Category: Uncategorized

Keystone State Games

Ana and Jenya skated this weekend at Keystone State Games in York, PA.  Both Ana and I had a fairly nasty head cold the entire time, but Ana did a wonderful job of skating through it and did quite well.

Here's Ana's Limited Beginner CTT Free Skate, she got 2nd free skate, 3rd compulsory:


 

And Jenya's Pre-Preliminary CTT Free Skate, she got 3rd Free Skate, 4th  compulsory:


 

Alexey Mishin at RMU


Alexey Mishin at RMU, originally uploaded by ruthlestina.

Alexey Mishin, coach of Plushenko (2nd in last year’s olympics) and other top-tier skaters, visited RMU today. Jenya got a chance to participate in a group lesson with him, with two other girls who are also working on their axels. Very cool!

Picture shows Mishin (in the red jacket), plus Igor and Crystal (the girls’ normal coaches), and Talia, Tory and Jenya.

Columbus Figure Skating Competition

A very long, but very nice day today at the USFSA figure skating competition in Columbus, OH.  The girls had a great time and did a wonderful job. 

Jenya tied for 1st on her compulsory and got 3rd on her program, Ana got 3rd on her program and 4th on her compulsory, and De got 1st place on her program.  Their coach Crystal very kindly came all the way to Columbus just for them, and I think her being there helped them significantly in their skating.  It was a lovely competition, too — small, but comfortable and well-run.

For anyone keeping track, Jenya and Ana have moved up from ISI (the recreational/intro skating path) to USFSA (the path that can eventually lead to nationals/olympics/etc).  This is very cool, but leads to confusing terminology.  In very broad terms, skaters go thru the whole ISI progression from Pre-Alpha to Delta, or the Basic Skills progression from Basic 1 to Basic 8, and only then can they start in USFSA in something like Limited Beginner Test Track.  Which means you have to be a pretty good skater and have a year or two of competition experience before you can achieve the status of beginner…  

De's Basic 2 program – 1st place out of 3:


 

Ana's Limited Beginner Test Track – 3rd place out of 6:


 

Jenya's Beginner Test Track – 3rd place out of 9:


 

De’s First Gymnastics Meet

The last event of our super-busy weekend — De's first real gymnastics meet.  She competed level 3, and had a wonderful time. 

Here is her bar routine, she scored an 8.0 on this even with the spot (they do an automatic deduction if the coach touches them), so she was very happy about that.


 

And her beam routine


 

And her floor routine


 

And of course vault


 

Halloween Again


053, originally uploaded by ruthlestina.

And this year we have a sorceress, a witch, and a black cat — and of course Lunn's usual assortment of fantastically carved pumpkins.

The girls have gotten to the serious avarice stage of Halloween development — they went out with pillowcases for max capacity candy collecting, and hit the road fast to get as much as they can, as fast as they can.

We got lucky on both pumpkins and costumes this year — the pumpkins mostly came from a giveaway at the grand opening of a local bank, and the costumes are all holdovers from previous years, with a few new accessories. Ana would live in that cat costume if we let her…

The Acting Bug


048, originally uploaded by ruthlestina.

So last year when we took De to Circe de Soliel, she started asking about acting, performing, and such. After her umpteenth request, I registered her with a casting agency locally, that I heard about from a friend who'd been an extra through them. All this seemed to do, tho, was get us on a mailing list for endless hype exhorting us to upgrade to the paid actors and models directory, which we of course ignored.

Last week, however, out of the blue, we got a call that the agency was auditioning kids De's age for a part in a commercial, so I took Ana and De both down there. It was pretty cool – there were lots of people there auditioning for all kinds of parts, and the girls had a wonderful time.

They had each girl in turn play out a short story, basically the staff told them what to do and they did it. "You feel sick…" "You're scared" "Now you're feeling better and you're hungry," stuff like that.

We went away thinking it had been a very cool experience but expecting nothing to come of it. Then I got a call that they wanted Ana to come back in for a call-back audition! (Apparently De had been too bouncy to be convincingly sick on command…)

So we did the call-back audition today. They had a bunch of women there auditioning for the "mom" role, and they were matching them up with little girls auditioning for the "kid" role and having them play through scripts. It was again, neat to experience. Here is Ana at the beginning of the call back audition, where they photographed her holding a name board.

Ana enjoyed herself, and they seemed pleased with her, but again, no expectations. Of course, Ana's now got the bug, and keeps asking if we can do it again soon…

Drawing Wildlife Class


042, originally uploaded by ruthlestina.

Jenya's gotten very focused on drawing recently, and decided to sign up for an art class at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

She picked the "Drawing Wildlife" class, taught by Mark Klingler. It's actually an adult art class, because she wanted "real" art lessons, not pasting tissue paper onto cardboard (her words).

She handled herself very well with all the grownups, and the instructor was very supportive and encouraging. It was a great experience. They picked something from the CMNH hall of mammals, and then spent 3 weeks progressively sketching, drawing, painting, and polishing a watercolor of whatever they picked. Jenya learned quite a lot.