Much excitement here : Emily has actually made it through to Nationals in the climbing competition! We didn't really expect her to get to Divisionals (the previous round), considering that this is her first year on the climbing team, and that she's the youngest in her age group, as her birthday falls the day before the cut-off date. So this is a happy surprise.

So she and I will be flying out to Sacramento next Thursday afternoon. Registration takes place on Thursday evening, and the competition happens over the next three days.

We fly home again on Sunday evening, leaving Sacramento around 8pm Pacific Time and arriving here at 6am Eastern Time.

I really wanted the whole family to go. But all those last-minute high-season air fares worked out horribly expensive. It would have been different if Bobby could have taken even a few days extra leave, so that we could have turned it into a decent holiday where we actually had time to do stuff other than watch people climb. But he didn't feel that he could really even take the Thursday and Friday, let alone some of the next week. So it just didn't seem worth paying all that money if we weren't going to be able to do much while we were away. Better to rather save our money for October, when we're all going to Colorado.

Once we'd decided that only one parent should go, of course the huge decision was - which parent? Bobby desperately wanted to go, but in the end he decided that it was just too complicated for him to take even those two days leave. Plus, he didn't think he'd cope too well at work on the Monday if he'd just got off a plane at 6 that morning... So - I'm going. I'm going to miss the rest of the family horribly. But I'm also really looking forward to the trip. It'll be wonderful to have my middle child all to myself for three whole days. I'm hoping that it'll be a special mother-daughter trip that we'll remember forever.