Citius Fortius Altius

That is Latin for "faster, stronger, higher" and I have decided that is my new motto for the year.

It has been such a long time! I guess that's what happens when you don't have the Internet. The past week has had some really exciting, stressful, and interesting things happen too. So now I get to catch you all up, isn't that exciting?

Sunday Uncle David and Auntie Joyce went to the Bahamas so I got to babysit the puppies! They just got a new puppy too! She is so stinking cute! I am going to steal her one day... even though they told me I couldn't. So since Monday was a holiday I spent all day playing with the pups, knitting, and making dinner for three of my most favorite people. Amazingly enough the dinner turned out very well and my cheese sticks were a hit!





Tuesday it snowed! So again no there was no school! So I spent the morning playing with the pups, knitting, and watching the inauguration. I found it amusing when Obama messed up his oath, but over all I found it fascinating how the change of power takes place in our country and how many people actually took an interest in it. We took a field trip too! I took Chloe over to my house to meet our dogs and after about 15 minutes she was running around and playing like a little mad woman. Later that night she passed out for a long time and she slept really well that night.





Sadly, I had to go back to school on Wednesday and Thursday, but here is where the stressful part came in. Friday was the last day to drop or add a class and on Wednesday I was offered an internship with Carolina Family Medical. So between Thursday and Friday I had to write a proposal, get my supervisor to sign my application, fill it out, turn it in to the marketing department and have them approve the internship. Thankfully I got it all done with a lot of help from my amazing friend Tina, who helped me get the internship to begin with. My advisor calls at 4:00 on Friday when I'm in the van on the way to Liberty to tell me I had been approved and that I needed to add the internship as a class and drop my elective by 5:00, that wasn't going to work in so many ways, but once again Tina saved my butt by doing it for me. I have amazing friends.


So now we are at Saturday. The vault started at 9:15 and opening was 7' 10. First off, that is really early in the morning to be vaulting (warm up started at 8) and second that was a really long time to wait to come in. Not to mention the official was a moron, he screwed one of the guys over on a jump because he didn't know the rules and he almost messed up one of my teammates by guessing she missed because he wasn't paying attention. Anyways, by the time I came in my legs were tight, my hamstring was hurting, and my tendinitis was inflamed, but I cleared a bar and it should have been two. One thing I don't understand is how some people, like the one girl on my own team, can hit the bar so hard and it stays and people like me who hardly tap it and it falls. I just don't get it! My first two attempts were horrible, but my last one I was over it and to be honest I didn't even feel myself hit the bar and I had enough time to land on the mats and look up to watch it bobble and fall off the pegs. I heard a "OH!" from the crowd and I went from "Thank you!" to pissed off in two seconds flat. Clearly I didn't go to the vault school that teaches you how to hit the bar just right to make it stay and to top it all off I did exactly what coach told me to do. The jump felt great and I was in the air, but it just wasn't good enough. I could blame some of that on Liberty's runway which was kinda slow and coming from VTech last week which was super fast it messed me up a little, but that wouldn't be all of my problem. Also my step was so far off the whole day. Every time I moved it back I was still a foot under and I only like to be about 3 inches under, so that could have contributed to my crappy jumps too. However, my last jump was the closest to that amazing day at App last month so I'm getting there. I have decided next week I am switching poles at 10' no matter what. I know I can clear it on the one I jumped on today, but I can make it easier on the other, so I am going to try that route next week at Penn State. (Where opening will be 10')



"I'm not too focused on who I'm vaulting against. The competition at the meet is more me against the crossbar." -Nick Hysong