Swimming 101

Bayley gearing up for her second race of the day
Grandma G and Kendal hanging out between races
Sunday pictures -serious cheese
Sunday pictures...silly

As all of you know I am a huge sports fanatic. I played and participated in just about every sport imaginable growing up. Out of all of the sports I've tried, I probably struggle most with swimming and tennis. It is hard for me to admit that I am not good at something, but I am not very good at swimming or tennis, which is probably why they are some of my least favorite sports. Nonetheless, I have children that love the water and are actually pretty good swimmers. So when we moved to Alabama last year, we were excited that there was place where Bayley could swim year round. She joined the Anniston YMCA swim team and for the most part has really enjoyed it. Yesterday she had her home swim meet, her second ever meet. The last meet she participated in was last October and she had only been practicing with the swim team for about 6 weeks. She performed awesome yesterday! She swam the 25 freestyle, 50 freestyle, 25 backstroke, 25 butterfly, the 100 medley relay and 100 freestyle relay. She has really improved in the 6 months since her last swim meet. She improved on her times considerably in everything but the backstroke, which she was already pretty good at. She won 4 second places, one 12th place in the 8-under 50 freestyle, and 1 first place. She was so excited and we are so proud of our little fish.


For those of you who may be like me and unfamiliar with competitive swimming, swim meets are ALL day affairs. They spread out the swimmer's races I guess so that the y can rest in between, but that means that there are a lot of races in between that your child is not participating in. So the majority of the time at a swim meet is actually usually spent sitting inside a crowded gymnasium with all of the other swimmers and parents. You actually are only in the pool area for the time when your swimmer is swimming, which for us was in total only about 15 minutes yesterday. Grandma and Grandpa "G" came over from Marietta to cheer Bayley on. We enjoyed having them around and it was nice to have other sources of entertainment between the races besides me.


Kendal is sure that she wants to follow in her sister's footsteps and join the swim team as soon as she is 5 years old. So who knows, Saturday swim meets may become a regular occurance around here. As for now though, I think we will stick to participating in 2 a year.


The rest of our week was pretty low key, which was nice after the last week. Kendal got to ride a pony for the first time...there was travelling petting zoo with $3 pony rides.
She was so excited! Trey is definitely entering his prime of michief and trouble. He keeps me very busy and I am trying my best to limit my usage of the phrase "NO SIR" to about 20 times per day. Jeff's highlight of the week was catching his first Bass in our backyard pond. Until Friday he had only caught catfish, so he was thrilled to catch a pretty good sized small mouth bass.

Tag...

Here it goes.



This is what you do:

1. Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages)

2. Turn to page 123

3. Find the 5th sentence

4. Post the 5th sentence on your blog

5. Tag 5 people



I am sitting at my laptop in my bedroom. In my bedroom I keep a stack of books I would like to read in my spare time. Most of these books have been in that stack for many many months. One of those books is "the five people you meet in heaven" by Mitch Albom. The fifth sentence on page 123 of this book is:

"I don't understand."

So my friend Heidi who tagged me had a really funny quote from her book. Unfortunately my quote is familiar and very ordinary. Maybe the 5 people I tag will find something profound or funny in their books. I tag Vanessa, Alyssa, Lindsay, Lori, and Lisa.

Easter Week 2008!

Bayley painting her Easter Eggs
My one attempt at an Easter picture...we were running late for church
Bayley working on her new Jewelry making set...Easter present

Trey playing with his new car racers...Easter Bunny
Kendal swinging at the park
Our favorite fast food mascot...Chick-fil-A Cow
Trey at the Saturday Easter Egg hunt...one of the two eggs he picked up that morning
Kendal painting her Easter eggs
Trey trying to cause trouble while we paint Easter Eggs

Trey tried to put on Mom's mascara
Kendal's first bad bike accident...two strawberries on her knees
Trey thinks he is hot stuff on Kendal's bike
Enrichment dance lessons
Trey enjoying the swing at the park!

We had a happening week around here. Not only did we participate in the traditional activities associated with Easter, but we also had lots if extracurricular activities. Every Wednesday night Jeff has mutual, but twice a month I also do Faith in God Girls on the same night. Bayley also has swim on Wednesday nights, so after picking her up we all head to the church for a night full of activities. I love doing the Faith in God Girls Activities, but it does make for a late night for us. The kids of course love it, but I usually am reminded about our busy late night the next day around nap time.

Thursday night we had our first Enrichment Night of the year. This year we planned our Relief Society Birthday Celebration around the theme of "Are you an 8 Cow Woman". We watched Johnny Lingo, a classic LDS movie, then we had two 10 minute classes, one entitled "Holy Cow" and the other entitled "Mad Cow". After the mini-classes we had hula dance instruction were we learned how to "shake". We ended the evening with Hawaiian Haystacks and Frozen Hawaiian Pie. Everything went smoothly and I think the sisters had a good time. As the Enrichment Counselor in Relief Society, I am so excited when an activity is over and there was a good turnout and everything went as planned! I do live in a great branch were we have very talented sisters who are willing to share their talents.

Friday Bayley was out of school so she was able to join us at the library for story time and an Easter Egg Hunt. There were over 240 eggs for 10 kids...they loaded up on eggs and candy. After the library we headed to the park for a picnic. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, so the park was jam packed. We had a great time though!

Saturday I woke up at 6 am to get in my 11 mile run...yes, I am training for another 1/2 marathon. This 1/2 marathon is in Louisville, Kentucky in April. After running my first 1/2 marathon last December in Memphis, I swore I would never run that long of a race again. Well, here I go again...I run April 26th and I am pretty sure that will be my last race for a long time. After my run we dashed out of the house for another Easter Egg Hunt. This time there were tons of people and just a few eggs for each child. The entire hunt was over in less than 1 minute. Oh well, the kids still had a good time and we definitely didn't need any more candy. In fact, the Easter Bunny has taken into consideration that my kids get lots of candy even before he leaves eggs on Easter Morning. So instead of candy-filled eggs, my kids hunt for eggs filled with pennies and nickels. They love it and they fill rich after the hunt. We have had a wonderful Easter day and week! We love Easter and the opportunity to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Easter also is a great kickoff to spring and our favorite seasons of the year...spring, summer and fall (I am not a winter person).

What your grass looks like after the welder who is repairing your fence starts your grass on fire...He swears that the burnt patch of grass will be greener than the rest of the grass once it grows back in! I'll let you know if this is true in a couple of months!

New Camera!

So after lots of research and two weeks without a camera I finally made the plunge and bought a new digital camera. I knew that I wanted a Canon this go around because after must research they seem to have the best picture quality in compact digital cameras. I also wanted one that was compact enough to fit into my pants pocket. And as always, a good deal had to be part of the equation. After the first couple of days of taking pictures I have to say that I am very pleased with my Canon SD750 ELPH. Hopefully it is as good as all of the reviews I read have read, because like just about everyone else, pictures are very important to me and to my family. I have to say that digital cameras have to be one of the best inventions around. I love being able to snap away without worrying about film or developing. Here is our week in pictures:

Kendal is ready to go to Charlotte's Birthday Party

Testing out the New Camera on Trey

Trey found the disposal tool under the sink and is trying to take apart his cribKendal trying to keep Trey from picking his nose (he does it intentionally when I am taking pictures now) What a boy!Kendal with party hair...ready to go to the library for the St. Patrick's Day partyKendal showing off the fish she caught...it took her all of 10 seconds! Trey was especially excited about the fish!Bayley is worried that Jeff is going to kill the little fish by touching it's gills...we do practice catch and release!Daddy teaching Kendal how to cast...the kids love going out back to fish.

Trey helping Grandma move chairs at Leigh's baby showerKendal holding baby Olivia...she was so excited to see her "big" baby cousin visiting from San AntonioThe girls with OliviaOlivia is such a happy baby...it was so much fun to see her!

Sunday pictures are always so much fun!Trey hasn't quite caught on to the "silly" picture...however I sure do have a bunch of silly ones of him when I am trying for cute!

I know it was a ton of pictures this week...but I had to make up after posting zero last week!

You Live and You Learn!

I have to say the last couple of weeks I have learned some pretty interesting stuff. I'll start first with the importance of regularly evaluating your insurance policies on your home and your car.
Insurance
Insurance is a interesting beast. I know that we all hate paying for it, because all of us NEVER think that WE are going to have to use it. Jeff and I until recently had taken that attitude that we would have pretty high insurance deductibles, because we were only going to file a claim if there was a catastrophe and we have heard that making claims on your insurance can lead to your insurance rates being raised or your insurance dropped completely. Not only that but high deductibles reduce your rates. As mentioned in my previous post, we recently incurred some exterior damage to our house. The lessons we have learned from this incident so far are:
1) Why have insurance if you are not going to use it? In the end, we decided to file a claim for the damage to our house. As of right now, we have been told by the insurance company that this will not count against us because the damage was caused by a force of nature.
2) Make sure that you don't have too much insurance. Because of the recent events, we decided to re-evaluate our insurance policies and found out that we had insured our house too much...this was due to a miscommunication between me and the insurance. After correcting this problem, not only were we able to reduce our yearly home insurance rates, but we were also able to greatly reduce our deductible. Lesson learned!
3) The insurance business can sometimes be complicated. Does anyone know what recoverable depreciation is? I don't either. There are a bunch of insurance terms that I need to learn.
4) One of the first questions that many repairmen ask when looking at the damage is are you going to file with your insurance? Why should that matter other than they will probably increase their rates if you are?
5) There is still a lot that I need to learn about insurance...but I won't bore you anymore about insurance...however, maybe I have gotten a few of you to think about your own.

Garden Boxes
Last week for one of our Enrichment Activities in Relief Society we made Garden Boxes. We have one sister in our branch that swears by them for having a successful garden. In fact, she no longer gardens at all in the ground and gardens only in her 36 garden boxes. I am pretty excited about this alternative to ground gardening. We created these boxes using a 22 gallon tote, a 18 gallon tote, some garden netting, and a 2.5 foot piece of PVC pipe. The interesting part of the evening was that we had to use a jigsaw to make some cuts in the totes....many of the women, including myself, have never used one of these tools (there were some scary moments, but everyone left with all of their fingers). Now the tough part comes in trying to figure out what to plant. I think we will start with a couple of tomato plants and see how it goes. I'll post a picture soon.

Swimming
Bayley was asked to move up to the "Big" swim team this last week. She was swimming circles around the new group of Mini-TigerSharks, so her coach said that she probably needed to move up. Jeff and I have been reluctant to let her move up. The main reason being that the "Big" team is full a serious swimmers. Which is great if you are 12 and ready to commit to a sport where they want you to practice at least 5 days a week. Bayley is 6 and we refuse to let her burn out on swimming. We want her to continue to enjoy swimming and not take it too seriously, yet. So after some discussion with her coach, we agreed to have her move up but Bayley will continue to only practice 2 days a week. Her coach was very understanding and actually said she wished more parents had the same attitude.

Life
Everyday I am reminded how much I have to learn. My kids continually teach me...Bayley loves to know that I learn from her. In one of her recent prayers she lovingly told Heavenly Father that her parents needed to stick around because they still had much to learn from her and her brother and sister. Isn't that the truth?

I will post pictures later this week...I have tried 3 times and it continues to have a server error! Oh well!