SWISA

The championship swim meet was held on the 21st at Paddlers and our kids rocked it!!  Brady is in his last year of 8U, Bennett in his first year of 11-12 and Carter is in his first year of 15-18.  I love swim season.  Their coach Celeste has been the head coach since I was an 8U swimmer (which I guess doesn't say much since it wasn't that long ago.  Ahem...) and she is fantastic.  She doesn't take crap from any of the 100+ swimmers and I wish she would come live at our house for a week and get my kids straightened out!! 

 

Cate and Brady spent a few hours at the Sparks house and came home dyed and ready for the meet!  Go Paddlers Pirates!

 

We bought tattoo's at Jolly Rogers the last time we were at the lake and the kids actually saved them for the meet!



 

We had to be at the pool Saturday night to set up and everyone put their tents up.  Ours is huge (shout out to Scott's gma BauBau for dropping a new one off one day this spring for her 'Lil Scotty') and everyone made fun of us for bringing our "house".  So, I decided to decorate it with a Smallie Family-appropriate sign.  WELCOME TO THE NUT HOUSE.  That about sums it up!

The weather was perfect!  Overcast and just a tiny bit of rain.  So much better than past meets when we've fried in the sun all day

Warm-ups start at 7:30 am, meet starts at 9:00, and we usually finish by 3:00.  It is a very long day, but the kids always have a great time hanging out with their swim friends

 Hunter and Bennett made themselves comfortable

 As did Cate

Brady's medley and free relay team went undefeated all season!!!

 

Each meet, kids can swim in three individual races and two relays.  Brady swam the same events at all five meets...50 free (2 laps), 25 Fly, 25 Back and both relays.  He won 1st place in every event all summer...except for one (20.13 was his time...20.12 was Jake's time!! They both swam so great this year and went 1-2 almost everytime)   He worked so hard all six weeks and earned every one of those blue ribbons!  And when the championship meet came around he brought his "A" game and won each of his races by more than 4 seconds!

Doin' Work

 Bennett moved into the 11-12 age group this year and that makes for a rough season.  Not only are you the youngest, it's the first year of moving from 50meter distances to 100meters.  But, Bennett had a really great season and beat all of his seed times during the championship meet which is Celeste's goal for each kid.

 This was Carter's 10th year on the team.  I know he likes swimming, and his closest friends are also on the team, but in reality, he really has no choice.  He knows it's swim team or summer school.  Which would you choose?!  Swimming keeps him in great shape for the upcoming soccer season and it's the perfect way to get his butt out of bed before noon :) He also had a great year and started swimming the 100 breaststroke for the first time, and he placed 4th in the championship meet...surprising everyone! 

 Scott and I are the head timers and we have to be at every meet from the first race to the last.  Scott is the backup timer, so he times all 81 races while I beg, hound, coordinate timers.  It's really not that bad and Scott only got upset and yelled at another teams coach one time, so I consider that a successful season!

 

After 8 hours of watching everyone else swim, Cate got the entire pool to herself while the officials were putting the final touches on scores and ribbons.  She was so happy to finally get in the pool!  Celeste has made it clear that she will be on the team next year!

 In each age group, three kids are chosen for high-point awards.  The top 8 (or12?) finishers in each race earn points for the team.  High-point calculates each swimmers total individual points (relays don't count) and the top three win a special award.  Last year, Brady won 3rd place high-point and was the only swimmer in any age group to win that did not also winter swim competitively.  That's quite a feat considering the other swimmers winter season ended just weeks before summer swim started and Brady hadn't swam a lap since the previous July! This year he won 1st place high point with 48 points...the maximum any swimmer can earn!!  After the meet, they do a special presentation for all high-point winners and he received a plaque.  WAY TO GO BRADY!!

And for the first time ever, Paddler's swept 8U boys high point!  Wyatt Loftus and Jake Curry tied for 2nd with 36 points.  Our 8U boys rocked it this year!!

 

And because Cate refuses to let her boys get all of the attention, she pulled her 2nd tooth out during the swim meet!!!  And she didn't swallow it this time :)  She did drop it and lost it for a few minutes, but Grammy found it for her.  She was so excited to have a tooth to put in her tooth fairy pillow that Aunt MeMe bought her.  And she was even more excited to find a few dollars stuffed in the pillow the next morning.

I'm sad to see the swim season end, but it is nice to have almost a full month of summer left to sleep in and not run kids to practice every morning.  Guess I probably need to use that time to get a few things done around the house too.  Bleh.

pardon my french, but...

Holy Shit.  If there is a world record for 'number of questions your children ask in one day', my kids have broken it.  Every damn day this summer. 

What time are we going?  (at least twenty minutes LATER than we should.  Like always)
Who else is going?  (whoever is brave enough to spend time with you ridiculous-question-asking-freaks)
What time is it?  (approximately 30 seconds later than the last time one of you heathens asked and 30 seconds before you'll ask again)
What is today's date?  (it's summer, who the hell cares??)
What are we having for breakfast?  (nothing.  You should have slept til lunch time)
Lunch?  (cereal?)
Dinner? (why do you people expect THREE meals a day??)
What time is my game? (3:30. THREE-THIRTY.  Damnit Bennett, you're stupid $#*&'n game is at 3:30!!!!)
Have you seen my goggles? (don't even get me started)
Can we go to the pool today? (only if you promise to keep your head under water at least 90% of the time)
What are we doing today?  I'm bored.  (shut up Scott)
And the #1 question asked every single day this summer......
CAN I GO TO MAUMAU'S??  (please God, force my mother to call and ask at least one of these damn kids to come over!!!!!)

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Listen up people....school starts soon, and this year I will have FOUR out of FOUR kids in FULL TIME school.  Hold on while I grab a tissue.
*******
Ok, I'm back.  Tears of joy flood my eyes every time I think about it.  SIX hours a day there will be ZERO Smallie Children questions for me to answer.  More tissues.  I know I should be sad and there are times when I start to panic about all four being in school, but then Bennett asks, "Mom, how are we related to our 4th cousins?" and just like that...no more sadness.

lake rats

I figure I better post about our last lake trip before we leave for our next trip at the end of the week :) I know this is probably a long, boring post filled with pictures that look a lot like our last trip pictures, but this online blog is my family scrapbook so I want to make sure when the kids are older they realize how lucky they were as kids! (I especially want photo evidence of good times in case the only thing they remember is us yelling at them all the time)

The weather was absolutely perfect while we were at the lake this time...mid-80's with low humidity.  We spent the entire four days on the dock, in the water, or on the boat.  In fact, our car only left the driveway to run and get fishing worms.  One day we took the boat to Coconuts for lunch and one evening we joined Danny, Barb, and Aaron at Jolly Rogers.  Both very fun places for lakeside meals.  One of the best things about this week was that the kids only turned the tvs on at night when it was time to go to bed!  You know it's a great time when they are having too much fun to even bother with tv :)  

Fishing in the shade :)

This was going great until Brady stopped peddling and Fran had them going in circles

Brady LOVES to fish

Carter even got out of bed early to go tubin' behind the wave runner!

Big catfish Brady caught

 

Throwing it back!

Scott literally fishes all day and night. 

Carter and Mike took FLAME for a spin

Ready for a boat ride

Born.  For.  This. 

At Coconuts, they have a huge water trampoline off their beach and a plane landed right next to it while the kids were jumping.  Very cool.

Big brothers are great for catching a ride on



Their cove is perfect for tubing.  We spent a lot of time doing this!!!

Cate liked to pretend that the dock shed is her bar and she served drinks to everyone

Aaron, Fran, and Cate taking a ride on Big Mable

Heading to Jolly Rogers for dinner!

Perfect way to end the evening...ice cream and Cardinal baseball

I looked out the window at 8am and Scott was already on the dock

On Sunday, Mike and Fran hosted Mike's two brothers and their wives for lunch (+ us).  The kids helped Fran make lemonade and tea...until she dumped an entire container of sugar on her head.  Then they deserted her to announce to everyone what happened...and avoid clean up :)

Cate and Aaron love hanging out together

They swam all the way out to the middle of the cove to catch some big waves

Carter spotted while Scott took the boys on a wild ride.  I was fired from driving after I made 2/3 of the kids cry.  WIMPS!