that both of the girls have a strong desire to take gymnastics when I was so much in love with it myself when I was a kid.  We're really opposed to pushing the girls into being involved in only the sports and activities that we love or did as children because we like to encourage their individuality and interests in order to help them gain confidence in themselves and in the choices they make.  So before they are signed up for any class, we'll go over all the possible options out there, from swimming, to soccer, to t-ball to ballet.  Only one activity can be chosen and so far, this is what they really want to do.  I'm going to just enjoy it while it lasts and maybe brush up on some old skills in the meantime.  :)

One thing I want to mention about these pictures is that I wasn't allowed to use a flash in the gym which made it difficult to get a crisp image--especially during Sage's class so my apologies to you if you're forced to squint.



The lady in the pictures with Clare is Miss Jenna and she is her teacher and often Sage's as well. 
She seems to know the name of every kid that comes into the building and every kid knows hers and loves her.  She will demonstrate for them one time a long circuit of skills she wants them to work on and at the end she'll always say "Okay, go play." and I'm always shocked when I see the kids going through everything she just asked of them and remembering how they were suppose to do it all the while having a fun time.  I cannot say enough great things about her.



This is a balancing exercise where Sage is playing catch with another girl while on a balance beam.  They play this for awhile until the teacher tell them to switch and then they'll go to the next beam for a different exercise.