The Blue-Eyed Skater Takes on Denver

In March, Emma had the opportunity to skate in a competition in Denver.  Because of Abbie's performance in her school musical, I sent Emma on an airplane with her coach and then I took a road trip the following day with my good friend, Jennie.

Jennie and I took off in the wee hours of the morning, so I was a bit sleepy when I was loading up the car.  About an hour into our journey, I received a phone call from Josh.

Josh:  "Mom, have you seen my backpack?"

Me:  "Umm...it's not by the door?"

Josh:  "No."

Me:  (sudden realization hits me and my stomach plummets.) "Oh no, Josh.  I think I packed it in the car when I was loading stuff up this morning!"

Josh:  "What!  I have stuff in there that is due today!"

Mom:  (trying hard not to cry.)  "I'm so sorry!  I was taking stuff for Emma's coach and it was under her stroller so I thought it was something that belonged to her.  Let me pull over and we can figure this out.  Maybe I can take a picture of your assignments.  Do you think your teachers will be okay with that for now?"

Josh:  "I guess we'll see."

Okay, so maybe that is not exactly how the conversation went, but it is pretty close.  As soon as I hung up the phone, the tears started.  Jennie tried to console me, bless her heart.  I just could not believe that I had packed his backpack!  Who does that?  Apparently, I do, because..."Hi, my name is Desirae.  I'm an imperfect human being who makes mistakes and does dumb stuff sometimes."

Fortunately, Josh's teachers were understanding of the situation and were okay with the "My mom stole my backpack" excuse.  I took pictures of the assignments that were due and we continued on our way to Denver.

Emma was ah-mazing, as usual.  She did two programs.  Her first program was her Showcase.  She skated to the song, "Alive" by Lady Gaga.  I really love this program.  She ended up winning 1st place!  This was exciting in more ways than one, because not only did she win first place, but because she won first place, she qualified herself to compete in a National Showcase Competition in August.

So proud of this little blue-eyed skater girl who is not so little anymore.

Her second program was her Freeskate program.  She skated to "Sampson and Delilah".

She skated really well and ended up winning second place in that group.

She is so beautiful on and off the ice.

Aside from the figure skating, we ended up having a ton of fun together as well.  We had to eat at Chick-Fil-A.  That is a must.  We ate at probably the best Chick-Fil-A ever, well, at least they had one of the best employees ever...Ron.  Ron is our hero and every customer service employee should be like Ron.

We also took Emma to see La-La-Land because she had not seen it yet.  Jennie and I had both seen it twice already, but we love it, so we didn't mind.  We cruised a mall, watched a ton of "This is Us" and "Psych" and road tripped our way back home.

It was one of my favorite road trips ever because of the company I was with.  

Here are the videos of Emma's programs.