New Year at Gym!

January 3, 2021

New Year At Gym!

Welcome to 2021!!

This is how WGV Gymnastics is welcoming in 2021 our first week of classes! We start back with Recreational Gymnastics Monday, January 4, 2021 and the happy decorations and big smiles help us launch in the New Year!

Come join us!

Check out our website for beginner gymnastics (ages 5 to 17), tumbling (ages 5 to 17), boy’s gymnastics (ages 5 to 17), preschool gymnastics (ages 3 to 5), Parent and Tot (just walking to 3), open gyms, skill clinics, our Gym-N-Learn Preschool Program (potty trained through 5 years), and more!

We offer day camps, summer camp, winter camp (we just finished up 2020’s winter camp), birthday parties, afterschool pickup, our pro shop, private lessons, preteam, competitive team…

Oh, can’t forget the monthly gym parties! We call them “Parent’s Night Out” but the kids call them “Gym Parties” – mark your calendar for every third Saturday in 2021! Tickets for those are already on sale at eventbrite or through the gym’s facebook page.

We are all super excited about our wonderful new year and what amazing things the gym will offer! Our goal is to “provide love and encouragement while inspiring kids to develop self-esteem and confidence through gymnastics.” We have a lot of fun fulfilling that goal!

See you at WGV Gymnastics in 2021! (Oh my, we open tomorrow! Register online for a free trial class!)

Type at you later,

~Nancy Tart

Overcomer: Movie Review

September 6, 2019

Overcomer

My family went to see the new Kendrick brothers’ movie, “Overcomer” on opening weekend.  Oh. My!  This film has great acting, believable serious characters, some realistic humor, and glaring, real-life truth.  It catches you into the storyline almost instantly.  Major disappointment we can all relate to begins the story.  The one glimmer of hope comes from the coach consoling his players with a very serious, “next year will be our year.”

Well, life happens.

(Isn’t that always what seems to be true? We plan what we see as perfection, but a monkey-wrench gets tossed in to muck up said plans.)

The primary employer in the area closes, relocating to another area and because it offered the workers transition into new jobs, of course, most workers relocate along with it – taking the team members with them in ones and twos until only one is left.  Imagine being 17 years old, hoping for a scholarship in your favorite sport and boom, because of something outside of your control, your team is decimated to where you don’t even have a poor team to be the star of.  This faces the coach’s eldest son. 

Meanwhile, the coach is facing an aggravation that blows up in slamming bricks into shattered bits of sand.  He can’t see the light of anything.  No team, 10% pay cut, no scholarship for his eldest son, and being “forced” to coach in a sport he pretty much hates, cross-country, with a team of one (okay, if you’ve seen the trailers, this isn’t a spoiler) – a girl with asthma. 

Enter Hannah.  A petty thief stealing to prove she can get away with is who happens to be granted what her grandmother believes is a “full scholarship,” really her private school tuition is paid for by her late mother’s friend.  This girl feels she has no friends, feels abandoned by everyone (parents are dead, Grandmother is always working), and good at only one thing – running. 

Coach’s wife feels they are teachers to answer a calling of caring for students and showing love.  She accepts Hannah 100% without reservation. 

Coach is still internally fuming over his losses. 

Providentially, he accidently steps into Thomas’ room.  A man whose not-so-old body is being torn apart by wasting diseases brought on by his drug-addicted and abusive past.  He was a champion runner.  Over time, Coach picks Thomas’ brain on how to coach Hannah. 

*Spoiler Alert!*

Don’t go any farther if you don’t want the whole “hidden” twist revealed.  As the blind Thomas asks Coach about himself, I whispered to Thea (she can’t tell anyone anyway, but I like to talk about movies as I watch them and she doesn’t care if I “ruin” the movie) “Thomas is Hannah’s father.”

Yep.  My storywriter brain is connecting the “coincidence dots” and morphing an awesome story of redemption – yes, that’s what the movie does.  Thomas abandoned his family (leaving Hannah with her Grandmother who holds a deep root of bitterness) to chase drugs and junk.  Once though, Thomas was a champion runner.  He believes God has given him a second chance. 

Doesn’t God always do that?  He always gives us a chance at redemption.  I love pointing out stories in real life and in movies where there are second chances or last minute redemptions.  Yes, we are nerds, so I’m usually at least twice a week discussing the redemption story of Star Wars – you know, how Anakin had good intentions, fell away from the good side, wrestled with himself, did so many bad things, yet redeemed himself with his last few hours and gets to be a “good part” of the force.  Redemption has always been offered but we have to accept it. 

Overcomer is one the girls can’t wait to add to our collection – if we didn’t have a limited budget, our clan of ten (my mom joined us) would have gone to see it the next day too, bringing friends along! That is the first time the girls wanted to go back to the theater and see the same movie again.  Usually, if we see a movie together (usually a Star Wars flick), they leave saying “I can’t wait til it’s on DVD!” This one was, “can we see this again tomorrow?”

One line got me as a mother: “For 6 weeks, I had the perfect Dad.”  (Hannah says this at Thomas’ funeral.)  I cried. God used what looked like simple choices to weave together a tapestry of forgiveness, freedom, and purpose for so many people.

What has God orchestrated you toward?  Are you open to love and forgive, or are you stubbornly clinging to bitterness as revenge?  Think about it; what one choice did you agree with God on and now see so much more than just one simple thought of “oh yeah, I did the right thing.”

I love it when movies make me reflect on my heart.

Type at you next time,

~Nancy Tart

My New Gym!

August 22, 2019

Our New Gym!

Have you ever moved? 

YES!  I can remember 19 different homes in my early years.  My husband and I have shifted houses 10 times in almost 17 years. 

I am intimately aware of moving.

I know just how many boxes can fit in a 5×8 moving trailer.  I can look at your furniture and see it morphing into place inside a moving van like blocks in Tetris – just with some blankets and pillows strategically placed here and there for padding.

WGV Gymnastics (which yes, I call “my gym” even though it’s not mine, I coach there… but I love it!) just moved from their old facility to the new one at 135 Center Place Way, Saint Augustine, in World Golf Village area.  (They literally moved across the pond!)

We helped with loading a trailer and cleaning.  Our monster was the pit – do you know how many giant trash bags are needed to clean out 15,000+ 6”x6”x6” foam pit blocks?  We have no clue, but it’s upwards of 500.  And that doesn’t count those wrapped up in the tarp! 

Our new facility has amazing new equipment, huge cooling fans, the climbing rope (Kimberly’s favorite), and I can’t wait to teach classes in the new preschool area!  Our after-school program is very nice.  We have two vans that pick children up from area schools. (Mill Creek, Pacetti Bay, and Palencia Elementary, to name a few – check with the office if you want to find out if your school is covered!) In this program, you can pick which days you need pick up, and your students will have assistance with homework, crafts and games to entertain them, and snacks while they wait for you to pick them up!  Since we are a gymnastics facility, the bonus to the program is access to specified gymnastics classes.

Dozens of people helped out in this massive move.  Teamwork.  That’s why I only know a small facet of the whole picture. 

We finished by sorting all the blocks into good, bad, and ugly. Good went to the new pit, bad to be shredded to make new mats, and ugly to the trash bin. Our teamwork system was separated into groups of various sizes doing specific tasks: One pulled bags up out of the pit, one opened bags, one put good blocks neatly into uHaul boxes, one bagged up the bad & trashed the ugly, and one took “train cars” (aka uHaul boxes loaded with pit blocks) to the door to wait for the “engine” (aka the truck to the new gym).

Lucas and Jillian loaded the bags out with a rope (before it got reassigned to another task) while Kimberly tosses bags up to be sorted! This teamwork went on for hours.

While I only know the pit blocks intimately during this move, I am super excited for the new facility and our growth from here out.  Come and see us at 135 Center Place Drive at WGV Gymnastics!

Type at you next time,

~Nancy Tart

New Story Release!

Launch of the 9th book in the Five Alive: Stories of the Funny Sisters series

October 30, 2017

New Story Release!

Welcome to the ninth book in the “Five Alive: Stories of the Funny Sisters” series.  The title is “Happy Hurricane Helpers.”

Following Hurricane Irma’s attack on their town in Florida, the sisters join with their neighbors and help clean up.

Hurricane Irma was a powerful storm that did reach category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale (over 155 mph).  Hurricanes usually decrease in power as they travel over land.  Hurricane Irma had traveled almost straight up Florida’s peninsula from the Keys.  When this storm hit Saint Augustine, it was a category 1 storm (75 to 95 mph).

In coastal areas like Saint Augustine, most hurricane damage is caused by flooding.  The strong winds can fell huge trees, rip debris off houses, throw limbs through windows, and cause heavy damage as well.  Trees falling on power lines caused the sisters to be out of power.  For more information about hurricanes in general, see “Hurricanes,” one of my Home-Edge Readers!

For now, how about a preview of two scenes from “Happy Hurricane Helpers!

Kim awoke this morning before the sun even started to turn the edge of the sky pink.  Last night, the power had gone off and the sisters had camped out in their sleeping bags under the huge, sturdy wooden table in the safe room where there were no windows.  Last night they had heard the deep rumbling that sounded like standing next to train tracks when the train raced by.  Last night Hurricane Irma had hit Saint Augustine. 

   As soon as the tree on the dirt road was clear, Tina, Becky, Kim, Ellen, and Jill followed Mom and Daddy and started helping with limb cleanup.  Some of the Tree family kids were out cleaning limbs too.  Two other children from a house down the paved road joined in the fun.  The Tree men had left a trail of sawed-off branches scattered where the big trees had fallen.  They had stacked big round stacks of trunk wood by the road because those were too heavy for little kids.  But the branches were perfect for kids! 

   Six-year-old Kim flexed her muscles. 

   “I can drag this BIG one to the road!” She challenged, dragging a limb to the edge of the road. 

   “I got a bigger one!” said Tina. 

   Becky and Ellen laughed.  “We are doing teamwork!”  Ellen announced.  She was four and her blankie was draped over her shoulders like a boa.

   “Me too!” Jill called.  Jill was only two but she loved to help.  She had a two-year-old-sized branch and was making funny faces as she fought it to the edge of the road.

   “Let me help you, Jill,” offered Tina. 

   “No!” Jill yanked the branch and it flew out of her hands and right to the edge!  Jill stood up straight, brushed her hands on her jeans, and said, “I can do it myself!” 

   … (continued reading Happy Hurricane Helpers here!)

 

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

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