The TAGS Experience

Maybe it's the 100-plus degree weather, or maybe it's the fact that I don't get as much sleep as I need, but I've been feeling very tired this week, so I'm going to have to pre-date this post to when I should have published it.

Patrick and I went with Natalie to Austin again last Saturday, July 27th so that Natalie could swim in two more races at the TAGS (Texas Age Group Standards) swim meet. She swam in the 100 meter Backstroke and the first (backstroke) leg in the 200 meter Medley Relay. This was a more relaxed trip. We got to Austin by about 3pm and settled into our room. We got to eat a leisurely dinner at a local Italian restaurant. Of course, I got a head injury at the restaurant, but that is another long, embarrassing story that I'll have to relate another time (when I've recovered from the embarrassment).

This first photo is a quick one shot with my iPhone camera. Natalie had just finished swimming in the 100 meter Backstroke. We didn't expect a lot from this race since she was seeded 22nd out of 23 girls going into the race, having qualified by five-hundredths of a second with a time of 1:25.14. She ended up 7th in her heat and the time that flashed on the screen was 1:25.00. We thought she would at least be happy with dropping some time, but she came up to where we were standing and asked us to come down because she "wanted a hug". She was crying when we saw her. Patrick did a great job as usual reassuring her. In the end, the official time was actually 1:24.60. She was happier with that. The time standards get faster when these swimmers turn 11, so one of her goals at this meet was to get faster times so that she would already have "A" times when she turns 11 in a couple of weeks. She didn't get that, but she is so close.

This is a picture of Natalie and her friend Aspen (both in black and red) in Lane 5, before the start of their 200 meter Medley Relay. Natalie swam the first leg (backstroke) and Aspen swam the third leg (butterfly). The other two girls were Jesse (2nd--breaststroke) and Sarah (fourth leg--freestyle) and they were on the other side of the pool. They were seeded fourth out of 24 with a time of 2:33.35. They ended up 7th with a time of 2:33.94. She didn't seem unhappy about this one. In fact, we didn't see her for a while because she was taking a shower in the locker room. We had checked out of our hotel room before coming to the meet, so after her races, we had planned to leave for home. We thought her relay team did a great job. They added time, but really, they dropped in their ranking only because the teams that finished in front of them dropped several seconds off their times.

Hanging out with her friends really makes Natalie feel better. This is a zoomed in photo of her with her friend Jesse and Aspen. She was so far away that I had to zoom a lot with the camera plus zoom in when I edited the photo. She actually did visit us in the stands a few times, but she was with her friends during the rest of the meet.

This is Natalie's (and our) first experience with this big of a meet. I still can't believe that less than a year after starting competitive swimming, she was swimming with the best in the state. She definitely drives herself harder than we can ever drive her. We just hope she continues to enjoy this sport for a long time.

Whirlwind Trip

Even a short trip for us requires some logistical considerations. Anthony went to the beach with a group of friends for an overnight trip from Tuesday to Wednesday. He was running late on the way back and Alex needed to be picked up from his PE Camp at 4pm, so the rest of us met Anthony (and Alex) in the parking lot of his school. We gave Anthony the carseat and Eric and he drove home. Patrick, Natalie, and I drove to Austin. This was the pillow on one of the beds in our hotel room. Natalie claimed it as soon as she saw it. We all needed some rest after the trip.

Meanwhile, Anthony took Eric to his swim lessons last night. He had just gotten home with him when we called using the Face Time on our iPhones. Natalie had been relaxing on her hotel bed watching the show Terra Nova on my iPad. When she and Eric got on Face Time with each other, they both started putting parts of their face near the camera to show each other, showing closeups of their eyes, nose, mouth, etc. Natalie was laughing so hard and I heard Eric on the line laughing too. This is a blurry photo of Natalie, but I love this emotionally perfect moment of two of my children enjoying each other's company.

That emotion carried through to today, thankfully. Natalie's friend Aspen wasn't racing today, but she was there to socialize with and support her friends since her brother and sister were racing today. Natalie had someone to "hang" with. Only the swimmers and coaches were on deck, so we had to sit way across on the other side of the pool and one floor up. Natalie used to get to her spot way ahead of time. Now she is "relaxed" enough that she goes to the starting line much later. Today this was only about three heats before her heat. Patrick and I were sweating it out watching her laugh and socialize with her friends, with no way to contact her to make sure she got to the starting block on time.

This is a grainy zoomed in photo of Natalie just before her race. She is doing her usual pre-race routine of cracking her knuckles and other joints and stretching. She looked relaxed enough that she was laughing and socializing with a few other girls that she had just met. There were kids at this meet from all over Texas. I still can't believe that she swam fast enough to meet the Texas Age Group Standards (TAGS) and be invited to swim in this race.

One other comment--Natalie is wearing her new racing suit. All her friends have this fancy Speedo Fastskin suit and she very nicely requested one also. We were going to wait until her birthday in a couple of weeks, but decided that we had bought her brothers fancy soccer cleats in the past. With her hard work she qualified for this meet in three events, the 50 and 100 meter backstroke and the backstroke leg of her team's 200 meter Medley. She deserved a fancy suit, right? ;)

We had hoped that the suit would give her a boost of confidence for this big swim meet. She came into this race today seeded 17th out of 31. We had no expectations that she would make the finals, although almost all of the seed times were so close together that there was a possibility. They were only going to take the top 8 to the finals in the evening session, no top 16 as in previous finals she has been involved in.

Her seed time for the 50 meter backstroke was 38.83 seconds and her time today was 38.82 seconds. She has been upset with small drops in time in the past, so we weren't sure how she felt about this one. We were all the way on the other side of the pool. When we finally saw her, we knew. She was joking about dropping a whole one hundredth of a second and she was smiling. She actually dropped to 19th place out of 30 (one girl did not end up swimming for whatever reason), but she wasn't upset at all. She was happy to have this chance to swim with the top 10-year-olds from the state. Patrick and I sighed in relief and just hugged her and told her we were so proud of her. She has really matured emotionally as well as physically in this past year. It was all good--after all, then we could go home after checking out of our hotel instead of staying around until this evening.

This is a picture of the T-shirt that Patrick bought for Natalie and me. I love the colors and how they made the Texas shape with all of the words "2013 Texas Age Group Swimming TAGS Long Course". We'll be back for her other two races on Sunday. We hope to have a similar positive experience.

A New Oven and A TAGS Party

YES! We now have an oven!!! We have been without a working oven since May 28th when ours stopped heating up. It would have cost over $300 to fix it and we had already planned on redoing the kitchen after Anthony goes off to college, so we waited until we could get a new one.

I finally got my double oven! Because the new one is bigger than the old one, they had to redo the area of the kitchen that holds the oven. This picture only shows one, of course, with brownies baking inside. I've been itching to bake and Patrick had this in the new oven when I got home from work and picking up Alex this afternoon. This one is a 30-inch oven, bigger than our old one. The top oven is a smaller one that doubles as a convection/microwave oven. We tested them both out today. Alex made his beloved HEB (store-brand) pizza in the lower oven and he heated something up in the microwave. We'll redo the rest of the kitchen in September.

Tonight, they also had a TAGS Party during swim practice for Natalie and the other 28-29 swimmers from their club that made it to the TAGS Championships this coming weekend. Isn't the cutest party favor bag? One of the moms made one for each child complete with a personalized, laminated tag. All the parents brought a little something to contribute to each bag. The idea was that the swimmers would each get a bag to take with them to the TAGS Champs, with items such as healthy snacks (and some not so healthy snacks), and fun stuff like water guns. We contributed a small bottle of Gatorade to each bag. Natalie apparently also gets a free swim cap with the AAAA logo and "TAGS Team" on it plus a 2013 TAGS Long Course T-shirt. She didn't get the T-shirt yet, but we're hoping she can get it by this weekend. We had already bought her the swim cap with the "TAGS Team" on it plus her last name. Now it's slightly easier to pick her out amongst the crowd of yellow swim caps.

Today she also got her new personalized swim bag. Do you notice a "red" theme here? Natalie has a red water bottle and two red gear bags plus red shoes and red shorts. Notice that she is wearing her shark towel around her neck after swimming. She loves having a towel around her neck to keep her shirt from getting wet from her wet hair.

They had a ton of food at the party. Patrick, Eric, and I had already eaten dinner. Patrick made pasta for dinner then put the rest in a crock pot to bring to this TAGS Party to share. We also brought those brownies shown above. The kids ate and socialized together then they finished off with an informal group photo. Natalie was having a blast being part of this exclusive "club". Patrick, Natalie, and I will be leaving tomorrow afternoon after I get home from work to go to Austin for this competition. More details on that later this week.

Other Things Besides Swimming

Besides being at the Natatorium for four to six hours total per day for three days, we did a few other things. On the first day, Friday, Natalie was done with her events by about 10am, so we had until she warmed up again at 4pm to do things. We let her decide where she wanted to eat lunch, so we tried a local burger place, the Padre Island Burger Company, which was located close to one of the beaches. After lunch we drove around to see the beach, but Natalie wanted to go back to the hotel to relax. She also has that eczema on the back of her legs and salt water is not her friend. I stayed with her and she even laid down to rest, but didn't sleep. Eric really wanted to go to the beach, so Eric and Patrick got into their swimsuits and went back to the beach to play.

Of course, Eric loves to play with sand, but we didn't bring any sand toys. Still, he played with the sand and water with his hands and feet. They walked along the beach and played a bit in the water. Patrick was afraid to get his iPhone wet, so I'm thankful he took a few of these pictures to show me later. We never had enough time on the other days to go back to the beach.

Poor Eric--he really needed some active play time, so the beach visit was good for him. We had planned on more pool time at our hotel but the water was cloudy and the hot tub had a leak (the hotel is a whole other story). On our last day we did have a chance to run around the local mall. We had to check out of our hotel before noon, and it was still too early to go back for the evening session at the Natatorium (warmups that day were at 3pm). We got to shop a little that day. Natalie and I were able to make a big dent in shopping for her school uniforms for the upcoming school year.

This is a fun photo I took at the La Palmera Mall. They had this cool circular seat. Like a moth to a flame, Eric was drawn to it, and once there, he started moving his arms and legs as if he was making snow angels, except without the snow, hence his arms and legs look blurry.

The rest of the time, Eric had almost unlimited iPad time because of all of the waiting for warmups to start, to finish, for the races to start, and to finish, etc. He played a lot of Angry Birds Star Wars and Where's My Perry, among other apps. He had brought a few dinosaur toys, but he barely played with them. We also brought coloring books and crayons, but he didn't want to use them. He only wanted to play on the iPad. Every so often we got him to do something else, like eat a snow cone. They sold snow cones at the concession stand at the meet. At least Eric got to focus on something farther from his face. He also got to walk around outside to get some fresh air.

Eric behaved very well despite all the waiting, despite the lack of sleep from going to bed late and then having to get up early again every morning.

One other thing that we all did was eat out a lot. This is a picture of the Oreo Cheesecake that Natalie had for dessert at Grimaldi's Pizza. She had just finished gobbling up three slices of their 12-inch "personal" pepperoni pizza and she almost finished this whole cheesecake piece all by herself. On the first night we ate at Chili's to eat her favorite dish Grilled Salmon with Garlic and Herbs. They serve broccoli in that dish and that's the only time she eats broccoli. We also made the rounds of Schlotzky's and Wendy's, two of the kids' favorite fast food places. We even got Starbucks--twice. I joked on Facebook that Natalie got to swim (and exercise) while the rest of us just got fat from all of the eating out!

Long Course A Championships

First a warning--this post is long with details most of you will probably not care about. Feel free to skim. This is my way of recording our memories since I never have time to scrapbook anymore.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, Natalie had a swim meet in Corpus Christi this past weekend. She usually adds and drops time in different races, but she dropped time on everything during this meet. This picture is one of the few I've gotten that have caught her smiling. She tends to run away from the camera nowadays, but for this weekend, she had a lot of reasons to smile.

This was one of those preliminaries and finals meets where she swims in the morning, and if she makes the top 16, she gets to swim in the evening too. All the participants had to have an "A" standard time in their events in order to even be at this meet. Natalie qualified in five events, the 200 meter freestyle, the 50 and 100 meter butterfly, and the 50 and 100 backstroke. She also swam in three relays, the 200 meter freestyle relay, the 200 meter Medley Relay, and the 400 meter freestyle relay. Her goal was to try to achieve the TAGS (Texas Age Group Standards) time standards to qualify her for the next meet in two weeks. She already had a TAGS time in the 50 meter backstroke from the meet held in Austin two weeks prior. She wanted more TAGS times.

Friday, July 12

200 m Free Relay--
Natalie swam the third leg of the 200 m Free Relay and had a split time of about 35 seconds. That's faster than she has swum the 50 m Freestyle in competition thus far and is fast enough for an "A" time. She told Patrick that the pool seemed shorter. Patrick replied, "That's because you were faster and it didn't seem as long!" :)

50 m Fly--
Natalie came in fourth place with a time of 38.81 and ninth place overall. Her seed time had been 39.09. She wasn't that happy because she had hoped for a faster time, but she handled it okay. In the evening, Natalie came in first place in the consolation final (and ninth place overall) with a time of 38.49, but when we saw her after her race, she was in tears because she had wanted a TAGS time. We talked to Anthony in the phone when we were in the car going to dinner. He made her laugh, which was what a good big brother does. Eric also talked to Anthony and Alex too.

Saturday, July 13

200 m Medley Relay--
Natalie was the first (backstroke) leg of the 200 m Medley. Her team got first place with a time of 2:33.91, which qualified for a TAGS time (TAGS is 2:43.59). Yay!

200 m Free--
Her next race was the 200 meter Free and she got a time of 2:54.19. She dropped 1.86 seconds from her previous time of 2:56.05. She placed 18th, which was up from 22nd for her seeded time and qualified as a second alternate for the evening final. She didn't get to swim the 200 m Free that evening, but it was wonderful that she dropped time again.

100 m Back--
Natalie got a time of 1:26.70. She added 0.19 seconds to her previous time of 1:26.51, but she came in second overall instead of where she was originally seeded, in third place. Natalie swam in the 100 meter Back finals in the evening. She was in the Championship final and came in second with a time of 1:25.14, which was 1.37 seconds faster than her previous best and also a TAGS time. TAGS is 1:25.19. She rejoiced with a bunch of her friends, who seemed just as excited as she was.

Sunday, July 14

400 m Free Relay--
Natalie's first race was the 400 meter Freestyle Relay with Aspen (1:18.08), Brooke (1:16.75) and Kailey (1:23.37). Natalie was the anchor leg and she swam her fastest 100 m Free ever with a split time of 1:20.00. They were AAAA Team B and they came in third place behind AAAA Team A and the Lonestar Aquatics Team.

50 m Back--
She came in first in her heat (one of three) with a time of 38.84 seconds, 00.16 seconds faster than her personal best of 39.00 that she got at the Texas Open in Austin on June 28th. That's a TAGS time. She also got first place overall. She was happy. Her time for the 50 m Back final was 38.83 seconds. She laughed about how she dropped only one hundredth of a second, but she was still in first place overall.

100 m Fly--
Natalie got a time of 1:36.56. Her previous personal best was 1:38.29 for the Long Course 100 meter Butterfly. A long course "A" time is 1:36.79, which she had not been able to achieve before now, so she got into the "A" Championships by virtue of her "A" time in the short course 100 m Fly. She knocked 1.73 seconds off her previous time AND got an official long course "A" time, but she was on the verge of tears because she "barely made an 'A' time". She was in 13th place overall. In the final that evening, her 100 meter Butterfly time was 1:33.71. She was 11th place overall (four people scratched) and dropped another 2.85 seconds off her time in the preliminaries. She dropped a total of 4.85 seconds off her previous personal best. She had to be happy about that!

Lots of numbers, but it all boiled down to one thing--Natalie is getting faster and faster. She is working very hard with 3 1/2 hours of practice each weekday. We are so proud of her for working so hard and being so dedicated even at such a young age. I wanted to at least share one fun photo. Natalie also has fun. This is a blurry iPhone photo, but I still love how she is laughing and goofing off with her friends before her races. Having a lot of friends to enjoy swimming with just makes it more worthwhile for her!

Tomorrow I'm going to talk about some of the fun stuff we did this past weekend.

Catch Up

Wow, I didn't realize that it's been almost two weeks since I posted to this blog. That's about the longest I've gone without posting. I'm at work right now, on call for OB, so I can't upload any photos. I'll do a summary of what's been going on with us for the past two weeks and I'll start filling in the details tomorrow with pictures.

--I was on call last Friday, July 5th, as well as tonight.

--Patrick and I have chosen a new oven to replace the one that isn't working. The new oven should get here and hopefully be installed next week.

--Alex has started PE Camp at his high school. That will be Monday through Friday for the next three weeks. Before that he spent a lot of time having sleepovers with friends either at our house or at his friends' houses. He has also been going to Fiesta Texas this summer and dragging Anthony with him to the gym to exercise.

--Anthony had been going out with friends and staying out late. He has also been driving Alex to PE Camp every morning and then running at the track there before coming home. Otherwise he has been a slug at home, sitting in a reclining chair on his computer or getting lots of game time on the Playstation 3.

--Natalie had a swim meet this past weekend in Corpus Christi--more on this tomorrow. Her best friend was gone all last week, but now that Margot is back in town, they've seen each other daily. She has also been reading lots of books borrowed from the library. She and Patrick seem to be the only one reading books around our house.

--Eric started swim lessons Monday through Thursday at the same time that Natalie is at her nightly swim team practice. He seems to be doing well and has already advanced from level 3 when he started last week to level 4 a day or two later, to level 5 yesterday. The rest of the time he has spent probably too much time on the iPad, especially during Natalie's three day swim meet this past weekend.

That's all for now. I'll be back tomorrow with pictures.

Happy Fourth!

Every year we have a neighborhood parade on the Fourth of July at 9:30am. It's usually way too hot already at that time, and it was again this year. This year we had a slight variation in that Patrick and I took Natalie and Eric to Starbucks for breakfast first. :) Natalie has been asking and I've finally got a day off. We came home then walked to the area where the parade started.

We usually only walk around a couple of blocks, but it's a long walk in the hot sun. Some kids ride their bikes and scooters that are decorated for the occasion. My kids can't ride bikes, or at least the two-wheeled kind, and Natalie had never really ridden her scooter (after begging for it for Christmas one year), so we just walk. We usually also carry the banners from the Championship swim meet that is usually held the weekend before the Fourth of July. Our girls aged 9-10 got the most points from all the teams swimming at the Championship swim meet, so that is the banner that Natalie carried. Our girls aged 11-12 and our boys aged 7-8 and 9-10 also won banners last weekend. Natalie, of course, hid her face as soon as she saw me with the camera. This is one reason why I take photos with mostly my camera phone nowadays. I can whip out the camera phone a lot quicker than the big camera, but alas, she can still see me with enough time to hide.

After we had walked about halfway, Eric started complaining about his legs being tired. I don't know how that boy can swim for hours but when he walks any larger distance, he suddenly gets tired. The heat was affecting him and that did play a factor, however, so I carried him almost the rest of the way. Thankfully, that was not a long distance. I was chatting with various friends along the way and that made it much shorter.

After the parade, the organizers served popsicles, water, and red, white, and blue iced sugar cookies. Even Patrick had a popsicle and he remarked at how good they were. He hadn't originally intended to get one, but Eric got an orange one and he wanted a blue one, so Patrick volunteered to take the orange one.

Every year they also have a fire truck come to lead the parade. One year they came late, probably because they were actually working, but this year they got there in plenty of time. After the parade, the kids that are interested line up to talk to the firefighters and to explore the fire truck. This year there were two lines, one for the back of the fire truck where Eric spoke briefly with one of the firefighters. I couldn't hear what they were saying but I could tell that the firefighter had to lean in a bit in order to be able to hear what Eric was saying. The next line was to be able to "drive" the fire truck. Eric loved both.

This is a picture of us walking to the parade. Patrick was happy that Natalie was the one that actually grabbed HIS hand to hold it. She's growing up but at least she'll still do stuff like that. It was pretty cute too that when she was in the parade holding the banner, she also held on to Eric's hand since we were walking in the street, after all. She held onto his hand until he got tired of walking and I started holding him.

One of the signs of "growing up" around here seems to be kids wanting to be at their friends' houses all the time. Alex has barely been here this summer. He is always at his friends' houses sleeping over. When he's here he is usually with one to three (or on the weekend after his birthday--six) friends. We've gotten used to the extra children. Of course he never wants me to take a picture, so I have no pictures of him this summer. So, yesterday afternoon, Patrick took him to his friend Dylan's house. He was invited over there to watch fireworks and to sleep over. On the way, Patrick took Natalie to her friend Margot's house. Natalie did not sleep over at her friend Margot's house, so at least we had three of our children at home with us last night.

Anthony is my other child that I've barely seen this summer. He has been spending as much time as he can with his friends before he has to go off to college this August. When he's here he is usually playing for hours on the PS3. Sometimes he even plays while he has another friend on Skype on his computer on the table next to him. I was happy to spend a little time with him yesterday afternoon/evening.

We were invited over to Natalie's friend Margot's house for a cookout and for pool time. This is a picture of Anthony and Eric in their backyard pool. The pool really made it easier to stay cool on this hot day. I was also happy to see Anthony interacting with the rest of us instead of being away with his friends or being present but not really there while playing video games. He and Eric played in the pool for quite a bit. Eric stayed in the pool for most of the almost four hours we were there. Margot and her family are leaving today for vacation, so Natalie was getting as much play time in as possible. They had invited Natalie to go with them, but with the "A" Champs next week in Corpus Christie, she did not want to give that up. She really does drive herself harder in swimming than Patrick and I could ever push her.

I'm on call tonight then hopefully I'll be able to spend more time with my family this weekend. I hope everyone had a fun and safe Fourth of July! Patrick was able to chat with his brother Geoff on his birthday yesterday, but I want to wish Geoff "Happy Birthday" again!