Somersaults were the official favorite of the day

On Saturday, we were able to go to our third official HopeKids activity since Elena has been diagnosed. It's not that we haven't been signing up for other events, we've just had an unfortunate string of low counts and hospital stays popping up whenever we've been signed up for HopeKids events and have had to skip out on most of them. Lately though, we've made it to the last two things we signed up for. Pretty good. :) I hope it continues because we have had a blast at everything we've been too. We love Hopekids and are so grateful for such an amazing organization that provides us with opportunities to get Elena out and enjoying life when she otherwise wouldn't be able to (most events are immuno-compromised friendly :)).

Arete Gymnastics invited the HopeKids to a two hour gymnastics clinic at their ginormous facility (the largest in Utah). I was excited for Elena before we went, but it was even better than I expected!

They started out with group stretching:

Elena moves to the beat of her own drum. :)

Then they broke off into age groups and rotated through different tumbling circuits (cartwheels-rolls-somersaults, bars, jumping-balance bar, etc.)

In the middle of one of her circuits, Elena stopped cold and sat staring like this for two solid minutes:

It took me a second to figure out what was going on, but she caught sight of the older kids doing cartwheels and flips and was mesmorized. :)

Lily was content in our arms for the first hour, but then she caught the gymnastics bug, too and wanted to be like the big kids.

Near the end of the day, they opened it up to "Free Play". Elena found an open area and started dancing to the background music. And then she kept on dancing. And dancing and dancing and dancing. For 15 minutes straight. And let me tell you what - she was feeling it.

Here's a small sampling. I can hardly believe this girl - she was coming up with all of this totally on her own. She just LOVES to dance.

At the end of the clinic they invited all the kids up by age group to get their "award".

Elena and her ribbon

Then some of the resident gymnasts performed for all the kids. Craziness. There were pretty young kids doing amazing things with their bodies.

After the closing "ceremonies", Elena and Lily went right back to playing/dancing - and attracted a crowd of a bunch of the teachers and gymnasts. Elena knows how to work it.

Elena doing a little call and response with a passerby

She was contagious - pretty soon she had everyone else dancing as well.

We had SUCH a blast! It was awesome to get Elena out and trying different things. I think we'll definitely be going back for some of the "open gym" time they hold weekly.

In the car on the way home, we asked Elena what her favorite part of the day was and she said, "The DANCING!!"

We chuckled and said, "Ok, well, what was your favorite part of the gymnastics - the cartwheels, bars, somersaults, jumping, flips, etc.?"

"The somersaults - I like those the best."