Wow!! What a trip!! It doesn't seem like it was that long ago when Sue was proposing this trip to me, but the past six months have flown by!! I watched the days tick away on my count down ap and finally the day was here :) I was up at 2:30 to round up half of the team and head to the airport. We had an early flight but were able to see a lovely sunrise. The Dallas airport was crazy!! Mind you I don't get to travel much, but it's the biggest airport I have ever seen!! We had to get shuttled to the rental car place and then the road to leave was a few miles long and went right under some of the runways. Not kidding, we drove under a plane that was taxiing to or from the terminal. Maybe they do that at a lot of other airports but I had never seen that before. 
When we got to the hotel everyone was tired from being up so early so most people went to take naps ... me on the other hand ... I wandered the hotel to take pictures ... We all went out for a nice dinner together, then it was back to the hotel to make sure the boys got a good night sleep for the competition the following day.
The level 6's were the second session on Friday and the boys did great!! Ryan introduced me to Valeri, and they were talking about the facilities which were relatively new, I found it funny that the one thing Valeri commented on was the light, how it was too dark, I don't know if it's just the photographer in me but that's usually one of the first things I notice when I go places and I had been thinking the same thing!! Sue graciously took over camera duties for the meet which was nice because usually if I'm on the floor coaching there are no pictures from that meet.
Like I said, the boys did great!! Garrett had a great meet, he made corrections and had a great energy the whole time and did one of the best pommel horse routines I've ever seen him do!! Kevin was able to win floor as well as placing on 4 other events and after some number crunching and phone calls ... long story short he finished 7th all around!! Awesome job from both boys against some good competittion at an international meet (they got to compete against kids from Mexico!)
After dinner we all got together to watch a movie and when everyone was supposed to be winding down, our room was wound up!! We played out in the hallway, waved at the people in the glass elevators, Kev even made friends with some level 10 gymnasts we met who were doing laps around each floor of the hotel ... It's rather entertaining what you can see just standing on a balcony in a hotel ... :)
Saturday was a day of sight seeing and going to the elite competition. Activity #1 for the day was going to the Dallas Cowboy Stadium. From everything I had heard about it I was surprised I didn't see it flying in (did see it flying out though), it's huge!! We took a tour that let us go down on the field where we got to meet a couple of the cheerleaders, had our pictures taken on the 50 yard line, the superbowl trophies were on display, and the boys got to toss around a football for a little while. The tour lets you go into the press room, the team locker room (which is so big and so nice! I really wanted to sit in one of the lockers but a sign said you can't :( ), and you got to go into the cheerleader's locker room too. It was really cool to see!! 
Activity #2 was a stop at a Bass Pro Shop. It was quite an adventure getting there because there was a lot of highway construction going on, but thankfully we knew what road we needed so that helped (I think we had just gotten that area of Frisco all figured out ... and it was time to leave ... go figure!) The important thing was that we got there! I had never been to one before, but it was neat. It was all done up for Christmas and they had a fish tank and even some ducks in a pond. The boys played one of the shooting games so it was a good time for them, and I walked around taking pictures (Is anyone surprised by that? Didn't think so). Activity #3 was going back to the gym for the elite competition. We had seen the Japanese team around the hotel a few times, one time they walked by us, they must have seen our shirts from the meet, because every single one of them said Hi as they walked by. The meet was good, there were a lot of athletes and coaches that I recognized. I was really excited to see John Orozco, I was at Nationals when he got hurt about a year and a half ago, and a few weeks ago he placed 5th all around at Worlds!! I got to talk to him briefly when everything was over, he seems really nice and he's definitely on my Olympic dream team for next year :)
The Japanese team won the meet (their high bar was amazing), they were so much fun to watch, they just looked like they were having fun. The boys got to go out and meet some of the athletes and get autographs to they were excited, and hopefully motivated to get back in the gym :)
Kev had wanted to throw something over the edge. We told him that wasn't a very safe idea, but I came up with blowing bubbles off the balcony instead. So on our way out we left floating bubbles in our wake :) It turned a few heads, even at 4:30 in the morning!! Just like how our adventure began we got to see the sunrise from the air. As we flew over CT I was on the look out for any familiar landmarks I could find, and as we were coming in to land I was able to spot my brothers house!! Thought that was pretty cool :)To finish, here are a few thoughts/ notes/ observations from the trip:
-Sunrises and sunsets are beautiful in Texas everyday
-It's so flat down there and all the houses are the same so you can look right over the tops of the houses and just see everything.
-They really do do things big in Texas :)
-I discovered carmel macchiatos at Starbucks ... that could be dangergous!!
-They need bigger signs on the highway in their construction zones ... though it did allow us to take the scenic route.
-Ok so I always knew that I love my car, but after driving a VW Jetta for 3 days, I couldn't wait to get back to my Subie!! Don't get me wrong it was a brand new car and it went really well, but I wasn't a fan of the low head space scrunched up pedals.
-The full body x-ray things at the airport only goes clothes deep (like bluetooth the guy said), it won't show the surgical screws in my knees, I asked ...
-The highway exits down there are labeled by the name of the street you're exiting onto instead of numbers like we have up here. So mapquest would say stuff like 'Exit onto Bass Pro Drive' instead of 'Take exit 25', the only thing I didn't like was if I'm at Ikea Drive (they also named the roads after what was on them, also convenient), how many exits to Bass Pro Drive?
-The highway exits down there are labeled by the name of the street you're exiting onto instead of numbers like we have up here. So mapquest would say stuff like 'Exit onto Bass Pro Drive' instead of 'Take exit 25', the only thing I didn't like was if I'm at Ikea Drive (they also named the roads after what was on them, also convenient), how many exits to Bass Pro Drive?
So that was Texas in a nutshell and pictures :) It's got me pumped for the Vegas trip in a few months, but I've got the holidays and plenty of other competitions to look forward to first. It was a great trip but it's always nice to come home :)
Til next time . . .
Cheers :)
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