I am terribly behind on this blog (for example, we got a new rabbit a month ago . . .), and mainly it's because of summer swim team. I have a love/hate relationship with swim team. It's great exercise! It gets everyone up and going early in the morning! The other kids and parents are so nice!
But . . . it takes up the entire morning! Plus Wednesday nights and Saturdays! And we lose (or break, for variety) goggles like you wouldn't believe!
I must say I am looking forward to not hearing, "I can't find any goggles!!" another time this summer.
So here's our morning swim team routine: The 3 girls and Micah and I leave at 7:20. Micah's practice is from 7:30-8:00. Faith's practice is from 8:00-8:30, so I take this hour to walk on the really lovely, shady path behind the pool. Even though it's shady, the past 2 weeks have been miserably hot and humid, so even shade leaves me absolutely dripping with sweat when I'm done.
I spend a few minutes picking dandelion leaves and clover for Mocha, our new bunny (who I will introduce in a later post, I promise), and then I take Micah home, and sometimes Faith, as long as she doesn't want to take a long shower. If she does, I leave her there while Anna and Grace practice from 8:30-9:15.
I rush home and take the world's quickest shower, making sure Caleb and Jonathan are getting ready to go before I get in. Then we leave to be at the pool at 9:15, which is when their practice starts. As long as either Nathan or Luke are home, then I don't have to take Drew and Verity, which is lovely. There have been weeks when no one else is home though, alas.
Then I pick up Anna and Grace (possibly Faith too) and run them back home because they are starving by now (me too!), and we eat a quick bite before I rush back to pick up the boys at 10:00.
And by then I'm exhausted and ready for a nap, completely unmotivated to start any huge project, or even little one, for that matter! Sigh.
The season was great though. Micah won almost all his races, even though he has the craziest way to take a breath for freestyle--he practically rolls over on his back, the move is so exaggerated! He's a strong boy. Grace was also at the top of her game. At the invitation-only meet pictured up top, she won a medal in all 4 of her races. Anna was not the oldest in her age bracket, but she is still a very strong swimmer. In that same meet, she came out of the 2nd heat to win a medal, which was impressive. Faith is also a good swimmer, and she won second place for her relay. Caleb and Jonathan didn't swim in any meets because they both missed several (different) weeks of the season for various things, like being in Ohio, working at WSS, and going to encampment. Still good exercise though!
The kids have only been swimming the 2 months of summer swim team, and they've been a little frustrated at things like their start dives, flip turns, and some other technique issues--things that if they just worked on them a little more, their times would probably really drop. So we've toyed with the idea of having them (the 3 girls, mainly, but possibly Micah) do some swim team during the year. The only problems are 1, that is pretty expensive, and 2, how on earth are we going to logistically do something like that?! So we're looking around at different teams and ideas.
I don't really want this to take over our lives, because we know no one is Olympic-bound (we're just too short!), and we still want them to be able to do other things like run cross country and play basketball. I guess I'd say "strong kids, not specialized kids" is our goal.
I just don't see me getting any more energized or motivated throughout the school year, though!
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