Sunday, September 27, 2009
Loving Xara 3D!
I found a new toy! I think I've gotten over my long creative slump... Lots of new projects lately, including t-shirt designs for a new division of my company has awakened the creative juices! Yay! I found a new program this weekend, Xara 3DX, and it's amazing! It makes it sooooo easy to do 3D letters... Here's one of my first creations, with many more to come!
Monday, July 27, 2009
ABC Swim Finals, 2009
Hello??? (echo echo echo)
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.... :)
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.... :)
Monday, February 23, 2009
Always our CHAMP!
Yes, I know that I've been MIA - blame Facebook!
I have to get out there and write about my sweet, strong, and amazing daughter. This girl of mine has had an entire TRANSFORMATION in swimming the past month or two. She has gone from someone out there having a good time to being a girl on a mission to become the best that she can (while still having fun!). She has dropped well over a minute of time on her combined events over the last month alone.
It recently became clear that she excels in the Breaststroke (just like her brother and mama!). She dropped 30 seconds on the 50 Breast since the beginning of the season (September). After our February home meet a couple weeks ago, she was within 4 seconds of a champ time in the 50 Breast.
Her last chance to get that state time came and went this past weekend. On Sunday, she swam it and missed the champ time by .20 of a second. Ouch! She had the opportunity to do a time trial in it at the end of the meet, giving her another chance. My girl had it in her, and dropped another 3/4 of a second, earning that champ time. Unfortunately, as I watched with shaking hands and tapping feet, I knew that this time drop was not going to give us the result that we wanted. As an ex-official, I am quite in tune with technique and was watching her and the officials closely, so I saw that she'd been disqualified, which meant that her time wouldn't count. My heart was broken for her, and it was so hard to watch her as she became so excited to see her time and then rush to me with the biggest smile on her face that I've ever seen. I had tears running down my face. Tears of pride, tears of joy, tears of disappointment. I hugged her as hard as I could and told her how simply AMAZING she was and how proud I was of her, hating that I was going to have to break her heart but knowing that I couldn't let her go on thinking that she'd be going to state.
She is disappointed. I think that I am possibly even more disappointed for her. The kicker is that the time standards change in April, and as of then her legal time will be a champ time... qualifying her for state automatically in August... BUT she ages up in June, so that champ time won't count. She's a hard worker, an amazing swimmer, and I know her chance will come. She's our champ.
Here she is with her finals shirt, she took 2nd place in the 50 Breast:
More awards, and a certificate for her first EVER A time!
We had a special celebration for her last night. It was fun and made her happy. Wish I could get over it as easily, this mommy has guilt. If I'd bought her a new suit for the morning session, maybe I pushed too hard, maybe we shouldn't have tried to teach her the underwater pull... But amidst all the heartache, one factor remains. She's our champ, and she's made me proud.
I have to get out there and write about my sweet, strong, and amazing daughter. This girl of mine has had an entire TRANSFORMATION in swimming the past month or two. She has gone from someone out there having a good time to being a girl on a mission to become the best that she can (while still having fun!). She has dropped well over a minute of time on her combined events over the last month alone.
It recently became clear that she excels in the Breaststroke (just like her brother and mama!). She dropped 30 seconds on the 50 Breast since the beginning of the season (September). After our February home meet a couple weeks ago, she was within 4 seconds of a champ time in the 50 Breast.
Her last chance to get that state time came and went this past weekend. On Sunday, she swam it and missed the champ time by .20 of a second. Ouch! She had the opportunity to do a time trial in it at the end of the meet, giving her another chance. My girl had it in her, and dropped another 3/4 of a second, earning that champ time. Unfortunately, as I watched with shaking hands and tapping feet, I knew that this time drop was not going to give us the result that we wanted. As an ex-official, I am quite in tune with technique and was watching her and the officials closely, so I saw that she'd been disqualified, which meant that her time wouldn't count. My heart was broken for her, and it was so hard to watch her as she became so excited to see her time and then rush to me with the biggest smile on her face that I've ever seen. I had tears running down my face. Tears of pride, tears of joy, tears of disappointment. I hugged her as hard as I could and told her how simply AMAZING she was and how proud I was of her, hating that I was going to have to break her heart but knowing that I couldn't let her go on thinking that she'd be going to state.
She is disappointed. I think that I am possibly even more disappointed for her. The kicker is that the time standards change in April, and as of then her legal time will be a champ time... qualifying her for state automatically in August... BUT she ages up in June, so that champ time won't count. She's a hard worker, an amazing swimmer, and I know her chance will come. She's our champ.
Here she is with her finals shirt, she took 2nd place in the 50 Breast:
More awards, and a certificate for her first EVER A time!
We had a special celebration for her last night. It was fun and made her happy. Wish I could get over it as easily, this mommy has guilt. If I'd bought her a new suit for the morning session, maybe I pushed too hard, maybe we shouldn't have tried to teach her the underwater pull... But amidst all the heartache, one factor remains. She's our champ, and she's made me proud.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Santa 2008
In one of my "lets get organized" fits sometime last month, (about the time I was making a zillion dr./dentist appointments), I had the foresight to make our appointment to see Santa Claus. No kidding, at the Mall of America, you can now schedule your time in advance! Of course, I couldn't forsee that we'd get our first dusting of snow on that night, which meant that the usual 45 minute trip to the mall turned into an hour and a half... sigh. Oh, well!
I was dismayed to find out that the "appointment" Santa wasn't quite as santa-ish as their regular "stand in line for hours" Santa. I guess if you have to wait you get the real deal. This Santa was great with the kids, but a little small. Way to skinny, and I think William was taller than him.
One thing I like about the Santa(s) at the MOA is that they actually take time to visit with the kids. They all sit on the floor and have about a 5 minute dialog before they do the pictures. During this dialog, Santa reminds all the kiddos to be good and mind their parents, and eat their vegetables. Santa asked each kid what their favorite vegetable was:
William: "Peppers." (This kid definitely got the hot and spicy Mexican genes that seemed to skip me over)
Madison: "Broccoli" (also known as trees, it's been her favorite since she was 2)
Caden: "French Fries." (insert head smack)
Yes, I suppose that technically real french fries are a vegetable. I have a feeling that he was talking about the McDonald's variety, though, and I'm not so sure about the vegetable content in those. It got quite the belly laugh out of Santa and a giggle out of Santa's elves, and anyone else that heard him. Yes, Caden is so far my only picky child. Doesn't touch much for veggies, and doesn't eat his dinner (or lunch) half the time. Thankfully, he's a big fan of milk and breakfast cereal, so he won't starve anytime soon.
Here's this years Santa pic, I think it turned out nice! Merry Christmas!
I was dismayed to find out that the "appointment" Santa wasn't quite as santa-ish as their regular "stand in line for hours" Santa. I guess if you have to wait you get the real deal. This Santa was great with the kids, but a little small. Way to skinny, and I think William was taller than him.
One thing I like about the Santa(s) at the MOA is that they actually take time to visit with the kids. They all sit on the floor and have about a 5 minute dialog before they do the pictures. During this dialog, Santa reminds all the kiddos to be good and mind their parents, and eat their vegetables. Santa asked each kid what their favorite vegetable was:
William: "Peppers." (This kid definitely got the hot and spicy Mexican genes that seemed to skip me over)
Madison: "Broccoli" (also known as trees, it's been her favorite since she was 2)
Caden: "French Fries." (insert head smack)
Yes, I suppose that technically real french fries are a vegetable. I have a feeling that he was talking about the McDonald's variety, though, and I'm not so sure about the vegetable content in those. It got quite the belly laugh out of Santa and a giggle out of Santa's elves, and anyone else that heard him. Yes, Caden is so far my only picky child. Doesn't touch much for veggies, and doesn't eat his dinner (or lunch) half the time. Thankfully, he's a big fan of milk and breakfast cereal, so he won't starve anytime soon.
Here's this years Santa pic, I think it turned out nice! Merry Christmas!
Monday, December 1, 2008
Utter Exhaustion...
Yikes, so I didn't do so great on the blog front last month... this is such a busy time of year! When I re-entered the work force, I knew that there would be a trade off with my job - the seasonality of our product would allow me to spend lots of time playing with the family in the spring/summer, but time is at a major premium this time of year. I'm ok with this, but after weekends like the one I just had, I really question my sanity. The store that I work for opened at 10 PM on Thanksgiving night and stayed open for 24 hours. I headed over around 8:30 pm and was surprised how crowded the area already was. I planned to stay until around midnight to make sure that things got off to a smooth start, but that was not to be. I didn't get out of there until after 3 AM, and I'd been planning come back at 8 AM - that got pushed back a bit. I had a bit of a run in with mall security, who (being the bullies that they are) were trying to tell customers that they couldn't turn down the road that accesses our parking lot because it was full. (Our store is situated directly behind the outlet mall). Freakin' idiots. They were actually sending people away that were saying they were trying to get to us. It was utter madness, I cannot fathom the number of people willing to go shopping at that ungodly hour, but we made it through. Only a few more weeks, and then we get to make the trip to UT to see Grandma and Grandpa Bradford, The Hensons, and lots of friends - we're ALL very excited for that!
In other news, the television that is up in our room died. It had a nice long life, I bought it with my ex when William was just a baby - it was time to replace it. Brent got a steal of a deal on a 46" Sony LCD (thank you Slickdeals). I have to say that Caden is in heaven not that he gets to watch his Wonderpets in the evenings on HD. Actually, I'm probably lying, I don't think Noggin broadcasts in HD - but you get the picture.
Kids are all doing well. Madison has a swim meet this Saturday and her first piano recital this Sunday. William is done with club swimming and started with the Middle School swim team today. Caden is excited about Christmas. We have an appointment to see Santa and get pics at the Mall of America this Friday - he told me that he want Lightning McQueen and a Butterfly toy (???) for Christmas.
Here's some pics of the kids from Thanksgiving - I wish everyone a safe and Happy Holiday Season!
In other news, the television that is up in our room died. It had a nice long life, I bought it with my ex when William was just a baby - it was time to replace it. Brent got a steal of a deal on a 46" Sony LCD (thank you Slickdeals). I have to say that Caden is in heaven not that he gets to watch his Wonderpets in the evenings on HD. Actually, I'm probably lying, I don't think Noggin broadcasts in HD - but you get the picture.
Kids are all doing well. Madison has a swim meet this Saturday and her first piano recital this Sunday. William is done with club swimming and started with the Middle School swim team today. Caden is excited about Christmas. We have an appointment to see Santa and get pics at the Mall of America this Friday - he told me that he want Lightning McQueen and a Butterfly toy (???) for Christmas.
Here's some pics of the kids from Thanksgiving - I wish everyone a safe and Happy Holiday Season!
Thursday, November 13, 2008
9 Appointments in 7 Days...
Yes, I know you always knew I was crazy. I haven't been around much, and this is why:
Since "my" store traditionally is a big crazy blur between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and because I've been putting off several appointments for way too long, last week I decided to just make them all. So I did. 9 appts in 7 days - Caden's 3 year check (2 months late), 4 dentist appts, 2 eye dr. appts (plus another follow up for a contact lens fitting for Madison, an ADD checkup for Madison. All this in addition to our regular hectic schedule of swim team practice, swimming lessons, and piano lessons.
I'm about halfway through it all, wish me luck!
Since "my" store traditionally is a big crazy blur between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and because I've been putting off several appointments for way too long, last week I decided to just make them all. So I did. 9 appts in 7 days - Caden's 3 year check (2 months late), 4 dentist appts, 2 eye dr. appts (plus another follow up for a contact lens fitting for Madison, an ADD checkup for Madison. All this in addition to our regular hectic schedule of swim team practice, swimming lessons, and piano lessons.
I'm about halfway through it all, wish me luck!
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Halloween!
Sorry for the lack of bloggy news, life has been crazy as heck lately. I promise I'll do some news soon, but for now, here's Halloween pictures. Caden was adorable this year, he was so excited and a week later wakes up each morning asking if he can go trick or treating again :)
He loved pumpkin carving once he got over Daddy scaring him!
He loved pumpkin carving once he got over Daddy scaring him!
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