Brandon's Birthday

All I can say is, brownie points for trying! No one will ever be able to make a pineapple upside down cake the way Brandon's mom did! I know he appreciates the effort, but I am the first to admit, it is just not the same. We celebrated a day early with the Earles (that we apparently didn't take even one picture with!) and BLT's because the next day we were headed North!!

That's a lot of candles babe! You can't really tell that under all that fire glow there is a cake ;)

Summer Swimming

First swim of the year, we watch from the sidelines!

First swim of the year - late May

The Zoo

The zoo with friends. It was hot and Lizzie the lion was very entertaining! The kids could have played with her through the glass all day!

Just for fun

I will spare you the pictures of me...but will say that one of them I could still get zipped - the other one has suffered closet shrinkage, I am certain.

I wore the black dress to Jr. Prom and the white one to Sr.Prom...circa 1997 & 1998!

Summer Swim Team - WWJ

This is what happens when you get behind on your blog, all of summer swimming becomes one big post!! I just have say how much love I have for summer swimming! I love the discipline of practice every morning, I love the swim families and I love seeing the kids progress throughout the season. And this season we have a lot to be proud of!!

When your mom has to go early for a meeting, you get to do your summer reading at the pool!

This was our inspiration for the season - the record board! After Elizabeth's first meet I thought she had a chance to break a record...then someone reminded me that there is a little difference between a meter and yard pool! Ok, competitive mom here was effectively put in her place! 

When you can't find last year's ribbon holder and you just make a new one!

Coach Jamie 

We miss Molli and her matching suit!

EB was named Water Jet of the Week for working hard and having great finishes!

A little pre-event huddle

Downtime between events looks a lot like this with the soundtrack "mom, I'm hungry"

The 8U boy!

Not sure what his secret was, but love that he had to tell his sister

Do you know where your goggles are?! Right here Mom!

That's a final wall touch, waiting to shake hands with the swimmers in the lane next to her. She does such a good job showing good sportsmanship.

Pep talks from Ima and Auntie Amber

This is what you do when you are at a meet that starts an hour late and you are waiting, waiting and waiting! This really team was ready to go!!

The silly 8U boys - a lot of energy here!

The final event of the year is the Tazewell County Meet. Washington hasn't won for years and we didn't have a high participation rate, which mean we didnt' have a lot of families to help volunteer. Oh yeah, and Washington hosted. My family was such a big help and they all took a job. Dad announced all day. EB passed out heat winner prizes in the session she wasn't swimming in. Brandon timed and my Mom sold programs and t-shirts. It was quite the day! Tremont has won for several years. They have a great swim club and had a great showing at the county meet. But a funny thing happened...the coach started taking pictures with the trophy assuming it was their's to take home and then the final results printed out...they didn't win - we did!!! We were all really surprised as we had been trailing the entire day, but we won by 20 points and it took every single swimmer putting some points on the board to get that victory. It was such a huge accomplishment for our team. Being we were still cleaning up and organizing the awards, my kids were the only swimmers from our team when we found out, so they got their picture with the trophy and the coach!

The best lesson came the next morning when the kids were putting their awards on their plaques. Elizabeth had swam an awesome 25 breast stroke event, but she touched the wall 2nd. The girl who touched first should have been DQ'd, but she wasn't flagged. EB assumed that she had still won 1st and that the girl had received a DQ, we actually all did. But when I saw the results and placed the 2nd place tag in her envelope I hoped she wouldn't notice. No luck. At breakfast she says "I think you made mistake, I got first in this event but you gave me the 2nd place tag".  No sweetie, no mistake. "But she didn't even swim the breast stroke" (and she didn't, she had lots of illegal strokes) followed by a lot of "that's not fair!!" Thank you swimming officials for providing a life lesson. Grant had a great final meet too and his relay team did awesome! He had top 8 finishes in all of his events.

The end of year picnic was very rewarding for the kids as well. Grant was named Most Improved Swimmer in his age group and Elizabeth received the high point award. Later, we were told she didn't just have the high point award for her age group, but actually scored the most points of any swimmer on the entire team! So we didn't break any records, but it's all good ;)

Can't wait for next year!! We will put that WWJ magnet on the back of my car proudly!!!