Hi everyone! It has sure been a busy past couple of days!

Last Friday, we took a short trip over to Indianapolis during our lunch break for a blanket drive. One of our teammate's brothers recently fought cancer and he started a blanket drive in Las Vegas to help keep fellow cancer patients warm. We were very honored to be able to continue his efforts here in Indianapolis for the Peyton Manning Children's Hospital at St. Vincents. In just over an hour, we collected 20 blankets and $240. The following day, we purchased 17 more blankets bringing our total to 37 blankets! A group of us were able to go to the Children's Hospital to deliver the blankets to the patients there. It was an incredibly fun, rewarding trip, being able to talk to the kids and brighten their days. We are quite thankful to be able to give back to our community!

Yesterday started the first official day of practice with all the other countries! It was super fun to be able to meet some of them at dinner last night! We'll be able to show our hospitality and get to know the other girls over the next 7 days. Competition begins on Wednesday; the time has come! It's here and we are READY!

U - S - A
U - S - A
U - S - A
USA!!!!!!

HOME STRETCH!!!

Hello everybody!

We all came back from our short break re-energized and even more excited for Junior Worlds. It was so nice to go home and be with our families and friends who have given us so much support throughout our time training.

Today was our last day working out at the St. Vincent Sports Performance Center before the big meet. They have been a great resource throughout our training, and we want to thank them for everything.

Tomorrow is our first day training at the IUPUI Natatorium! We can't wait to jump right in and make that pool our home for the next week and a half! We are having an exhibition on Thursday and we hope to impress all those coming to watch and cheer us on!

If any of you are able, we would love to hear you all cheering and showing your USA pride at Junior Worlds next week. The tickets and schedule are available online on the USA Synchro website (usasynchro.org).

We can't wait to see you all soon in Indianapolis!
Much love, The 2010 USA Junior World Team

Congratulations to all of the competitors at US Open!

Hi everybody!
Today was a very exciting day in Indianapolis! In addition to our training, we got to go downtown to the USA Synchro National Office for a delicious lunch. There we met some important individuals who help promote, organize, and support US Synchronized Swimming - Terry, Janice, Jennifer, Taylor, Jordan, Elizabeth, Kevin, and Will The Intern. They bought us a very delicious, healthy lunch and we all sat in a conference room where we got to know one another a little bit. We talked about the exciting plans for Worlds as well.
After practice tomorrow, most of us are heading home for the weekend to see our families and friends, and to recharge for our last three weeks here together. So far Indianapolis has been a blast and we are looking forward to seeing you all at Worlds! Thanks again for all your support!!

Dinner!!

We are now staying in a hotel in Indy, and since we no longer have the campus cafeteria food that we had in San Antonio, we are making our own food! Our wonderful coaches have been giving us cooking lessons and we've made some pretty great meals! And we thought we'd share some with you!

Last night we made stewed chicken with:
- 1 can of stewed tomatoes
- 1 can of black beans
- 1 can of kidney beans
- chicken breast
Cook the chicken in a skillet and add the can of stewed tomatoes. Mix the two cans of beans in a pan and heat over medium heat. When the chicken is cooked, add the beans and enjoy a yummy meal! (we ate it over some brown rice).

We have had so much fun cooking ourselves! We also made tilapia and sweet potatoes tonight! Not only are we learning a lot in the pool, we're learning in the kitchen too! =)

US Open!!

It has certainly been a fantastic past few days! We survived the 100+ degree Texas weather and made a great showing at US Open! We took gold in the Junior Solo, Duet, and Team competitions and silver in Combo to China's National Team I.

It was a great honor to have support from our Senior Team I and to be able to watch them and cheer for them as well. It was also awesome to see and get to know the three Canadian club teams that came out to Texas. One of the highlights of the meet was watching the Chinese National Team's Combo to Alice in Wonderland! It was truly incredible!!

We had an early flight this morning and are now settling down in Indianapolis for the second half of our summer. We're half way done with our journey, but the best is yet to come! Congrats at Opens USA! We're going to keep this momentum moving forward through the end!

As day 2 of US Opens comes to a close, let's give a huge shout out for Alexa!! She competed her solo today - both prelims and finals - and swept away all the competition! What a great way to start off the meet! Yesterday, we all competed in figures and showed a great improvement since trials, just a month and a half ago. We are all excited to see such progress because we're only half way through our journey together!

We have started off having a great meet, and will continue tomorrow with the duet and combo! Aly and Alexa will no doubt represent tomorrow and we will continue that momentum through the end of the day when we compete our combo for the first time, to represent the United States of America.

Let's go get 'em! USA USA U - S - A!!!!