Life At The Circus

I love, LOVE, the tradition of decorating a Christmas tree.  If you stop to think of it, it’s kind of a strange tradition… I don’t even let my kids bring sticks into the house on a normal basis, but every December, we head out, chop down an entire tree and bring it into our living room.  We then string it with lights and hang tons of sentimental  and breakable decorations on it.  None the less, I love it.  And as soon as Thanksgiving is over, I am chomping at the bit to go cut down our tree and bring it home.  This year’s tree cutting was a momentous one.  2012… the year our oldest son chopped the tree down himself Now for years, Scott’s let him “help”… some years he’d come with his own plastic saw to cut with Daddy… as he got older Scott let him hold the real saw and take a few strokes at it. This year, he told my son, he thought he was ready to do it himself. I think Scott did one or two strokes at the beginning to get him started and the...

Our 6 year old had her first gymnastics meet this past weekend.  I can’t really put into words the feelings of pride I had in watching her.  When we first enrolled her in gymnastics 3 years ago , we did so because she was tiny, tough and flexible.  It seemed gymnastics might be worth a try for our then 3 year old. Somewhere in the last 3 years, a light when on inside her.  It turned every curb into a balanced beam, and made every wide open space beckon her to do a cartwheel or round off or handstand.  Saturday was her first competition.  I was so excited to see the new skills she’s learned.  But the thing that made me the most proud, wasn’t her round off back hand spring (though that was really cool to watch for the first time), but rather her ability to get back up on the beam after falling.  I was impressed with her poise and confidence.  She walked out by herself onto a wide open floor and performed her routine with people watching....