· January 21, 2004

Hi everyone,

   I hope you all had a good holiday and got everything from Santa that you wanted! I did some fun stuff but with still having to go to gym and do schoolwork, it never really feels like a vacation. Christmas was pretty quiet because we just stayed home all day. Oh, did I say quiet? Well, my brother got his drum set so maybe it wasn't too quiet! He talked my mom into letting him keep it in the basement instead of the high school. But he does have to stop playing at 7:00 p.m. every night and since I don't get home from gym until about 8:00 p.m., I guess I am lucky for that! I actually got my computer for Christmas but I have to wait until my birthday to get the printer, I guess it was too much money to get both at the same time. USAG sent my coach a calendar for 2004 and boy is it neat, it has a page for each month with each of all the really great girls - like the ones who went to the Olympics or Worlds. They get a whole page with their picture and then there is a section below of some of the other girls with little pictures on it. And we were really excited because I was in one of the little pictures - I'm in April but it's really little. It also has everyone's birthday on it and guess what, I am the same month as Carly Patterson, Tia Orlando, and Allyse Ishino and they are all really good seniors so that's pretty cool. Well, my coach wouldn't give me his calendar so I was pretty jealous that only he got to have one. Well, the very next day, I got a package from USAG for Christmas and it had a calendar in it for me too! Oh and guess what's really cool on the calendar - well, Susan Jackson's name has the letters USA in the middle, I never realized that until I saw the calendar because they had the letters capitalized on the calendar so you could notice it.

   New Year's was the best! All my teammates got together and first we went to Panera Bread for lunch. They have the best cinnamon crunch bagels! After that, we went to the movies and saw Cheaper by the Dozen. That was such a funny movie - I want to see it again! After the movie, we went to Bernie's house and made candy houses. There must have been at least ten pounds of candy, it was so colorful and yummy looking! At midnight, we got out pots and pans and went outside and started banging on them for all the neighbors. I didn't go to sleep until after 1:00 in the morning and had practice the next day, so obviously I was tired and got in trouble all day.

   My injury seems to be doing okay. My coach is FINALLY letting me do some small stuff - like I get to do a roundoff back handspring! He always makes me stop doing stuff for just the smallest injury and it is sooooooo boring! But nothing I am doing now hurts anymore and I have most of my flexibility back so I guess I really did need to take some time off. He's taking it very slow though to make sure that my bone is completely healed or I might just injure it again. I think I'll get to compete in the podium meet, but maybe just bars. He doesn't think that I'll get to go to Classics in California though because I won't be ready for all around yet, but at least I get to go to New York. I went to California last year for a meet so I'm more excited about going to New York anyway. I love competing on a podium and I think one of my teammates will get to come with me to compete and we can also see the American Cup.

   Well, hope everyone is off to a good start in the New Year and thanks to everyone who wrote to me in my guestbook. It's really neat to read some of the messages, I was really surprised because someone from Sweden wrote to me and has even seen me compete!

   Bye, Bye,