November 7, 2005

This week was an exciting one for our team - we had three birthdays! Lauren and Tabby turned 20, on the 1st and the 2nd of November and Heather turned 19 on the 5th. For Tabby and Lauren's birthdays, Liz and some other girls on the team planned a surprise party for Tuesday night. For Heather's birthday a bunch of us went over to her dorm room while she was at brunch with her sister and decorated it with balloons, signs and streamers. Plus, Chris brought a cake and candles for all three of the girls to practice on Friday! Needless to say we had a lot of celebrating last week.

Unfortunately, the week wasn't all fun and games. We are in the midst of midterms and last week seemed to be pretty packed full of exams for everyone on the team, which of course means not much sleep. Despite the fact that we were all pretty bogged down with work we had a great week in the gym. Here are a few of the highlights: Heather's knee seems to be healing really fast and she started tumbling on the real floor! Also, Liz is working tkachev to an immediate tkachev and it is looking incredible. Plus, Aimee did triple fulls on the floor today. Kristen has been really busy choreographing floor routines. So far, Tabby, Alex and Nicole have gotten new routines and they look awesome. I can't wait to see them out on the floor performing in competitions.

At practice today (Sunday) Larissa (our old assistant coach) came in to visit. It was so great to see her! She is busy these days working for Google but she still finds time to drop in the gym and say "hi." Scott, Kristen's husband, also came to workout today and he brought their baby son, Zachary, with him. He is absolutely adorable and it has been pretty incredible to watch him grow over the past few months. It is truly amazing how many skills he has developed in just a few months. He now responds to his name, gives you smiles, makes little laughing noises and Scott told us today that he crawled about two inches for the first time!

Well, that about sums it up for the past week of Stanford Gymnastics. Thank you all for your support and interest in SWG! Go Cardinal!

Stacey Sprando