Regional Champ and Georgia Aquarium


Ms. Kathleen has consistently done well at meets this year, and the regional championship in Knoxville was no different! It was definitely stiffer competition- there were kids from 8 states and judging was tighter- but that didn’t phase her at all. She got out there and WON floor with an amazing 9.9 (at that point in the day it was the highest score of the whole meet), 2nd on Beam with a 9.775 (.005 difference from 1st), 3rd ALL AROUND, and 6th on bars, and 9th on vault. She was state champ on vault 3 weeks ago so shows how being just a little off one day can make a huge difference. She’s had private lessons lately that I think helped make all the difference on floor and beam because we worked on those the most. 

And while we always get excited for her when she wins, my favorite part is that she LOVES it no matter what the score. Which is a good thing because it was a commitment to get her to all these meets all year, but especially this one. We left at 4AM on Friday and pulled into our hotel in Knoxville around 5PM. Pops came too and it was 9 hours for him. We all went to dinner that night and had an early night to be ready for the competition Saturday. 

She didn’t compete until 10:45, but Pops and I went with her early that morning because the other 5 girls on her team had an 8AM start time. Turning 10 put her in a different category and she was the only girl from her gym competing at that time, but all of her teammates stayed to cheer her on from the sidelines. I seriously could have cried that they made that effort all for her. Especially because most of them were leaving town that day and it delayed it by 2 hours. 


From there, Pops went on to visit his sister in Nashville and we drove to Atlanta. Lilli and Matt have always wanted to go to the Georgia Aquarium and we decided to take advantage of being 3 hours away and make it happen. We checked into our hotel that night and walked to dinner and rode the Skyview Ferris wheel before being in bed early again. It was a long day! 


We were up early again today to go to the Aquarium and it was definitely worth the extra hour and a half of driving for the weekend. The website said it would take 3-4 hours and I thought that was exaggerated (I mean Shreveport Aquarium’s website says 2 hours and I’ve never even had it take 1, lol). But it took every bit of it and it could have been longer if you read every sign (we did read a lot of them). 


We saw a sea Lion and dolphin show



There were beluga whales and whale sharks. Otters, penguins, hammerheads… it was very cool! The whale sharks and manta rays are in a 6.3 MILLION gallon aquarium. Lilli is in awe and says “I would love to see the filtration system.” Only Lil!  ðŸ˜‰



We originally thought we’d go to a Braves game too, but we would have had to rush the aquarium to make it so we decided to skip it. It’s been a big weekend and we are going to chill until we leave early for home. By the time we pull back in our drive way we will have done over 1500 miles in a long weekend (and I have to give credit where it’s due because Matt drove 100% of that and I’m so thankful to him for always taking care of us) but we made some memories that will last forever! 






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