A Day to Remember

Today was Remembrance Day.

It was nice to see other countries celebrate. Poppies were on many collars. One of the British coaches had a home-made poppy on his tracksuit.

Even though we are in the middle of this big event it is not hard to remember how lucky we are to have had heroic men and women stand between us and harms way all over the world. France is one of those places where many Canadian soldiers died to protect us and our freedom. Evidence is still all around us today of the great wars that were fought in this area. Something to think about.

The opening ceremonies was interesting with a very beautiful choir of several hundred voices and an amplified grand piano. After that I was in the back gym warming up Luke for his prelims and missed an.... interesting balancing act. The girls will have to tell you all about it when they get home.

Luke and Alex competed awesome! Both warmed up great. Luke did a nice Half-Full Tuck to Double Full-Out Straight and then nailed his Half-Full Straight to Full-Full Straight for a solid 13th place finish. Alex was brilliant in his first pass and took one small step in the box on a Half-Full Straight to Triple Tuck. This was so good that we took a risk and he competed an easy Half-out Pike to Full-Full Straight and we kept our fingers crossed that the combined two passes would allow him to be top 8 and go on to finals (we wanted to save his other big dismounts for finals so he would have a chance at moving up). The gamble paid off and Alex snuck into 7th and will compete in Finals tomorrow. Phewph!

Our girls had a light training day. Cori and Julie did 2 of each prelim routine and both worked a bit more on mounts after. They are ready for tomorrow and both a bit nervous and very excited. Julie's mom came today and joined our Canadian Team cheering section!

Watch for some photos tomorrow as the girls took some time to do a "photo shoot" on the Mini including model poses, tiger poses, ninja poses, you name it! Brett pointed out that our competition tracksuits match the equipment and therefore we were still ninjas only now in camouflage. He then proceeded to hide all over the place. Hilarious!

Trish Quinney from Edmonton took some great shots so I will be sure to get them and post them so you can see.

1:07 in the morning now so better sign-off.

Tomorrow is prelims for the girls. Finally here.

Sweet.

Stay Strong,

Jamie