For me, December brings both a huge load of cheerleading, and a huge load of school. Last Sunday my team went to a small competition in Montreal to compete. We have a lot of rookies this year (about 20 out of 36), so most of our team had never been in a cheerleading competition before. The competition we went to in Montreal was a chance for our team to get out the jitters of performing on a floor in front of an audience. We did well at that competition, placing first! They also have stunt competitions, where a small group of either 4 girls, a girl (top) and a guy (base), or 3 girls and one guy can compete a 1 minute routine of stunts. I decided to do it this year with a group of girls on my team. Our top hurt her ankle a week before the Montreal competition, so we had another girl sub in, and she did amazing!
^The whole group- Dani on the left, Erica in the front, Kristyn on the right, and me in the back
This weekend we had Nationals in Brampton with all the other universities and colleges in Canada that have cheerleading teams. We’ve had a lot of injuries these past few weeks, and one so bad that we had to get a sub for Nationals, and the new girl had to learn the whole routine in a week, which she did amazingly by the way. I’m so proud of our whole team. We did our best, and we had fun, and I can’t wait until next semester for our next competition together.
^At the end of the routine
Cheerleading Nationals 2010
Thanksgiving
Although Canadian Thanksgiving was a few weeks ago, I have a couple cheerleading friends on Facebook from Texas who go to school in Ottawa, and I can’t help but notice them planning their annual American Thanksgiving feast this weekend. Because we only did this briefly for our Canadian Thanksgiving (and because I love lists), here’s a list of what I’m thankful for this holiday season (in no particular order):
1) My cheerleading team
Being a part of a cheerleading team basically means that you have 35 other people who you are with for 2 hours, 3 times a week, who you have to get along with. You can’t really fight with them, because one of them may save a part of your body from being injured. We try not to hurt them, and they try not to hurt us, but it happens sometimes, and we get over it. We have to learn how to work together, and even though I’ve only known most of these people for 3 months now, being with them feels like being with family. Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been getting stressed out and frustrated at things that aren’t going as planned, or people getting hurt, or school assignments, but as soon as someone sees one of their teammates start to well up and start crying, there is always someone there to help- I know from many experiences. Someone is always there to lift your spirits, and say ‘why don’t we try it again, and maybe we’ll try something different this time?’, and it always helps.
Below: My team! This was taken last week after practice. 5 points if you can find me!
2) School
This is my last year at Carleton, and although there has been construction going on during all 4 of my years here, I’ve just been realizing that we have a beautiful campus, and I’m lucky to have gone here. I’ve met all sorts of awesome people- most through the cheerleading team, who have made my time here even better. I’ve had my fair share of stressful living conditions and ‘friend’ drama, but the library or the ‘couch room’ as I like to call it, have made a great getaway for me.
3) Food and Shelter
I’m pretty sure this is a given, but as I said before, I’ve had my fair share of stressful living conditions. That being said, I’ve always had a place to go if I wanted to get away from it all, whether it be a family friends house, or one of my friends apartments. As for food, when I was home this past weekend I made some banana chocolate chip muffins. And since, well, I love them, I brought some home with me. The other day I brought 2 to school. One to eat on the way to school, and one for the middle of my class when I’m feeling tired and want to sleep right there on the desk. On my way to school I passed a couple of guys asking for food/money. I learned somewhere not to give them money, because who knows how they will spend it- I know all people on the street asking for money aren’t looking to spend it on bad things, I’m just saying- if I’m giving my money to someone who is hungry, I expect them to spend it on food. Since I had a muffin on the seat next to me, I decided to give them that. Well, in the end I don’t think they ate it, because when I gave it to them they looked at it like it could have been poisoned. But hey, I tried, right?
4) Family and Friends
And lastly, the most obvious one. Something that mostly everyone is thankful for, and needs no explanation.
some good things…
- On Tuesday I went to the Ottawa Gymnastics Centre with some girls from my team to work on our cheerleading stunts. I got hit in the nose and it started bleeding. It hurts, but it makes me look tough! I guess this isn’t really a good thing, but we did get the stunt to stick.
- This past weekend I went home and it was AWESOME! I did a bit of everything I love doing when I go home- hanging out with family, playing with Hails, going out and spending time with friends, and playing with the kittens! Being at home makes me so happy, but I love coming back to school and cheerleading.
- I was super sick last week, pretty much until Sunday. I had to leave church on Sunday morning because I couldn’t breath. But starting Monday I felt amazing! Good thing, because I had to make the 6 hour drive back to Ottawa. Since getting hit in the nose I haven’t been able to blow my nose though, and it’s making this getting better thing not work at all.
- I found this video on facebook. Some students at Carleton made a video for the project ‘It Gets Better’ and it’s posted on the site.
- Becoming better friends with the new girls on the team. I love them all already!
- This picture:
Hailey looking around me to see where Kate went
- And this picture:
Getting to cheer at the Ravens home tonight! The theme is Carnival, and there are going to be buskers and everything.
- For the next month I have plans/people visiting for every weekend Tonight, my friend Owen is visiting, next weekend, the Aunts, Kate and Hailey are coming, the weekend after that I’m going home to pick up the van for the competitions, the weekend after that I have a competition in Montreal, and the week after that I have Nationals in Brampton!
I’m going to be posting 2 posts on my days, since I’m doing the themed photo posts, so stay tuned for my next post tonight!
Procrastination At It's Best.
Soo I have 2 more exams left. TWO! Jeez, most people are done by now! I have my next exam tonight at 7, and my last exam tomorrow at 2, then I’m home on Monday night for some Christmas fun! Hopefully this time it won’t take us 12 hours to drive home. I tried to listen to Cheerfm while studying…but that failed. So now I’m listening to Super Smash Bros and Girl Talk, which sort of makes up for it. Also, I think the guy sitting in the comfy chair across from me in Rooster’s is taking pictures of me on his blackberry…and it’s really creeping me out, so I had to do something other than study to distract me from the creepiness. This post is going to be super random, because what other kinds of posts do I honestly write?
Nationals Part 2
1 Exam down, 4 more to go, and 1 essay to edit before I’m home in 10 days! I promised more pictures from Nationals, so here goes! I thought there was a professional photographer, so I was going to wait for those pictures to come out, but it turns out that there wasn’t one, so I’ll put up some of Kate’s pictures!
Me and my driving partners for the weekend Erika and Elisa. These girls saw me at my worst those couple of days.
Me and mom!
Christmas Christmas Christmas!
This time of year always makes me the most antsy. This time of year obviously being EXAMS! This year the exam season brings many things: Cheerleading Nationals, the end of cheerleading season, snow (!!), Christmas music in stores, seeing all my cheer friends around school 24/7, because now that Nationals are over we all have to start studying again, going home for Christmas, and my most favourite thing about this season- going home to see family! This year it also brings packing my things up and moving to a different place, which was decided a couple of days ago, and we’ve (Kaylee and I) started looking for places asap, just to get out of all this sketchiness and drama.
I got this Christmas survey from Rachel, who is also going through a move of her own right now, and you can read all about her funny moving stories at her blog (which include losing a dresser along the way? haha)
Home from Nationals!
Heyy everyone!
Hope you all had a great weekend, I know I did! Cheerleading Nationals were this weekend in Brampton, and pretty much the whole fam jam came. 4/5 blondes were there, 3 aunts, 1 Dave, 1 brother in law, 1 oma, and 1 mom! I always have the biggest entourage there and I love it!
We came 4th! Our awesome coaches Anson and Meagan are in the front.
Karlene, Ashley and Me at awards.
Me and Ashley at the Afterparty! Which was innnnsanee.
More pictures will be coming, this is just all I have right now!
My Brush With Fame
I’m here today- my first post of NaNoBloMo!!- to talk about hockey. Canada’s greatest sport, and well frankly I don’t even watch it, even though I come from London, which has an awesome hockey team- The Knights, and I now live in Ottawa, who has another awesome hockey team- The Ottawa Senators. Tuesday night our cheerleading team was invited to cheer at an exhibition hockey game at school- Carleton against the U-20 Sweden Team. We had our uniforms on, and our faces painted and the arena was pretty packed. We didn’t expect the Ottawa Senators captain to show up though! Yep, Daniel Alfredsson was there. Usually seen looking like this:
We even got a picture with him!
Okay that’s it for my brush with fame, now here is what I dressed up as on Halloween!
Just another day!
Pretty much my life at school lately has been: school, cheerleading, school, cheerleading, school, cheerleading, school, and of course, more cheerleading. Also a bit of hanging out with cheerleaders in stuck in there somewhere. So this is a very random post, pretty much about cheerleading, and things related to cheerleading! There will be a lot of shout outs to some cheerleaders in here, so watch out! At practice I practice in the guys groups and stunt with them, and yesterday (Monday) at practice I did my own stunt! (well, with Grant helping!) I’ve known Aley (the top) since grade 5, and let me tell you, she was VERY excited to be in this blog. Here ya go Al!
I know it looks like I’m not doing anything, but I promise I am! I also have to say hi to Erinn, Serena, and their roommates. I have heard stories that they talk about me in their living room after practice. So Hey Serena, Erinn and roommates!
This post is just filled with cheerleading. But this includes some baking! Tomorrow we have a bake sale, and I made brownies and cupcakes! 
I decorated them with farm animals too! The pink ones are pigs, brown are cows, and yellow are chicks.
There are going to be some sister contests coming up this week, so keep reading!
Lauren
Bus Strike Adventures
OC Transpo Bus
For the past week (and before the Christmas break), I’ve had to find different ways of getting to school almost every day because there are no buses running. Wednesdays I have no class, but I had to be at school to help recruit for cheerleading, so I was going to walk the hour to school, then someone recommended to me that I should take the shuttles (Carleton has school buses running from different parts of the city every half hour to help students get to their classes). The closest shuttle stop from me is a half hour walk at our nearest shopping center/O-train stop, so I got bundled up, and left at about 3:45, since I had to be at school for 5, and figured that would give me enough time. I got to the stop at about 4:20, and noticed a sign on the times board saying “Due to the weather, the shuttles will not be running today”. There I was, boots on, with slippers underneath, down filled mitts, tights, yoga pants, a short sleeved shirt, a long sleeved shirt, a sweater, a down coat, and BOTH hoods on (I later got made fun of when I mentioned that I took off my hoodS.). In other words, I was totally bundled up, and totally pissed that I walked half an hour to a bus stop where no buses would be coming.
After I got over my initial shock, and about 5 minutes of trying to call a cab (obviously busy every time I called, because how else would people get around these days?), I walked to the nearest Second Cup and called a teammate to come pick me up and bring me to school. On our way to school I find out that they had changed the recruiting times from 5-7 to 4-6. It was now 5:20. So I get to school, take off my layers (and my hoods), and starting trying to recruit people. Now has anyone ever had to attempt to recruit university aged guys to try out for a cheerleading team? NOT fun, let me tell you that. Pretty much our approach is “if you think the guy is hot and jacked, go hand him a flier and chat him up”. I’m clearly not very good at this. I attempted to recruit for about 20 minutes, then a group of us decided it would be better if we’d just go to the residence and try to force people to try out hand them out there. Well. In order to get to the tunnels (do you really think we would walk outside?), we had to walk past one of the campus bars. Now you should know that one of our favorite sayings is “Our drinking team has a cheerleading problem”, and we do live up to that saying. We decided it would be easier for us to talk to people if we had a beer in us. Well one beer turned into two, and two into three, and next thing you know we’ve forgotten all about handing out fliers, and were now talking about siblings having the same tongues, and things only the fiveblondes would understand like “touch tongues!”, and living on farms/ranches, since the group I was there with consisted of two sisters from Texas-Kelly and Kristina, and one guy who works on a farm-Matt (did I mention that he also is from a family of five siblings? Only one sister though). Kristina, by the way is my twin. If you are looking at pictures from my cheerleading you’d better look twice to make sure that it’s actually me, because we have to do the same thing. We were then talking about staying for trivia night, when I got a call that Krys was waiting for me outside res commons-almost all the way across campus. So I grab my coat, say my goodbyes and run across campus…only to be met by a chihuahua in Krys’ truck! Now I assure you, I wasn’t drunk enough to be seeing things…okay well maybe I was, but there was honestly a chihuahua in the truck. I’ve never seen one up close, and Radar is enough to turn me off of them. No offense to anyone who has one, but chihuahuas are creepy looking dogs in my opinion. It turns out that this lovely dog is staying at my house for a couple of days while Krys’ sister visits us from Montreal. I’ll let you all know how this goes.
I had totally forgotten that we (me, Emily and Krys) had planned a Monopoly date with Krys’ friend Dan and his girlfriend Felicia. Monopoly is a touchy subject in our house. We usually end the game in a big fight, and a win for Krys. This time was different though. This time I won! It was a crazy game, and I didn’t quite understand how I won, but I’m not going to fight it, I’m going to take that win and be happy that I’m the one who broke Krys’ winning streak. Oh yea, he also wins EVERY single game we play, including Risk, Clue, and Whoonu.
Anyways, that was my wonderful adventure with the OC Transpo strike. I was only planning on making it about my adventure getting to school for the recruitments, but I tend to ramble when I’m bored, and have 5 hour breaks in my schedule, which I do every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.
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