Last weekend, we had something really exciting on our planning; we were going to Dallas, Texas for a national cheer competition! The weeks before our departure we worked really hard to get our whole routine together and make all our stunts go. This was really stressful but it was definitely worth all our hard work.

We left the high school on Thursday night at 11:00 PM. We had a 10 hour bus ride so everyone slept the whole night on the bus. Around 9:00 AM in the morning we stopped at MC Donald's to get breakfast and at 11:00 AM we arrived in Dallas.

Our first stop was at the Dallas Convention Center for our first practice. The building was huge and there were so many teams who looked so professional. We all changed into our cheer shirts and after that we had some free time to go shopping because we didn’t have practice until 2:00 PM. Right before we had to check into the practice room, we all got together to stretch so we wouldn’t have to waste our time on the mats. In total we had a 30 minute practice. You get into a hall with a lot of mats and after every 10 minutes you rotate. The first 10 minutes you only have one mat, we warmed up our jumps and stunts on that. The second 10 minutes you have two mats. This is where we warmed up our pyramid and basket tosses. The last 10 minutes we had a whole floor (nine mats). We used this to do our whole routine with all the stunts, jumps and music.

After practice we went to our hotel.

We shared a room with Rachel and Kaleigh so we unpacked our stuff and went to the pool for 45 minutes with Malott and Kaleighs mom.

Here we decided that we were gonna eat at Olive Garden with everyone later that night, so that meant that we had to get ready and dress up nicely.

We went to dinner at 6, it was really good and we had a lot of fun. We got unlimited breadsticks (they’re the best) and Kamare dropped her phone in her spaghetti so we laughed about that for the rest of the night.

After dinner we went back to the hotel and some girls came to our room to hang out for a while. This was so much fun. We talked about a lot of stuff and we really got to know each other better. At 11 PM it was time to go to sleep, because the next day we had to wake up early and we had a busy ahead of us.

On Saturday we woke up at 8:30 AM to eat breakfast. We had a breakfast buffet at the hotel so that was really nice. After this we got ready and at 10:00 AM we left the hotel to go shopping.

The mall that we wanted to go to didn’t open until 12:00, so before we went there we went to some stores next to the mall which were already open. When we arrived at the mall, we spent our first hour at the forever 21 where we got some really cute clothes. After that we went to a lot of different stores. It was so big that they even had an ice skating area in the middle of the mall. They had stores for everything, even all kinds of restaurants.

We had a late lunch because our diner was going to be late too. We all got something at the foodcourt and soon after this it was time to leave the mall and get ready for our first day of competition. We did this at the hotel. We had to put on a lot of makeup and put our hair in high ponytails.

We didn’t have a lot of time so we kinda had to hurry but we made it work. At 5:00 PM it was time to go to the venue. Before our own performance, we looked at some other teams. They were really impressive. Around 6:30 PM it was time to warm up our stunts, this went the same as the practice before. Our performance didn’t go as well as we hoped, but at that moment we didn’t really care. Right after we finished we left to go eat dinner because it was late. We were supposed to go to a really good Mexican restaurant, but there was a two hour waiting list and since it was already 8:30 PM, we decided to go to Chili’s. It wasn’t a really big success. They forgot a lot of orders and it took really long to fix it. The food was good, but the service could’ve been better. As soon as we arrived at the hotel around 10:30 PM we took a shower and went to sleep.

Sunday was our last day in Dallas.

After breakfast we went to the Dallas farmers market.

The weather was really good, around 26 degrees celsius, so we spent a lot of time outside enjoying the sun.

As soon the mall opened we decided to go back because no one was done shopping yet. We walked around for a while and shopped some more. For lunch we decided to finally get some sushi (we asked for sushi for weeks).

Right after this, it was time to head back to the hotel again to get ready for our second and last day of competition. This time it went way better.

Less stunts fell and our score was way higher than the day before. After our performance we had to wait for the awards. We ended up taking fifth place in our division.

After this we went to eat at whataburger, they call it the best burger place in the nation! The burgers were really good and it was really cheap, so that’s always nice. We got back at the hotel around 11:00 PM, we packed our suitcases and went to sleep, because we had to leave at 8 in the morning the next day for our bus ride back home.

On monday we woke up around 7:30 AM, packed our last things and went downstairs to grab some breakfast and lunch at the buffet for on the bus. On the bus we slept a lot and had a fun last time together with everyone.

We had a really fun time in Texas and we are grateful that we got this opportunity!