The LA Open

This past weekend was devoted to helping with the LA Open Championships which are hosted annually by the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club. LAFSC is the club Stephanie belongs to and represented while competing. Over the years Stephanie and I have volunteered to help out with one or two competitions each year, and Steph served as the Newsletter Editor for the past year and a half. Now that she's leaving for college and exciting new experiences Steph has handed over the Newsletter duties to someone else but she still plans to stay involved when and where she can. I'm still serving as the Ice Dance Test Chair and was just elected to the Board of Directors.

Thank god this years competition wasn't as large as last years when we had over 320 skaters, this year we aren't hosting a Nationals qualifying event so it was a much more managable 197 skaters entered. The competion started this past Friday, July 15th and ran Friday 5-9pm, Saturday 8am to 9pm and Sunday 8am to 4:30pm. I was serving as the registrar this year and Andrew came and worked the Registration desk for me on Friday. The first day is always the busiest and it takes two people to handle it.

Saturday and Sunday I had volunteers to help so although I had to be in the arena I could wander around, see some of the skating, generally help make sure everything ran smoothly, meeting and greeting on behalf of the the club but best of all catching up with lots of skating friends who train at other rinks than Steph, some of whom I hadn't seen since last years event as Steph isn'tt competing this season. Steph worked Friday and Sunday helping Joanne with the awards and photo's.

Before we left for the rink on Friday, Andrew and I had gotten him all packed for baseball camp and Sam drove him up to Santa Barbara and dropped him off on Sunday morning. Andrew called Sunday night to tell me about his first day (Sunday was a five hour hitting clinic) and it was obvious he was in baseball heaven and enjoying being with a couple of friends from his team. We forgot to pack an alarm clock so I hope he makes it up okay but he said he asked one of the coaches to bang on his door at 7am. I'll pick him up Friday afternoon.

Friday night I was in line at midnight with the kids waiting to get the new Harry Potter novel. Even though I had to be up by six to be at the rink to open registration at 7am I couldn't disappoint the kids. I'd promised some time ago before I realized what the release date fell in the middle of.

It was worth being a bit groggy for the first couple of hours on Saturday to share the memory of that evening with them though, it was a lot of fun to witness all the excitement the book generated among the kids and adults waiting to get their hands on it. All three of them stayed up all night reading and finished it at different times Saturday morning after which they promptly went to bed. Sam says it was nice and peaceful at the house and he could kick back and watch his precious golf :)