This week I had 11 practices this week between gymnastics, dance (acro & ballet), the play I’m in at school and basketball. I’m tired.

He said

Just as Emelia has said in her part, this week was solely focused on practices. Her competitive gymnastics team is focused on prepping for their first competition on the 22nd of the month so each practice is getting more and more intense. They actually had an additional practice last weekend, and this week they have another mock competition—this time, adjudicated by an actual competition judge. It’s been surprising how focused she has become as she’s become the girl that was worried about whether she should be there, to the one on the team leading which is surprising as one of the youngest.

But that wasn’t the only practice she had this week. A month or so ago, Emelia signed up with her besties to be in the school’s play, The Trial of the Big Bad Wolf. The last week and a bit they have been in full-on performance prep every night after school as the performance is this Thursday. In fact there was so much practice this week that one of the nights we had to have her excused early as it was on gymnastics night.

But that still wasn’t the only practice she had this week. In both her Acro and Jazz dance classes, the year-end recital come up at the end of next month. So her normal practices they have been focused on their routines, making sure the performance outfits work and that they can dance in them.

But that still wasn’t the only practice of this week… Feeling tired yet? Emelia has joined Junior basketball at school and two mornings a week there is practice before school. Thankfully this is the one thing that doesn’t have some sort of performance, recital or competition to it — it’s just for fun to get the girls ready for playing against other schools in later grades. But all told, that totalled 11 practices she was at this week in 7 days! So if you’re feeling exhausted by all that, you’re in the same boat as Emelia. But, the good news a lot of it all wraps up in the next couple of weeks and then Emelia will get a little of her time back.

I’m pretty much done researching some of the gadgets we’ll use to create our camping videos having pretty much figured out all the pieces I want to get and we’ll start picking away as money permits. Now, the focus is really one two things: coming up with a name for our channel/videos; and then, researching the sort of content we want to cover. One of our early inspirations for this has been Keep Your Daydreamand has really helped shaped the sort of thing we want to do. Emelia is still really excited about it, and Danielle is—mostly because one of her frustrations and the reason we really talked about doing this is a lack of other videos out there that share storage ideas and how people organize and streamline their camping lives.

It’s been one heck fo a busy week, and we’re still getting taunted with snow, but the planning of creating a camping YouTube channel has really made this false exit of winter and the slow start of spring all the more palatable. Until the warmer weather gets here that will get us through!

She said

To say the last week and weeks coming up are busy is the understatement of the century. We always vowed we wouldn’t over-schedule Emelia but here we are, over-scheduled. Emelia wanted to take on everything, add the list that John posted already and she also is doing school dance club as well as tutoring once a week.

This week we got the package for her dance recital and that meant that we had to put in all the dates around that schedule, it was quickly apparent that we had managed to book almost every night for the remainder of the month. She is loving all that she is involved in but she admitted it was too much. She is handing it all pretty well but today at gymnastics the pressure of the upcoming competition and the want for perfection along with an overtired kid she hit the wall. She was pretty emotional at practice today and in our talk on the way home she admitted she was feeling overwhelmed and was really stressing how much she wants to do really well at the first competion. She is so focused and so worried about doing well that her want for perfection came to an emotional head. I talked her through it all, her play is this week and there isn’t basketball practice this week and that will take one big item off her plate. This helped, we talked about taking things in stride and to focus on her strengths. Told her she is ready for competition and to trust not only her abilities but her coaches.

This week will be a real balance of assuring that we keep her grounded, take advantage of her downtime to decompress and let her enjoy everything she has worked so hard for. This week will be busy but I cannot wait to see her play this week, she has talked my ear off about it and you can just see the excitement in her eyes when she talks about it.

I am sure this week will feel long and go by in a flash, she only has 5 practices to competion so the next two weeks are going to be busy but exciting for sure.