Nationals!!

 

Tessa and I flew to New Orleans on Tuesday, June 20th. 

We had two layovers and it was a long day of traveling. Tessa took good care of Nuts on all the flights though. :) 

We got a little stir-crazy on our last flight and thought it was really funny when Tessa put her drink-stirring-stick-things on Nuts' hands and made him do martial arts.

We were starving when we landed and so we got some dinner at Shake Shack in the airport. We both thought it was delicious and ate at Shake Shack every chance we got the rest of the days we were there. :) We took an Uber to our hotel and then walked over to the Conference Center to see where she was going to compete the next day. I was excited to see the Mississippi River, and so we walked next door to the outlet mall on the river and enjoyed seeing it. It was fun to see a little bit of New Orleans.

We wanted to explore New Orleans Wednesday morning and so we walked into the main part of the city because we saw there was a Shake Shack there. :) We walked through a couple malls and Tessa was excited to find the store It's Sugar in one of the outlet malls. She filled up a custom-made bag of candy for herself and her brothers.

We had fun window shopping in all the stores.

Level 3 competed Wednesday afternoon, so we went back to the hotel after lunch and got Tessa all ready. She was nervous for sure, but got more and more excited as it got closer to competition time. Stacey and I were talking about how glad we were that both Tessa and Morgan made it to Nationals and had each other to share all of this with.

After their warm ups, all the teams were announced. Tessa and Morgan did the cutest pose, but sadly I didn't get a good picture of it.

Their first event was beam. Tessa has learned her back walkover and decided to compete it. It made her coach and me a little nervous to compete a new skill at Nationals, but Tessa felt confident. She absolutely nailed it!!! She stuck the back walkover, and was super steady the whole time. That was her best beam routine all season! She scored a 9.65!! It was a great start to the meet.

Next was floor, and she nailed this one too! She was super steady the whole time and had a great back handspring. She was right on the beat with the music and just did an awesome job. She scored a 9.65 on floor too.

Vault was their next event. This mat stack was a little shorter than Tessa's used to, but she did great. She scored a 9.6, which is her highest vault score of the season too.

Bars was last, and she scored a 9.675. She overshot it a little bit on her back hip circle, so she was happy to see she still scored pretty high. 

What a perfect time to have her best meet yet!! It's been so fun to see Tessa get better and better all season, and to watch all her hard work pay off at this final meet. 

Before we went to the medals ceremony, they crowned all the girls who scored a 9.5 or higher on the beam as Beam Queens. We got a kick out of the tiny crowns they gave out. :)

The Beam Queens could sign their name on the poster and take a picture with the real crown and cape.

Our seats weren't great at the medals ceremony, so my pictures are all too far away. Tessa placed 6th on floor, 5th on beam, 5th on vault, and 8th on bars. She placed 4th All-Around with a score of 38.575!!!

She was so happy to earn a medal on all four events. Her scores were consistently high on every event, which is what put her in 4th place overall. I think a lot of girls are happy to leave Nationals with one or two medals, so to leave with 5 was quite an accomplishment!! 

We definitely felt like celebrating, so Morgan came over and swam at our hotel. There were a lot of gymnast families staying at the same hotel and it was so funny to see a pool full of all these girls doing flips and tricks into the water. Tessa and Morgan had fun making facial hair out of their wet hair after swimming. :) 

We slept well that night, and wanted some more Shake Shack the next day so we walked back downtown, stopping in different stores on our way.

I wanted to try a beignet, so we stopped at a coffee shop too.

It was fun to hear people yell, "Hey Beam Queen!!" all around town, and see other girls with their tiny crowns on. :)

It was so so so hot and humid there! It felt great to put our feet in the fountains at the Convention Center whenever we passed by.

After lunch we went swimming at the hotel again.

It was much less busy than the night before, which was nice.

We got some dinner and ice cream and ate it by the Mississippi River, and then got to bed early since we had an early-morning flight to catch. This was such a fun experience to share with Tessa! I love when our family is all together, and I love when I get one-on-one time with the kids too. This is something Tessa and I will remember fondly for a long time!

It's been fun to see the celebrations Arete has posted about Nationals on social media. All of the gymnasts who went did amazing!!