Anybody there?
Ok, I know I've been extremely negligent in posting here. Blame facebook. It's way too convenient and I can post little snippets of stuff here and there without having to actually sit down and think. It's a lazy, preoccupied, distracted ADD mom's dream. But, I've missed my little spot of blog and have decided to reform myself. Again. I was talking with my friend Tammy recently and realized that we share the same problem... there's so much PAST stuff we feel we need to blog about that it was just too overwhelming to even start. So I'm starting fresh, and if I get to the past stuff, great - if not, oh, well! Feel free to check back, I'm going to try and hit all the highlights of the past several months, but I'll be backdating the posts. I'm sneaky like that.
This past weekend, we attended ABC swim finals in Mankato, and we had a blast! Madison was qualified in 4 events in her new 9-10 age bracket. William qualified in 12 events, but opted out of the longer distance events (800 and 1650), as well as the 200 butterfly. So he swam a total of 9 events. Both kids did great! Madison didn't have any time drops, I think the outdoor meter pool threw her off a bit, but she gave it her all and had lots of fun. William dropped a good amount of time in 8 of his 9 events and got a few new B times. He also took first place in his division in the 400 IM, yay!
Here's some pics and commentary from our weekend away...
William's new favorite stroke is butterfly, and he's getting pretty darn good at it! As mentioned above, he opted out of the 200 FLY, but only because he's never swam it in a long course pool. A LC pool is one that is 50 meters long (versus 25 yards), so you don't get the benefit of a new push off and a millisecond's rest at each end every length. This is him swimming fly as part of the 400 IM, which is a pretty brutal race! You swim 2 lengths (100 meters) of each of the 4 strokes. He took 1st place in this event!
Here's his staple favorite (mine too), breastroke:
And a little bit of freestyle. I'll leave the backstroke out, he hates it even more than I did.
Here's Madison doing her favorite stroke:
William doesn't like to pose for pictures anymore, but my Madison is always game! Beautiful :)
Since William turned 13, we are now "all dayer's". In competitive swimming, the 12 and unders swim in the mornings and the older kids swim in the afternoons. So we were at the pool ALL day (7AM-7PM) Saturday and and until 5 on Sunday, and it was exhausting! William also swam Friday night. Usually I would rather remove my toenails with rusty shears than bring Caden with me to a swim meet (those of you that know and love him will not question why). Fortunately, this venue had the benefit of a park right next to the pool so we setup base camp next to that and didn't move from that spot (except to go to the hotel to sleep) all 3 days! Our base camp included a canopy, comfy reclining chairs, an air matress, a BBQ grill, toys, books, iPods, and plenty of food and drink. Brent had his laptop and was glad to find out that someone had an unsecured wireless router, so he was all good.
Caden spent hour upon hour playing on the playground, and his only casualty was a bloody nose when he ran in front of someone swinging and they couldn't stop in time. (Again, those of you that know Caden know that this is quite minor and impressive). The Childrens museum came out for a few hours on Saturday morning, and he had lots of fun with that too.
Took me quite awhile, but I was able to get the bucking bronco down for a nap both days! I carefully concealed the duct tape.
So, now we're off swimming until September! Looking forward to sleeping past 6:30 AM, and not taking 3-4 trips to the pool every day. I'm sure we'll find SOMETHING to fill the time.... :)
