Feeling jumpy

The NSW/ACT Jump Rope Championships were held at the AIS in Canberra over the weekend.

As it was Father’s Day, I suggested my ex be the stage dad, while I supervised the eldest in Sydney.

Also, while I come in handy as an assistant at the T-shirt shop during comps, my ex has been trained as a skipping judge, so he plays more vital role.

Oh, and I was a jittering mess of nerves at the prospect of spectating. I will explain more about that later …

I made sure my ex was well compensated in the gift department: a bottle of gin, some Darrell Lea Rocky Road, a cookbook and a framed pen and ink drawing by the eldest:

Noice, huh?

It was commissioned for my ex’s birthday in March, but projects move at a glacial pace in teenager land.

I’m still waiting for a lino print I commissioned 18 months ago.

The youngest hasn’t been able to train as much as she would have liked in recent months due to adenoid surgery etc, her bad ankle was playing up, Team Teal have also been breaking in a new member, plus their coach has been in Europe at a basketball competition, so the team were a little cagey on how they’d fare.

Hence my nerves. My heart breaks when skippers I don’t know from a bar of soap have a bad day on the competition floor, let alone family members!

That didn’t stop me fretting as I waited at home for news from my ex.

My heart dropped when I heard some of the updates, others made it soar.

Team Teal’s results were a mixed bag.

On the first day, the youngest scored a Silver for her solo routine, while her teammates picked up two Golds, two Silvers and two Bronze for speed and freestyle events.

Day two was a blow-out on the team’s speed skipping events, but they scored a Gold for their three-person Double Dutch and a Silver for their four-person freestyle routine.

Very proud mum!

The video my ex sent of their three-person routine is too blurry to share, but I’ll try and get a clearer version during the week.

Here are some actions shots of them in training:

 

 

Now they have four weeks to shape up for Nationals. Good luck Team Teal!

I was expecting to get heaps done around the house while the youngest was away, but I achieved hardly anything. By the time I went for three walks, put on a few loads of washing and did the grocery shopping, there wasn’t a moment left to mop the floors, though I did manage to scrub the latest round of black hair dye off the shower walls.

I was also treated to two delicious meals by DD – he made me a romantic roast on Saturday night and a lovely pasta lunch on Sunday that we shared with his sister and her husband on his deck in the glorious afternoon sun.

The weekend ended in Newtown watching a fab R&B-ish band called Lady King perform at Bohemian Cafe, followed by me racing home to make chicken nuggets and Cajun-spiced wedges for the returning skipping champion … who informed me she’d forgotten to finish their English homework, which is due this morning.

Argh! Someone who has skipped pretty much constantly for two days is deliriously tired and not really equipped to be writing speeches for English. But we managed to get through it without major meltdowns.

The night concluded with the bizarre sight of the eldest cleaning up their Petri dish of a bedroom without being asked.

Odd. But yay!

Anyways, that was my weekend – did you have a good one?

Song of the day: Queen “We are the champions”