Baby... then Blades

I was lucky enough to babysit Rylan while Kate and Paul started to pack for their move to KC next weekend. He was here from 10:30 until 3:30 and I had prepared by wearing my softest sweater (for snuggling), no jewelry, and had a stack of magazines at my favorite chair so that he could nap right on my lap if it happened. And it did-twice :D

Updated Kate with this saying "we're having fun"

He fell asleep with his little hands over his eyes.....OMG..way too sweet!

This is the yoga pose:  happy baby" (well if you grab both feet, which he did but I missed it)

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Saturday night was the last evening of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships hosted in Omaha this year for the first time and event organizers were our friends from 5214 Cass Street, Bob and Robin Freeman. Wow! It was exhilarating! We had great seats in the lower bowl and saw the womens' championship long routine events (the short routines had been earlier in the week).  The last  to compete were: an adorable young lady  from East Lansing MI (we cheered her on for Joe and Christin); the defending champion Ashley Wagner; Agnes Zawadski (coming into the night at 2nd) and Gracie Gold--her name should have been our biggest clue (!).  

Our personal favorite and clearly the crowd favorite was Gracie Gold--a 17 year old from Chicago-- Gracie came in 2nd but skated flawlessly (to me :D) and stole our hearts-as we all jumped to an ovation following her performance. Gracie was awarded the second highest free skate score EVER for a U.S. ladies skater last night.  Hard to imagine that the reigning champ could fall twice and still win, but there are points for everything and of course we didn't have a clue about those.

It was so much fun and a huge success for Omaha.

Thoughts on the event were: skating takes PRACTICE! We were seeing the upper tier of skills ability in the U.S. and so many people fall, once or even twice--it is all part of skating on the "edge"--doing the best you can and pushing your capability also means you may fall. Some, including the final back-to-back 1st Place winner Ashley Wagner fell twice! Now I know that the skating that happens between this championship and Olympic competition must be tremendous-where falling is generally not an option. Also-they skate much much faster than is captured on our television screens. The last impression is that the skating world is full of beautiful people (soccer moms got nuthin' on skating moms!) and lots of adorable wanna be's who throw stuffed animals, flowers and posters on the ice. So much so that they had to announce that no more signs be thrown on the ice as the glitter could interfere with the skating.

Scott Hamilton announcing below-wish I could have heard what he was saying about the skaters!  PS this pic was early in the evening and the seats were all filled as the night went on. This was largely the "press area" where they set up individual interview stations for the likes of Brian Boitano and Kristy Yamaguchi.