My "Awesome" grandson Timothy

A change of topic for today; time to brag about my grandchildren. One is better than the next, but the bragging rights today go to Timmy. He is a gymnast competing in Level 5 as a 9 year old. I had the honor of accompanying him to his meet this afternoon. It was held at West Point, so was well attended from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania gyms. In the words of his coach, he was "awesome." Coming from his coach that is a great complement, as this coach is a no-nonsense guy who hands out few complements. Men's-boys gymnastics consist of six events, with a maximum score of 10 in each event. Tim had a combined score of 55.75, and finished 2nd overall. He medalled in every event, with either a silver or a bronze. Although he got no golds, his performance is what gave his team a gold. None of the other kids finished in the top three in any event. The kid who beat him for the gold overall and in most events ended up with a score of 56.1--only .35 higher than Tim. The competition between then was obviously very close. No genealogy got done this weekend, but watching Timmy perform was fabulous. The meets tend to be fast and tedious at times, but West Point with typical military precision marched them right along, finishing and hour and a half ahead of schedule. There was no time to be bored as the little time between Tim's events wasn't enough to figure out the scoreboard and keep track of his progress. By the time we got to his last event and he was still in 2nd overall, I was a nervous wreck. He ended with vault, which is usually his worst event. Why, I don't know, as it seems simpler than the rest, [articularly his best, Pommel Horse. The scores were so close that it wouldn't have taken much of a slip-up to drop his score down considerably. I worried for nothing; he got a bronze with 9.55. By comparison for general level of difficulty, his bronze in Pommel Horse was with a 8.9. The scores above him were 9.0 and 9.1. Tomorrow it's back to genealogy as I head to Boston. I have been invited to attend the Board of Trustees/Council Dinner of the New England Genealogical & Historical Society. As my son-in-law is in town this week I can go to the dinner without worrying about my babysitting duties, so am not only going, but taking an extra day or two for research. I got two days off at Christmas I was so busy, one of them being Christmas Day (I worked New Year's Day--the other was the Friday after Christmas when I went to see my mother) so think I have earned a few days this week. I have to be at work by Thursday as I am speaking at Rotary that day on Estate Planning. I should prepare some hand-outs before speaking. I guess I can think about that driving to and from Boston. Hopefully I will get time to give you a Boston research report before the week is out. Obviously my New Year's resolution of daily blogs isn't going well, but at least I am down to about one a week--a vast improvement over last year!