Wasn't the marathon last weekend?

Well, it's been a month since the marathon. Whatever, I'm going to keep saying "last weekend, when I was running the marathon..." I spent my junior year of college in England. My roommate and I were always cracking ourselves up talking about "last year in England." Yeah, it only took about 5 years for us to stop.

So I haven't been doing much running lately. Cause you know, I ran a marathon last weekend. Ahem. Anyway, here's a sort of sporty thing in my life. Emma, my 8 year old, loves gymnastics. She decided this year she wanted to attend the "cheerleading camp" at school. It's a Saturday morning practice with the varsity cheerleaders. I didn't let her do it last year because I was afraid she'd be humiliated. She'd been taking gymnastics over a year and still didn't have her cartwheel. Seriously- the end of the year performance was excrutiating. I felt horrible not letting her go last year, but I thought she could be potentially humiliated in front of her peers. I won't always be able to save her from humiliation, but that was such an obvious possibility that I just couldn't let her take the chance.

So this year, she's done maybe two million cartwheels. And yes, she "has" her cartwheel. Off we go to cheerleading camp. She's there about 3 hours (which was one less hour than Harry and I had to drive taking her back and forth...)

Harry and I went to pick her up. She's in the auditorium with a bunch of other little kids and some really self-absorbed teenagers. The teenagers lead them through their dance and cheer routine and then do these lift thingies. The cheerleaders are all talking amongst themselves and basically lifting the little kids when the coach says something. Emma is in line for at least 10 minutes. She comes running over after they finally lifted her. I thought she'd be annoyed at how long they took, but no, she's thrilled.

She eventually performed her routine with the other kids at both a pep rally and a basketball game. She loved every minute. How is it possible this is our child?! She was actually pretty good. Not the best by any means, and not a "flyer" (the kids who get thrown in the air), but still she was good. She was telling me that it was "the best day ever!" and it made me laugh, because I got it.

Emma told me later that she "really wasn't the best, but it didn't matter, because it was so much fun!" Then she said I wouldn't understand. I stared at her awhile and said "Hello, Goofy?!" and she laughed and said "oh yeah, you ran a marathon, you do understand!" Sweet.

Oh, and she actually didn't need to have her cartwheel to perform. Who knew? But I still think doing those millions of cartwheels in anticipation was like me running mile after boring mile in training. Could I have done the Goofy with less training? Probably. And she could have done the cheerleading without her cartwheel, but how nice to have a reward at the end of all that work!

Don't get me started on how much Harry liked watching the end of cheerleading camp...