Swim Team

June was all about swim team.  We were there by 7:30 every morning which seems like more of a marvel with every passing day this summer.  At this point in August, the kids are lucky to be presentable by 11:00 am, and that is with enough prodding to make me want to pour myself a glass of wine/beer/double scotch on the rocks by about 9 am.  Not that I've spent any time thinking about that!

Guess who was on the team this year?  

The neighborhood swim team is open to all kids from age 5 through high school.  The trouble is that Emery is a total fish and wildly excited by her buddies on the 5-6 team.  Combine that with the fact that she had to attend every practice her brother did, and it was looking like it was going to be a looong season.  I figured the team was pretty small so perhaps she could try out?  

Yes!

The coach didn't have a problem with it and after the first few days, during which Emery forgot she knew how to swim, then convinced all the senior swimmers to hold her up, and finally graduating to hanging on the lane ropes every 10 feet, I thought perhaps it was not to be.  At that point, I said that if she could swim all the way across the pool on her own, she would earn an ice cream sandwich.  I think we found Emery's love language!  She zipped across the pool roughly six times that practice and all the senior swimmers were amazed at her sudden improvement.  Turns out eating ice cream was way more fun than getting everyone to baby her.

By the end of the season, she even won the "Most Improved Swimmer" award for her age group.  Perhaps she inherited Kim's flair for sandbagging?  

Alastair was in the 7-8 group this year and had a bit of an adjustment since he was top dog last year and now the youngest again.  

He did very well in free and backstroke and was swimming breast and fly by the end of the season.

Anyone who has attended a swim meet knows that it is only marginally about swimming for these kids.  It is all about video games, begging for snow cone money, and hanging out in the wrong tent.  Or maybe that is just Emery.  Alastair's tent was all about electronics, Diary of the Wimpy Kid books, and food.

In Emery's tent, there was much drawing and discussions of princesses.

These do not belong to her.

Both kids were invited to the Meet of Champs, the last meet of the season where all the teams compete for points.  Alastair swam free and back and Emery swam freestyle.

Alastair on the ready bench at MOC.

Emery and her girl friends at MOC.

I think Emery kind of because an unofficial team mascot.  She was very popular at the end of the season party with all age groups.

Spring Break/ March 10 on 10.

This year for Spring Break we decided to go skiing and give Emery her first turn on the snow.  We decided to drive and settled on Taos, New Mexico since it was relatively close and would take us past Midland, TX on the way there.  Since March's 10 on 10 fell on our second driving day of our ski trip, I'll also include that in this post.  

The Bowling Crew

Since we have been married, we hadn't managed to get out to Midland to visit Bob and Kathy.  Bob, who is definitely all about the babies, also agreed to watch Eleanor for us while we took the big kids to New Mexico and while Kathy was working.  Very brave of him, wasn't it?

These two are definitely buddies now.  We got to hang out, visit with the rest of the family, and finally see the house that we've been talking about with Bob and Katy for years. After a night and a full day, we took off.

10 on 10:

 

Bob was amazed at how much Nell eats.

  

Bye!

 

The road goes on forever (and the party never ends).

UFO stuff in Roswell.

Roswell also had a Sonic.

The adults were entertained by Overdrive audiobooks from the library.  Great book, by the way.

Road trips are all about treats.

Picking up skis.

And then we arrived at our little house.

The kids were ectastic about the loft, Emery especially, because it was just her size.

The house came with quite a view.

Then there were shots of the actual ski trip:

Dropping the kids off at ski school first thing in the morning.

  They loved this little bridge.

Alastair did ski school for two days and Emery for three.  

That left time for Mom and Dad ski dates.  We skied hard, lingered a bit over lunch, and hit the slopes again until it was time to pick up the kids.

Then we did a little skiing with the kids in the school area.  

The first day Emery kept giggling and throwing herself on the ground to do snow angels.  She refused to believe that fresh powder was required.

Alastair came out with us on the third day of skiing and didn't slow us down in the slightest.  

It was awesome to see his enthusiasm and bravery while skiing.  That was quite a change from a certain meltdown that occurred on Copper Mountain in Colorado.

Alastair, pretending to be an only child again.

Taos is a fun mountain, but it took a decidedly relaxed approach to children's ski lesson.  I want the kids to have fun while they learn, but the point of lessons from our perspective is to get the kids safe and out on the mountain.  I got the impression that most of the adults at Taos viewed ski school as babysitting so they didn't have to ski with their kids.  I loved our ski dates but I also loved skiing with the kids; that's why we brought them.  We want our kids to love doing the things we love doing so that we can continue to enjoy the outdoors throughout their lives. Keystone had a much better ski school in my opinion.

By the end of her third full day in ski school, they had not yet taught Emery how to stop on her own and were just starting to work on gliding down a marginally sloped area.  As we did not plan to actually move to Taos, we pulled her to get her a little actual slope time.

She loved it!  I brought the little harness I bought for Alastair and we found some nice gentle long runs at the end of that last day to let her really try out some skiing.  It was a little stressful getting all the way over to that area, but once we got underway she was able to relax and enjoy herself, singing at the top of her lungs.

Two ace skiers out in the snow.

Afterward, Kim took us out to see the Rio Grande Gorge.  I thought he was nuts because as we drove in that direction, I couldn't see anything.  

Then we drove over this bridge and looked down.  

Way way way down (565 feet).

It was pretty cool.

Then it was time to go home.  We took this picture on the morning we headed back to Midland, a foggy morning that turned into snow as we drove through the mountains.

After lots more driving...

We made it back to our Nell Belle.  Here is the happy crew... right before the stomach bug hit.  We made it about an hour and a half outside of Midland when Nell started getting sick.

After a very long (and smelly) drive back to Houston, during which we changed Nelly's clothes several times, stripped the carseat and improvised a new cover for it, and hit the shops for more wet wipes, we made it home.  Only to have it hit the big kids by midnight, the grandparents back in Midland about the same time, and me by morning.  Ouch.  It was an awesome trip with a smash-bang ending.  I think Bob and Kathy might be "out of town" if we decide to come through again next year!

Spring Highlights

Before Summer, there was Spring.  And it was loaded with sports and activities.  We had soccer, baseball, Cub Scouts, two triathlons, a camping trip, and the start of swim team.  Next Spring will be a study in minimalism.  

Emery played soccer again and scored another goal.  She is averaging one a season at this point.

She is becoming much more assertive with the game and loves it.

Her team from last season were back together again and boy are they a sweet crew:  the Salt Lake "Sweeties" to be exact.  They looked pretty fierce cute with their matching soccer bows.

There was a trophy of course.

Next up is baseball.  Alastair decided that he was all about baseball until he realized he was too old for t-ball.  This year was coach pitch and once he got over his initial shock (how were we to know he thought baseball and t-ball were the same thing?) he really got into it.

Pretty cute, right?

Alastair really enjoyed playing and has asked me to sign him up again this year.  At the start, his baseball skills were virtually nonexistent and it was neat to watch him progress over the season.

There were plenty of Cub Scout activities in the Spring.

  

Kim and Alastair got to go camping on the USS Lexington in Galveston while the girls had a girl weekend at home.  That means we watched a lot of Tinker Bell and painted our toenails.

From all accounts it was a really fun trip.

The Blue and Gold banquet at the end of the year is when the Cubs progress to the next level.  For the event, the kids baked and decorated cakes for a bake sale.  Alastair and I made this together.  He did all the measuring and mixing, I was in charge of food color, and he did the piping and frosting.  I was amazed by how quickly he picked it up.  

At the Blue and Gold ceremony, he was promoted to Wolf Cub and he earned several badges, including his skiing belt loop and pin.

In May, we attended the annual Rowdy Rebels camping trip.  This year, I managed to accidentally double book a camping trip the same weekend as a triathlon (only me).  We did both,  heading home after dinner on Saturday night to make the race Sunday morning. 

 It was such a fun trip, but I decided to fully taper/do nothing and just enjoyed the experience without the pressure of photographing every detail.  Oh, and I forgot my big girl camera.

Once upon a time, I looked like this.  

Then I did this.  It happens.  Somewhere, a small bald child might be wondering what color to call my hair.  Is it red?  Auburn?  It isn't really blond or brown, so what do we call it?  I feel you, kid.

Then there was Mother's Day.  That's me up there with the bow.  My favorite colors are not pink and purple, and she means tomatoes when she said potatoes (oddly she calls them the same thing despite knowing the difference).  Ten points for getting my Starbucks order right though!

I love this kid.

Other random things:

We went to a fire station.

Poor Blue (of course my car has a name; why doesn't yours?) was in a collision.  The super short version is that a man that I initially thought was drunk pulled out directly in front of me while I was happily driving through an intersection with a green light (me: left lane, him: not even in a turning lane) then drove off.  I followed him and called the police.  Much drama.  It turns out that he has some sort of medical issue which looks a lot like Parkinson's and was not even aware he had been in a wreck.  Many phone calls and a month later, and Blue is back to her old self again.  Moral of the story:  stick to the Sonic on the south side of the freeway.

Nell grew enough hair to have pigtails!  They are seriously adorable although they don't last long.  She lives to pull them out so I arrive at the store/school/church with a child wearing one single pigtail on the very last bit of her hair with the other side sticking straight out to the side.  If you've read much Dr. Seuss, you should be familiar with the general look.

And that, loyal reader, was most of Spring.