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!

Championship Meet 2013

Today was the Championship Meet for our neighborhood swim team. Our team went against the four other teams in our division, Canyon Springs Sailfish, Regency Racers, Hunter's Creek Hurricanes, and Knight's Cross Crusaders. We didn't have a dual meet against Regency this summer, but we lost the other dual meets to all of the other teams we met this summer. We were probably the smallest team at this meet, but we got third place overall today. Our girls actually got second place, but our boys got fourth place, thus the third place. Not too bad.

The first picture above shows Natalie in Lane 4 looking at the scoreboard for her time after she swam in the Girls 9-10 25 yard Butterfly. She had plenty of time to look around since she won by over 2 1/2 seconds.

This second picture is of the four girls in the Girls 9-10 100 yard Freestyle Relay and the Medley Relay. Natalie was the anchor leg in the Freestyle Relay and the Butterfly leg in the Medley Relay. They won both of their relays pretty handily, winning by 2 seconds in the Freestyle Relay, and by 3 seconds in the Medley Relay. What a team!

I don't want to forget Eric in all of this bragging about Natalie. This was the biggest meet he's ever been too. The trophy that he's holding in this picture was a trophy that everyone on our team received at the team party after the Championship Meet. The shirt he's wearing is way too big but that was the official Championship Meet T-shirt. Natalie's shirt is even bigger. The two ribbons are for his two races. At this meet they give ribbons up to 16th place. We had a hard time explaining to him that although he got second place in his heat in the Boys 5-6 25 yard Freestyle and fourth place in his heat in the Boys 5-6 25 yard Backstroke, he got 14th and 12th place overall. In the end he seemed happy to receive a trophy like everyone else.

Eric was in the first heat of the Boys 5-6 25 yard Freestyle and he didn't even have his goggles on because he was waving to Patrick and me before his race. He got 14th place out of 16 with a time of 42.19 sec. He was in the second heat of three in the 25 yard Backstroke and he got 12th place out of 16 with a time of 43.77 sec. The kid next to him was disqualified and at first we were afraid it was him. Thankfully, it was not. He asked me yet again if he could join the swim team again next year. I told him yet again that we would sign him up. He said he wanted to remind me because he didn't want me to forget. That tells me that he really enjoyed being on the swim team.

I want to backtrack for a second to recap how she did at the Texas Open meet in Austin on Saturday. Natalie got a 2:56.05 in her 200 meter Freestyle for an "A" time. She knocked 10.75 seconds off her previous time of 3:06.80. We were amazed and interestingly, so was she! She said that her friends were screaming so loudly during her race that she could hear them across the pool. She usually can't hear anyone yelling for her, so I joked with her that she should have been concentrating on swimming instead of listening to the cheering. :) She also swam in the 100 meter Butterfly where she got a 1:38.29, which was 0.9 seconds faster than her previous time of 1:39.19. Her last event was the 50 meter Breaststroke where she added 0.5 seconds to her previous time of 54.33 for a time of 54.83 seconds. She's been working hard to improve on this stroke. She even asked her coach for extra help. I'm still amazed at how self-driven she is with swimming. Patrick and I just hope that she doesn't get burned out.

To summarize her other races, besides the Girls 9-10 25 yard Butterfly, she also won in the Girls 9-10 25 yard Freestyle and the Girls 9-10 100 yard IM. Her time for the 25 yard Free was 15.11 seconds (she won by 0.78 seconds). Her time for the 100 yard IM was 1:21.06 (which is an "A" time) and she won by 13.18 seconds! Several parents remarked to me about how fast she was. I just said "thank you". She definitely works hard and deserves it!

Natalie's goal this year was to get the Individual High Point plaque. She's missed it by a few points the last couple of years and she knew she had a good chance to win it this year. Having gotten first places in each of her three individual events, she was a shoo-in. You deserve it, sweetie!

Swimmer of the Week

I hadn't planned on posting so soon, but I just had to. Eric and Natalie got "Swimmer of the Week"! They've been giving it to sibling pairs, probably so more swimmers would get a chance to get this honor. There are four of these signs given out each week. There are no set criteria or anything, just swimmers that the Coach wants to call attention to, usually because of their hard work and dedication. Natalie had never gotten this award in four years of being on the neighborhood swim team. Her friend Maya used to get it every year (except for this year since she decided not to swim with the team this summer). Natalie hasn't really expected this in the last couple of years, because she mostly goes to her other swim practice instead of the neighborhood swim practice. Still, she hoped she would get it, probably because you get this cool sign to put in your front yard!

When I texted Patrick about the award. He texted back that Natalie smiled at the news and said, "Technically Eric got it." It's true that Eric deserved it. He has gone to two practices a day almost every day in June and he's gone to most of the practices period. Tonight he was the only child in the swim lane where they usually have the 5- and 6-year-olds. I told the Coach Michael to work him hard! Coach Jesse made the announcement that Natalie had achieved her TAGS time in the 50 meter backstroke today (more on this later). He made the announcement to everyone else at the practice when he announced the swimmers of the week. On the way out of practice, Coach Michael (who likes to kid around with the kids) told me to tell Natalie that it was Eric who got the award. I told him that's what she had said. Coach Jesse said, "Yeah right. She's the one who got the TAGS time." He sounded proud of her too. :)

I have one more cute story. When we got home with the sign, Eric said he wanted to put it in the closet. I had to ask him why, of course, and I explained that no one would see it if it was in the closet. He said, "What if someone takes it?"

Patrick left with Natalie for Austin this morning. She has a swim meet there at the University of Texas Swim Center tonight and tomorrow morning. She could have had the opportunity to swim on Sunday as well, but she wanted to be back home to swim in the neighborhood swim team Championship Meet. She swam in three races today, her results are as follows:

200 IM--3:25.34 (dropped 2.23 seconds off her previous time of 3:27.57)
50 Fly--40.50 (added 1.41 seconds to her previous time of 39.09)
50 Back--39.00 (dropped 1.34 seconds off her previous time of 40.34)

Patrick texted me a few observations, since I couldn't be there. He said that her breaststroke was "very rough" in the 200 IM. He wondered, as he usually does, whether or not he should tell her about it. She is always looking for how to improve, but sometimes she takes it as criticism rather than helpful tips, even when the info comes from her coach. Patrick felt that even though she dropped 2 seconds off her previous time, she could do much better. To me this is encouraging because she keeps getting better and faster. Patrick was sitting far away from where she was sitting, but she was very happy where she was--sitting next to her friends. He expected that she would be unhappy with her 50 Fly time because she added so much time, but she had to recover quickly because her next race was only about 15 minutes later. When she dropped so much time on her 50 Back, we were ecstatic, and so was she. She said that when she saw her time, she almost cried. Patrick said that she even slowed down as she was coming into the wall again, so she may have some room for improvement. :)

Patrick took Natalie out to eat at Chili's as a reward. Her very favorite dish there is the "Salmon with Garlic and Herbs". He texted me that she ate almost all her broccoli before she started eating her salmon. She was a hungry and happy girl.

I took this second picture at HEB, our local grocery store this evening. Anthony is filling out a health form so he could get the meningitis vaccine, which is required for admission to most colleges, nowadays. Of course, he texts me earlier today while I was at work to tell me that he had to get this done by July 1st. HELLO--JULY 1ST IS ON MONDAY!!! Sigh, my soon-to-be college-bound boy has been enjoying his summer going to London with his father, playing on the PS3 for six hours at a time, going to theme parks and such with his friends. This week he had to send in his course selections already, with almost no information and now this. He told me that the school has been sending him emails through his new school email address. He isn't used to this email address, of course, so he doesn't check it often. I shouldn't be more tech-savvy than my soon-to-be college-bound boy, should I? Even I know that there is a way to get those emails automatically to his iPhone and that he can set it up to give him alerts when he gets certain emails. He just hasn't done any of that yet. Sigh, so meantime, I had to drag Eric with us after swim practice was over at 7pm, to go get Anthony his vaccination. I wondered if he really had to get the vaccine by July 1st or if only the preliminary information had to be turned in by July 1st. I couldn't take the chance since he couldn't figure out which way it was, so we did it tonight. ACK! I'm on call 24 hours tomorrow, so this was just one more thing I had to do today before packing my stuff and working at the hospital for a whole day.

Just because I've mentioned the other three children in this post, I have to add a small mention about Alex plus mention what the boys were doing all day while I was at work. Anthony took Eric to his morning practice today then took Alex to his friend Dylan's house to spend the night. Anthony took Eric to Wendy's for lunch and somewhere along the way met up with his friend Alejandro. Alejandro is here tonight and he and Anthony are of course playing on the PS3. Anthony will pick up Alex tomorrow then Alex wants to spend the night at his friend Jeremy's house. Alex is really taking advantage of his big brother this summer.

Nearing the End of Swim Team

Well, I've been waiting for Patrick to post about his trip to Houston with the kids last week. I guess that isn't going to happen any time soon. In the meantime, I wanted to do a quick post on what's going on with us this week.

This is a picture of Eric with his friend Sofia. The lady who runs the "Snack Shack", which is the name of our concession stand during the home swim meets for our neighborhood team, was trying to get rid of the last treats left over from our last home meet last Saturday. She's been bringing popsicles and Fruit Roll-ups and Fruit by the Foot to the morning and evening practices. The kids are starting to expect a treat at every practice, I think. This is the last week of our neighborhood swim team practices. This coming Sunday, we'll be having our Championship meet vs. the other four teams in our division. Our team party with follow and then no more neighborhood swim team until next summer. Eric already asked if he could join again next summer. Of course!

Eric has been going to both the morning and the evening swim practices almost every day this month. He has a faint goggle tan. Although we usually put sunscreen on him pretty religiously, apparently Patrick forgot yesterday morning, so Eric's cheeks and nose were a little rosy. He also got a haircut today. It's funny how he thinks his hair is long with it reaches his forehead, compared to his older brothers and their long hair. He and Natalie have some blond highlights too. Cute.

Patrick and Natalie are leaving for Austin tomorrow morning. Natalie will be swimming in a meet at UT on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. They are staying in Austin overnight on Friday and coming home after the meet on Saturday afternoon. I can't go, as usual, because I have to work. I have a regular day tomorrow and then I'm on call 24 hours on Saturday. I knew this day would come. I missed one day of a two-day meet in May because I had to work. Now I have to miss two days! Meanwhile, the boys will be home by themselves on Saturday morning and afternoon. Anthony is even the one that has to take Eric to a birthday party on Saturday afternoon. He's been driving Alex around this summer. We will all definitely miss our extra driver this coming school year!

I can't exclude the boys in this post. They been going to the gym a few mornings this week. Alex has also had a number of friends sleeping over here last weekend, as sort of a belated birthday celebration. Yesterday he had a couple of friends over just so they could go swimming in our neighborhood pool. Anthony has been to Splashtown and Fiesta Texas, going out to eat with his friends, and playing lots of PS3. I feel like I barely see those two.

That's all I can think of to report for this week. Hopefully one of the next posts will be from Patrick about their trip to the Museum of Natural Science in Houston last weekend! ;)

Happy 14th Birthday, Alex!

My dear sweet Alex turned 14 on Tuesday, June 18th. Last year he didn't ask for anything at all except to play on the PS3 all day. I also bought him some snacks. This year he didn't play on the PS3 at all. He has also been trying to be better about not snacking. He and Anthony even went to the gym to exercise--at Alex's urging, not Anthony's. Patrick and I at least gave him his choice of what to eat. We had offered to throw him a party for his birthday, but his friends were all either at camp this week or out of town. He plans on having a few friends sleep over here and there instead.

He didn't get up until late morning, and I use that term "get up" loosely. He awakened in the late morning, but didn't get up until about 12:30 when Eric got home from Vacation Bible School. We then went as a family to Chipotle, one of Alex's favorite places to eat. Patrick had offered to grill for dinner, but Alex got it into his head that he wanted a Buffalo burger, so for dinner, we went to the only place we knew definitely had Buffalo burgers--Fuddrucker's. Alex actually allowed me to take this picture of him at Fuddrucker's, just after he had taken his first bite of his Buffalo burger. Anthony had one too, and they both enjoyed their burgers. All of the kids asked for shakes with their meals, so that was their "dessert" in lieu of birthday cake.

Alex has been a big influence lately on the shopping habits of the younger kids. Alex and his Aunt Melissa saw a pair of sneakers that looked like dinosaurs when they were out shopping two weekends ago. Alex, Eric, Natalie, and I went to the mall the weekend before last, and Alex really wanted to show me these sneakers (Vans brand shoes). Of course Eric loved them. Never mind that I just bought him some new Cars sneakers a month or so ago. How could I resist? They're so cute and they were even on sale! The price was also about $5 more than the Cars sneakers that I had bought at Payless. Eric wore them immediately.

What was also cute was that Eric changed shoes later that evening when we went to church. I asked him why he didn't wear his new dinosaur shoes (apparently they are T. Rex sneakers, specifically). He told me that they were "sleeping". The next morning he decided to wear them again because they were "awake". I love it when the kids use their imaginations like that.

My dear daughter loves the color red. When the red laundry gets washed, most of the laundry basket is hers. I just bought her a pair of boys' red shoes from Target a couple of weeks ago, when she was looking for a new pair of shoes, and she specifically sought out red shoes. She picked her sneakers before that one based on the fact that the bottom part was red.

Recently, she has managed to pick out some non-red clothing. She loves teal and turquoise especially. While we were at the Vans store trying on the dinosaur shoes, she found this pair. Alex, the fashion consultant, told her she should get some different colored shoe laces for these shoes. He even helped pick out the colors. Natalie has also been wearing mismatched socks for the last year or so--on purpose. Even Eric wears mismatched socks now. He likes to take his socks from the clean laundry basket and put them all in his drawer, not bothering to match them. Natalie loves wearing this combo of colors/mismatched items.

I took this picture shortly after buying the shoes. Alex has always had such a gorgeous smile. His smile looks so natural even when he is "posing" for a picture. Eric is still in that awkward smile phase when he poses for a picture.

Alex has matured so much this past year.  At one point we were really worried about him going to high school in the fall. Now we are looking forward to his starting high school. He has so many new opportunities to look forward to. We just hope he can take advantage of them. He has so much potential and he is such a smart kid. We love you, Alex! Happy Birthday!

Summerfield vs. Hunter's Creek

The memory of the chaos and of a sobbing little boy was still fresh on my mind, but we had another away swim meet on a weekday. Where we were worried about rain with the swim meet last week, we were worried about bugs and sunburns with this one. Wow, it was super humid outside! Patrick and Anthony were fresh from their trip to London, having just arrived on Sunday night. With the time difference, the meet felt like it was starting at 11:30pm for them. Natalie's friend Margot had also returned from a trip on Sunday. Her trip was related to her maternal uncle who died last week from cancer.

Margot came with us to this meet because one of their school friends, Ally, was also swimming at this meet, except she was swimming for Hunter's Creek. I took the kids early so we could get a good parking spot and so I could help a little with the set-up. Anthony brought Patrick a little closer to the start of the meet and he stayed to watch Eric's first race, the Boys 5-6 25 meter Freestyle.

Eric got first in his heat, with a time of 47.25 seconds. His seed time was 1:11.97, so he improved his time by over 24 seconds! I knew that he seems to be swimming faster and faster, but now I have proof. Never mind that his heat was the slowest of the three heats. He got 8th place out of 13 boys overall. All he knows and cares about is that he got first in his heat. All I know is that I was happy that he got to swim the freestyle this time. Patrick personally took him to his spot and stayed with him until it was his turn. A lot of parent volunteers stood by to make sure everyone got to swim at the right time. My friend Alicia, who is the team parent, did not relax until all of the five- and six-year olds got to swim their freestyle and backstroke races.

Eric also swam in the Boys 5-6 25 meter Backstroke. His seed time was 58.71. He was in the second of three heats this time, and he got second in his heat! His time was 48.53 for an improvement of 10 seconds! He just asked me this week if he could join the swim team again next summer. Of course I told him "yes"!

For this swim meet, they got to sit down in chairs behind each starting block when they were awaiting their turn to swim. This is way more organized than in the last meet. I caught Natalie in a moment of concentration here. Patrick joked about how she wouldn't be able to do her pre-swim routine while she was sitting down. She likes to do a series of stretches and joint cracking just before each race.

At these neighborhood swim meets, each swimmer can swim up to two relay races and three individual races. Natalie's relays did well, placing first in the Girls 9-10 100 meter Freestyle Relay and the 100 meter Medley Relay. However, apparently their Medley Relay was disqualified for a technicality that Patrick thought was wrong. I preferred to focus on the positive part of that. Those teams won pretty handily as they have this summer so far and hopefully they will do well in the Championship Meet in a couple of weeks. They also had some excitement. During the Medley relay, they were pretty much neck and neck until the third leg (Natalie's butterfly leg) where she pulled ahead with such speed that several parents remarked on her swimming ability. This is just her proud mama bragging. :)

Natalie was equally impressive in her individual events. She swam in the Girls 13-14 50 meter Backstroke. Because she hadn't yet competed in this event for the neighborhood team, she didn't have a time recorded. That meant that she swam in the first heat, which is usually the slowest heat. That also meant that she would have to go as fast as she could without the feedback of other swimmers being close behind her to push her faster. She beat the other girls in her heat by almost a pool length. When all the girls swam, Natalie's time was two seconds faster (39.56) than the girl who came in second place. Sorry--more mama bragging.

Her next individual event was the Girls 9-10 100 meter IM. She came in first place with a time of 1:34.75 and about ten and a half seconds faster than her friend Anna. She was trying to beat her time from a couple of weeks ago (about 1:32) but she was happy with that time because it had only been about five minutes or so after her last race.

Her last individual event was the Girls 13-14 50 meter butterfly. I videotaped this one because I figured it would be a close race. There were only four girls in this race, and one of them was a 14-year-old girl named Sydney, who is very athletic and comes from a family of athletic kids. Sydney's seeded time was 41 seconds, which is around what I thought Natalie's time would be. She again had "NT" or "no time" since she had not yet competed in this event for the neighborhood team. It was a photo finish. In fact, I was watching at the end so intently that I didn't focus the video at the point where they were touching the wall at the end. Natalie out-touched Sydney in real life. Their official times were 39.53 and 39.97 respectively. That was an exciting finish!

I've bragged enough about my kids for now. I was going to post a little about Alex's birthday today, but this post is long enough. Today is Alex's 14th birthday. I will post about him tomorrow.

Happy Father's Day 2013

It seems like I get one child back and then I lose another one. Alex got back into town late Friday night, but Natalie went to a sleepover on Saturday night, so I still had two children in the house. Today I picked up Natalie from her sleepover, only to lose Alex to a sleepover. At least Patrick and Anthony will be back tonight. Alex will come back tomorrow and we'll all be together again for his birthday on Tuesday. This is the first time Patrick hasn't been home for Father's Day and it feels a little weird.

I took this first picture at the swim team pool/pizza party on Friday afternoon. The kids all wanted to swim, and they did for a few minutes, but then we heard thunder, so I made them get out of the pool. They played in the playground instead. At least the thunder stopped for a bit, enough to get the swim team photo done. After that, I helped serve the pizzas. A lot of people didn't show up because of the threatening rain. I guess the promise of free pizza wasn't enough to entice them to come, so we had lots of pizzas left. After everyone ate, they all pretty much left, and the rain began shortly after they finished cleaning up after the pizza party. The kids were a little bummed that they couldn't swim (because of the thunder and lightning). Natalie, who had already had swim practice for a total of two hours that morning plus she played in the pool for another hour, was the most bummed.

This is a picture of the kiddos on Saturday morning, curled up on my bed playing a new game on the iPad. At last we could relax in the morning instead of rushing off to morning swim practice. Natalie and Eric had plenty of iPad time, but who cares? They were entitled to a little relaxation, and frankly, so was I.

I picked up Alex from the airport on Friday evening at about 10:30pm. A good friend and neighbor offered to come over and sit in my living room so I could leave the little ones at home when I got Alex. It was raining and he walked over from his house with an umbrella. Al and Alicia have been so good to me this week!

Today was also a relaxing day, although I did drive around quite a bit between picking up Natalie and dropping off Alex. I wanted to make time for Eric too, and he's been asking to go to the Lifetime Fitness pool, so I took him there this afternoon. I probably mentioned this in a previous post, but at Lifetime Fitness, they test the kids to see of they can swim 25 meters, and give those that can an armband. The parents don't have to stay quite as close (10 meters) to their kids that have armbands. Eric passed this test last year, but when he did he had to stop a couple of times to turn on his back and rest. This time he did the whole 25 meters without stopping. I didn't think to time him, but with being on the swim team this summer, he has gotten better and faster. He asked me if he could join the swim team next year. I said, "Of course you can!"

I want to wish a "Happy Father's Day" to all the fathers out there. We got to talk to Patrick on the phone a little while ago during their layover in Minneapolis. I finally got through to my Dad just now. I'll try to post again tomorrow about the kids' swim meet tomorrow evening.

Swim Meet June 8-9

I'm a little behind on posting about last weekend's swim meet. Natalie was bummed about this one because she wouldn't be able to play with her cousins. We signed up for it because she was the one that wanted plenty of chances to achieve her TAGS time. Grandma and Grandpa did come to see her swim on Saturday morning when the weather wasn't too bad. I would have posted a picture of them with Natalie, but Grandma's eyes are closed and she probably would not want me to post that photo. This picture is also from Saturday, June 8th. Natalie hung out with friends in between races. She only swam in two races each day. It rained pretty hard at the start of the meet on Sunday and then it was unbearably humid after that.

The results of her four races during this meet are as follows:
100 m Freestyle--1:26.29 (added time from personal best=1:25.86)--placed 14th out of 32 girls ages 10 and under
200 m IM--3:28.74 (added time from personal best=3:27.57)--placed 7th out of 20 girls ages 10 and under
200 m Freestyle--3:06.80 (did better than previous personal best of 3:07.93)--placed 12th out of 18 girls ages 10 and under
50 m Freestyle--37.90 (did much better than previous personal best of 39.23)--placed 7th out of 31 girls ages 10 and under

Of note was the fact that her 50 m Freestyle time was more in line with what her time should have been the last time she swam the 50m Freestyle, when they had all of those glitches with the starting system. She did much better on Sunday than on Saturday. She was unhappy on Saturday, but felt better on Sunday. She's still on a quest to get TAGS times. We have another chance at the end of the month.

Between Eric and Natalie, they have been to 12 swim practices so far this week (more or less), with one more tonight. The one tonight is more of a team picture/pizza party, but still--that's a lot of swim practices. That's not even counting the two they missed. Our good friends took Eric to two of his evening practices, otherwise I've been to every single one, so we haven't been at home very much. Yesterday we had lunch with a friend of mine at Chili's after the second swim practice of the day (the neighborhood one) and then we got to spend a little time at home. This afternoon we get to spend a little time at home again, thankfully, and the kiddos have a couple of friends over here and they're watching the movie "Despicable Me" and eating popcorn.

Because it's only me here this week, I've been taking Eric to a lot of Natalie's swim practices. I took this photo this morning. I had just changed him into his swimsuit since we were going straight to the neighborhood practice after Natalie's morning practice. He couldn't resist stepping in all the puddles around the natatorium pool, of course. He also realized that his wet flip flops made a pattern on the dry pavement, so he kept looking back where he had stepped to see his footprints on the pavement. I love the joy of experiencing the simple things at this age.

Alex is coming home tonight! Yay! Eric is getting excited about Alex coming home. We miss him!

Summerfield vs. Knight's Cross

We had the second neighborhood swim meet on Tuesday night, June 11th, and it was hosted by another neighborhood team, the Knight's Cross Crusaders. Wow, what a disorganized meet. Some of the problem was due to the weather. The skies opened up with rain, thunder, and lightning before our team had a chance to even warm up. We sat in their clubhouse for about half an hour, waiting the standard 20 minutes after we last heard thunder. The meet started a little late--at 6pm. They seemed to be rushing to get the meet done by 9pm. We (our team) learned our lesson that we need to be more attentive to our kids if this happens again. I'm not sure if the home team learned that lesson or not.

They rushed to get the kids all lined up and ready to swim. They didn't give out updated heat sheets with the last-minute changes, not even to the officials. We usually have "ready bench" volunteers who make sure the kids are where they need to be and ready to swim their races. The parents who volunteer for the "ready bench" have a lot of experience, but several small children were missed, even though they were in the right place to swim. Eric was one of those. The other team rushed through the first events and didn't put up their sign to tell everyone what event number they were on--until they started missing kids. Only then did they put that sign up. We still haven't received the final results, so I don't know for sure, but it certainly seemed like the kids that missed swimming in their races were all from our team. There were at least five of them that I know of, mostly the five and six year olds. When we host a meet at our home pool, the individuals who run our meet usually make sure there is a child on each starting block when the race starts. Sometimes there isn't a child assigned to that spot, but they find out and then they move on. This team didn't do that.

To say that I am upset is an understatement. They blamed our parents/volunteers. They refused to let those kids swim. All those kids wanted to do was swim. It wasn't about winning or getting the best time. The kids just wanted to swim. Eric just wanted to swim. He was crying when they told him he had missed his race and that he couldn't swim the freestyle like he thought he was going to do. I calmed him down and told them he would get another chance. Then the parent running the meet suddenly made an announcement saying the "three" kids that missed their races could swim again--but wouldn't get timed. Then they started the race almost immediately after making that announcement. That was like rubbing salt in an open wound. Eric wasn't there again, of course. He was sobbing for a while. I held him almost until his next race, the backstroke. I stood right next to him to make sure he didn't miss that race. Several other parents did the same thing.

I found it interesting that for one heat where there were only Knight's Cross kids swimming, the parent running the meet stopped to call out the three kids names that were swimming--because only two were on the blocks. I also found it interesting that they had a kid swimming that wore a flotation device. He didn't have any chance of winning, because everyone finished in half his time, and technically that is against the rules, but they took the time to let him do that. Sure, all the parents are doing this for the kids, but let's do it for ALL the kids, not just for one team. I also found it interesting that several kids from the other team had false starts (but didn't get disqualified). Were they used to having to start quickly and didn't want to miss their races? Maybe so.

One parent went home early with her five year old child. She was so upset about her child missing her race that she wrote an email to everyone on our team. She left because her child had been "left out". That was not the way to handle it. Her child didn't get another chance to swim. Eric had another chance to swim. I am so glad he got another chance to swim.

All was forgotten after a while. Eric got to swim and everything was better. This is a picture of him with his buddy Sofia. He was goofing off and having fun with her the rest of the meet. He'll swim again at the next meet (next Monday) and this will all be just a memory.

I want to end this post on an upbeat note. Natalie was slotted to swim in the Girls 9-10 25m Breaststroke. She hates doing breaststroke, mostly because she thinks she's not good at it. When Eric didn't get to swim his freestyle, she was very upset about it too. I told her to focus on her races and beat the pants off the other team. I sort of did it to get her motivated, but I was also really mad at the other team for doing that to my little boy. Natalie won that race. She won by almost four seconds. She also swam in the Girls 11-12 25m Butterfly and she was faster than #2 by almost a second and faster than #3 by three and a half seconds. She won in the Girls 9-10 100m IM by over 19 seconds. She amazes me sometimes. Her two relay teams also won pretty handily. Go Natalie!

Anthony's Graduation

I barely spent any time at home today. We started out by going to breakfast at IHOP at 8:30am. We then almost immediately turned around and went to the neighborhood swim team practice at 10am. I let the kids play an extra hour, so we didn't get home until after noon. We showered and changed and had lunch then we were at the library by 2pm. We took a short shopping trip to Bath and Body Works for their "Semi-Annual Sale" then had ice cream at Brindles. We then had an early dinner at 4:30pm at Fuddruckers'. It was too early to head to Natalie's club swim practice, so we took a short shopping trip to Old Navy then went to swim practice. I'm a little burned out on swim practices, but I'm enjoying the time I'm spending with the little ones.

This is the only photo I have of Anthony with his graduation gear on. He was too far away on the night of his graduation to get any good photos plus they made the kids turn in their stuff immediately after the ceremony, so he didn't have anything left by the time we saw him. Besides what he is wearing here, he had a grey satin stole for his magnet school, DATA (Design and Technology Academy). He didn't receive that until right before the ceremony. By the time he got a friend to take a picture of him with the DATA stole on, he had already turned in the National Honor Society stole (the white one you see here). The grey one hung down at the sides instead of around the front like the NHS one.

He left ahead of us because he had to be there at 6pm. There were over 600 students graduating with their accompanying loved ones in the audience, so there were lots of people at the Freeman Coliseum, where they hold the graduation ceremonies of all of the district high schools. The ceremony had the usual speeches by the principal and various important people. Before this graduation, I had only heard of valedictorians and salutatorians giving speeches at the ceremony. Anthony graduated as number 2 and his friend Jake graduated as number 1 in the class, but neither of them were slated to give a speech. Instead, a student was chosen from tryouts held when Anthony and his friend Jake were out of town for college visits plus the president of the student body gave a speech. This still seems weird to me, but I guess the speeches weren't that important anyway.

The first names to be called were the students that graduated with the Summa Cum Laude designation, then the Magna Cum Laude, then Cum Laude, and then everyone else. At this school, Summa Cum Laude is defined as those students who have over a "100" average. They can achieve that by taking Advanced Placement (AP) and Pre-AP courses, which come with additional multipliers that tend to inflate their scores.

Because they announced the Summa Cum Laude graduates first in alphabetical order, Anthony was actually the 30th student to walk across the stage and receive his high school diploma. That meant that we could have left after about an hour because Anthony was done (at 8:30pm). We may end up doing that with Alex, but this is our first child to graduate from high school, so Patrick and I stayed for the whole ceremony. His parents, Alex, and Eric stayed with us and everyone else left to go to our house. Eric held up well, considering we didn't leave there until about 9:30pm. He played on the iPad almost the whole time except for when Anthony was crossing the stage--then he clapped and yelled like the rest of us. Alex left for a bit to visit with a friend whose brother was also graduating.

After the ceremony ended, we met everyone back at our house where we watched the final minutes of the NBA Finals Game 1 with our hometown San Antonio Spurs winning over the Miami Heat. Since this was an out-of-town game, they had a viewing party at the Alamodome this same evening, which caused problems for us getting to the graduation since the Alamodome is right next to Freeman Coliseum.

Tomorrow I need to start catching up on current events, like the second neighborhood swim meet of the season that was held last night, Tuesday, June 11th.

Alex's and Eric's Graduations

I feel like I'm either getting ready to go to swim practice, at swim practice, or coming back from swim practice. Yesterday I dropped Eric off at a friend's house so they could take him to swim practice at our neighborhood pool while I took Natalie to her club swim practice. Alicia was good enough to allow him to shower off at her house also. Her daughter Sofia is also six years old and she and Eric are good buddies. Alicia gave them a choice of who would get to take a shower first. Eric, who bathed with Natalie up until about last year, of course asked if they could take a shower together. Although it doesn't really matter at their age, it was best to not invite questions later (about why they could shower together when they're six but not when they're ten or at whatever age), so she told them "no". Wise choice but still, I could picture Eric asking and thought it was a cute thing to say.

Eric chose to sleep in my room last night. Amongst his many stuffed animals, he chose his big triceratops that he got from the Children's Museum when he had his birthday party there, and he also chose his little (beanie baby-type) triceratops. He seemed to sleep pretty soundly, but he and Natalie were both awake by 7am, despite getting to bed late at 9pm. We were up and out of the house by 8am to go to Natalie's 8:30 swim practice. We went to the grocery store on the way home. Natalie wore her swim parka inside. We got some healthy things like strawberries and blueberries, and something to eat for lunch today and for dinner tomorrow. I indulged them a bit with the snacks. I was about to say "no" to Fruit Rollups but decided it was okay. I told Eric to go get one and he said, "It's already in there." Yes, Eric likes to just put whatever he wants into the grocery cart.

Speaking of someone who likes to snack, Alex loves to snack, but he has been so good about eating the right things since he was in track this past year. Of course that change wasn't due to him actually paying attention to Patrick and me telling him not to snack so much. That change was due to his track coach telling him that he would do better in track if he made more healthy food choices. He still snacks, but he has actually used some restraint and has even chosen to eat fruits and vegetables. He is currently touring Washington, D.C. with a group from his middle school. I exchanged some short texts with him last night. He has been quite busy but seems to be having fun. They have a lot of ground to cover as they are going to New York City as well--all in four days.

He made me promise not to bring my big camera to his awards ceremony last week. As a result, all I have are bad, blurry photos like this one. I'm still happy with this because at least he's looking in my general direction and this is more than I got last year. He even gave Patrick and me a hug at the end of the ceremony. Like Natalie, he also got certificates for the President's Award, All "A" Honor Roll, and Perfect Attendance. There was definitely a time this past year when we weren't sure he would make all "A's" so kudos to him for getting his work done.

After the awards, they had a short little film with pictures of everyone in the eighth grade. Luckily, they didn't have everyone in the eighth grade walk across the stage or the ceremony would have taken forever. Only the kids that got awards got to walk across the stage. For this reason I can't really call this a "graduation", but the principal did address the eighth graders specifically with words meant to inspire them to greatness in high school and beyond. We were out of there in about 45 minutes.

Eric's ceremony was even more low key. They don't have letter grades in kindergarten, so there was no certificate for getting all "A's". My sister Melissa arrived with her daughter Emily just as we were leaving for the school, so we were a very large group--all for Eric. We were surprised that we were the only family members there. None of the other families were there. That's unusual for kindergarten, but maybe they thought they weren't supposed to come. In any case, we made sure to clap for all of the other kids too. Eric was super excited to see all of us there.

It was a simple ceremony, not at all like the other kids had when they "graduated kindergarten". Eric's teacher merely called each student by name, gave them a certificate of completion, and gave them each a hug. She showed us this little headband with a graduation cap on top and told us that each child could pose individually with the headband for pictures if they wanted to. She also joked about how she could only afford one on a teacher's salary.

I asked Mrs. S for a picture of her standing next to Eric because I figured that one of these days, he would be taller than her. She laughed and posed for me. Unlike Natalie who always wants to ride the bus, Eric elected to go home with us instead of going on the bus. We still had lots of activities left for us that day. I'll post about Anthony's high school graduation ceremony tomorrow.

For today, instead of another swim practice to go to tonight, we have our second neighborhood swim meet of the season tonight. I'll have to post about that also whenever I can get to it.