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.
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