Spring Break

This spring break, I spent half of my time in Las Vegas and the other half back home in Park City. In Vegas, I hung out at the pool, went shopping, and went on an adventure walking around the Strip. Every day, my family and I had a scrumptious breakfast, delicious lunch, and luscious dinner. But seriously, the food was soooo good. Then of course there was the warm weather. So one day my family and I went on an adventure. It was the best day of the trip, so I will explain in detail my day. To start off the day, my family went to Paris for breakfast. Yum! Next we walked around some of the hotels, all of which have something interesting such as fountains or a garden of flowers.

A turtle made of flowers in the Bellagio. 

Then we went to all of the candy stores you can think of. M&M World, Coca-Cola World, and Hershey’s World. We ate lots of M&M’s, taste tested twenty-four different flavors of Coca-Cola, and stood under a giant Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. 

M&M store!

That night after dinner, we went to see the Cirque De Sole show Ka. It was amazing! AND my gymnastics coach from about four years ago just started preforming in the show. I wasn’t able to see her in person but I saw her swinging across the stage from the ceiling. So that was pretty cool.

To top off the night, after the show we rode the roller coaster New York, New York. It was really cool to ride it at night where we could see the whole city covered in lights from the roller coaster on top of the hotel.

My family in front of the New York, New York.

So Vegas was pretty fun.

Vegas

This week is spring break, and it is the first spring break I have been able to go out of town. Usually, the final gymnastics meet of the season falls the week of or the week after spring break, so I have to stay and train, but this spring break, my family went to Las Vegas. The whole point of this trip was my brother’s golf tournament. We were there for five days, and three of those days he had a tournament.

Vegas is a strange place. First of all, it is one of few states that gambling is legal. I don’t understand the point of gambling. I mean, you know you are not going to win. Well, actually, my mom put in one dollar and won ten dollars, but there is a very, very, very small chance of winning. But, no matter the slim chance, there are a lot of people who stay up ALL NIGHT gambling. The funny thing is, when my mom won ten dollars, my brother, who is in seventh grade, became obsessed. “Put in another dollar! Go to that machine that one looks good! You are going to win I can feel it!” He convinced her to put a dollar in every once in a while, so by the end of the trip only three of those ten dollars were left. When my brother is twenty-one, he should be banned from Vegas because I do not want him spending all of our money. 

The other weird thing about Vegas is how it is full of hotels that represent other countries. Like, they have the Eiffel Tower and a hotel to represent Paris, by why not just go to Paris? I guess I understand that it is a lot cheaper to go to Paris in Las Vegas than to Paris in France. But who started this idea of putting these representations in Vegas? 

Paris...Las Vegas

And of course, there are the clothes. I love just sitting down somewhere on the Strip and just watching people walk down the street and observe their outfits. My mom and I do this together, and it is quite entertaining. We will have competitions with each other to see who can find the craziest pair of shoes or the most interesting outfits.

I guess I ran out of space to right about my actual trip...but maybe you will hear about it soon.

It's a Gymnast Thing #2

Handstands. Handstands at the beach, handstands on a hike, and even handstands at a gas station. The signature mark of a gymnast. If you are a gymnast, you can’t help yourself. Everywhere you go have the urge to do a handstand, a flip, or something gymnastics related. And, of course, you must take a picture. If you were to look through my phone, about three-fourths of my pictures are handstands or flips. Which means you will now get to enjoy the journeys of my handstands.

This picture is the most recent and one of my favorite handstand pictures. It was in Hawaii during Thanksgiving break, and my mom and I went to a beach near our hotel to watch my uncle surf. In between waves, we spelled out the words ‘believe’ with pieces of lava rock we found on the beach.

These pictures were from this summer in Lake Erie. On this vacation, I did a lot of gymnastics on the beach, and of course took many pictures. I could not choose between these three pictures, so I decided to use them all. So, I have my backflip, side-ariel, and bridge on a paddle board.

This picture is from Running With Ed in the Spring. A few girls from my team formed ‘Flipping For Ed’. In between each leg of the race, there are rest stops, and at each one we took a handstand picture. This one is my favorite and is at the Utah Olympic Park.

In the winter, we went to California for a competition, and after the first night of seeing a gorgeous sunset over the ocean, I was dying to get a silhouette handstand picture in front of the sunset. So, the next night, two of my teammates and I took a bunch handstands and leap pictures. Jamie is on the left, I am in the middle, and Gen is on the right.

Also this winter, we went to Arizona for a competition. At our hotel, there was a huge fountain. My mom knows how much I love my handstand pictures, so she suggested to take some in front of the fountain. One night, we went after dinner and took some good pictures (the splits on the edge of the fountain), and the next day after my competition, we went and took some more in my competition leo (the bridge). 

This picture is from three years ago when my team went to Idaho for a competition. This is still a favorite picture of mine. These two teammates and I love photography, and during this trip we took many creative handstand pictures. We had just finished competing and were on our way to dinner, but took about an hour getting back to the car in what should have taken about ten minutes. We took some detours because we kept thinking of more pictures to take, and when our parents finally thought we were out of ideas and were about one minute away from the car, I came up with a great one. So I gave my mom the instructions on exactly how to take the picture, and we three girls ran into the parking garage. I took the first level, Sam R. the next, and Sam B. the third. We each made sure we were in front of the window, but next to the stairs so they were not in our way. We counted to three and did a handstand, hoping our parents got the picture from outside the parking garage. 

All of these pictures are just a few from my many handstands, and there is no doubt I will have many more handstand pictures in the future.