Natalie had her first skating competition on Sunday. On the couple days leading up to the competition she was so excited. Not nervous, not scared like you'd think, but extremely, super excited! I was the nervous one. Isn't she beautiful in her skating outfit?
Natalie got to warm up before each event. Here she is working with her coach, a wonderful lady who is just wonderful with her girls, and a couple of her team mates. We just love Toby (her coach)! She is such a patient, honest, and great teacher.
Natalie during her figures. There are two circles on the floor forming a figure eight. She has to go around those circles on one foot, keeping the line inbetween the wheels on her skate, only pushing for momentum in the middle as she switches feet. It's very difficult to have that much control over her body like that, 
but when she focuses, she's pretty good at it!
Natalie chowing down on a hotdog after her figures and before the awards. It's a great blackmail picture :-).
Natalie getting her medals. Because she's in a younger category, they didn't announce, or give out, first/second/third place medals and every participant got the same medal.
Here she is showing her coach her medal. She didn't know what place she took at this point, but her coach took her over to the score sheets and showed her that she got first place points. Actually, one of the three judges scored her as a second place, but because the other two judges scored her as first place, she 
ended up getting first overall. Talk about an excited little girl!
Natalie showing off her "first place" medal. She was (deservedly) so proud of herself. She worked very hard!
Here is Natalie with another one of her coaches, Miss Caroline. As much as I love Toby, I ADORE Miss Caroline! She truly loves the girls and is always so positive with them. She has all sons and grandsons, so she just eats up the girls. She especially loves Alexis. Every time Alexis comes to one of Natalie's practice sessions, she comes up and gives her a huge hug and kiss on the cheek. As much as she teaches the girls, she's more for the moral support. (Toby's the mean one :-))
Natalie during her foward stroking. There is music playing and she hast to push off with her feet (stroke) on the beat of the music. She won this event hands down because the other two girls in the event kept trying to clap the beat instead of keeping their arms out and skating gracefully.
This is the best shot I could get of her backward stroking. The camera was not working properly (or maybe it was user error) and all the others came out very blurry. This is one of the things Natalie has struggled with in her lessons. She loses speed and then has a hard time keeping on the beat to get back up to speed. She did wonderfully on Sunday! I was so poud that she pursued through that!
Natalie with the team mates that were there for the competition.
They had the world champoin, Jackie Cross, from California come and skate for the participants. Natalie really enjoyed seeing that. "Mom, some day I'm going the beat her!" Natalie said to me after watching Jackie's performance. Such a great goal!!
This is the medal she got for her stroking event. They combined the forward and backward stroking. Again she got first. And again they didn't announce or give special medals for first/second/third place and gave the same medal to all the participants in her level. She skated in the Tiny Tots level because this was her first competition and Toby wanted her to be successful in her first one. Toby says that the goal for the next competition is to skip the Juvinile (the next step up) altogether and move into the Primary level. She thinks that Natalie is that good!
Natalie with both her medals on. They're exacty the same, so we're going to have the event, placing, and competition and year engraved on each one. These are her first medals, and therefore, very special! I want her to remember what/how she did years down the road.
And, more importantly, Alexis LOVED it! After making it, I held it up to hide my mouth and said in a squeaky Mickey Mouse voice, "Happy Birthday, Alexis!" Boy, was that a hit! She told everyone about it. Little did I know the effect that simple act would have! When she told Natalie, Natalie was amazed and totally believed ut, asking questions like "How can a cake talk by itself?" and making comments that the cake must be magic! Alexis kept her going for 5-10 minutes when she finally looked at Natalie and said, "You do know it was Mom talking for the cake, right?" Natalie's face was priceless, because she obviously had believed the cake had talked by itself, but tried to recover by saying, "Oh, yeah, ummm, I knew that!" I was rolling!
