Swim Team All-Stars

Today was the All-Star meet. At this meet, the best swimmers from the 30 teams in the Southwest Houston Recreational Swim League compete. There are two heats for each event in each age group. Meaning only 16 swimmers qualify for each event. It really blows my mind that Trevor could be ranked so high among the 4,500 + swimmers that make up this league! Crazy.
We were to arrive at the Don Cook Nat. at 6:45am. EARLY, again. Good thing it is in Sugar Land right across from the Mall. It is where the high school kids compete.
When we arrived they hadn’t opened up the doors, yet. (Good thing we got there on time.) So we waited outside along with everyone else. Then they called for the swimmers to enter the building. Trevor went in. After about 5 more minutes of standing outside, I realized that I still had Trevor’s goggles. I knew that they would be starting the warm up soon, and I started to get really nervous about how I was going to find him and get him his goggles in time. Finally after about 5 more minutes of me standing outside stressing, they opened the doors and let us in. It was like a slow motion cattle stampede.
It is a really nice facility. It has a 50 meter pool that they can put a deck across the middle to make it 25 meters. There are bleachers to sit on. Good thing I didn’t heft in the chairs. They have the professional starting blocks that most of the kids have never used before. They have a score board that shows the names of the kids competing, their times, and what place they come in. The only thing I could do was follow the masses of people entering the building and find a seat, and hopefully spot Trevor at the same time. Makaylie was with me and Charlie stayed home with the rest of the boys. I thought once I found a seat then I could hopefully leave Makaylie there to save the seat and go look for Trevor. Thankfully as soon as I sat down I saw Trevor talking to his coach and then they both looked over to the bleachers. I waved as big as I could to get their attention and it worked! Yay! One stress taken care of. I thought that I had picked out a good seat to sit at. I was on the front row, just left to the starting blocks, so I could see all the way down the pool. I soon learned that it was not a great place to be. I was right next to a gap that lots of people were standing in, who blocked my view and then there was the constant migration of people walking to and from their seats. Really frustrating. People can be so inconsiderate!
The races were really exciting to watch, from what I could see between people. By the time Trevor was up, I was a nervous wreck. You’d think that I was the one in the race! Trevor competed in the first Heat of 7-8 boys Breaststroke. He came in 2nd Place! 24.19 seconds. Yahoo! I thought that my heart was going to fly out of my chest I was so excited. Then came the second heat and I saw one of our teams, fastest swimmers in that heat. I couldn’t figure out why he was in that heat until they went. They were blazing fast. I saw the times up on the board and knew Trevor was beat. Over all he placed 10th out of 16 swimmers. I am so proud of the boy. What a great end to a great swim season!

Prelims, Finals and Banquet

Wow, what an exciting week we have had.
Thursday was swim team prelims. It was a swim meet where all the swim teams of our division meet at the same time. It is not the regular format. During the season, it will be two teams facing one another, and coaches assign who will be swimming which stroke. In Prelims, basically every kid swims every stroke. The eight fastest times advance to finals.
The swim meet started at 8am, which means that we had to arrive there at 6:45! EARLY. The meet was hosted by First Colony Gold. Right away my kids were all wigged out because First Colony’s pool does not have lines on the bottom, meaning that it is hard to know if you are swimming in a straight line or not. Hunter didn’t even want to do his warm up because he had run into the ropes a couple times on the first lap, and he was not liking that.
The great thing was that since there were 4 teams competing, they split up the age groups so that just the 6 and under, 7-8 and 9-10 age groups were swimming for qualification.
Free style was first. I was thinking that Makaylie would qualify for sure, but because there were no lines and maybe the fact that it was early and she hadn’t eaten yet, she swam a full second slower than her regular time. She did end up making first alternate for finals. This means, she had the 9th fastest time. If you think about it, she is two years younger than other people in her age group and is beating most of them! Wow go girl!
Trevor came in 6th place for breast stroke so he made it into finals. Yea!
The hard part was the end of the meet, when it was moment of truth for Hunter. He just knew that he was going to make finals and qualify for All-stars. He had been talking it up the whole meet, and I kept trying tell him that I am proud of him for doing his best and it doesn’t matter to me at all if he makes it or not. So as we were packing up our chairs, towels, and various other belongings, Hunter was asking me over and over if he made it. I didn’t want to tell him the truth full out, because I was feeling really bad for him. I said “I don’t know Hunter, I don’t think you did.” Well he didn’t believe me at all. So we went to go check the board before we left. We ran into one of our swim coaches and Hunter asked him if he had made it, and the coach didn’t know either. So we went to the board to check……. Hunter did not make it! He was crushed and couldn’t stop the tears. I was so sad for him. That is the hard part for a mom, to be happy for one kid and sad for the other kid.
We all decided that we should let Hunter decide where we should go to eat breakfast. Shipley’s, of course!
Finals were Saturday morning at 8am. We had to be there at 6:45am AGAIN! Each team gets to enter a relay team in the finals. Makaylie was in the Freestyle relay and Trevor was in the medley relay and Freestyle relay. So I planned ahead better and woke up Trevor and Makaylie up earlier so that they could eat some oatmeal and get their energy up.
Finals move more quickly than a regular meet because there is only one heat of each event, rather than 5-6 heats per event. The Medley relay was first. The first place team moves on to All-stars. Trevor’s team came in 4th place of 4 teams, OUCH! Next up was the 6 and under relay. Makaylie swam the anchor. She dove in the pool and swam her little heart out. Her team was in 4th (last) place when she dove in. She put her head down and swam to the other side of the pool without taking a single breath! She swam that lap in 22.14 seconds! (Beating her best time of 24 seconds!) She passed one of the other teams winning our team 3rd place! Trevor swam individual breast stroke. It was a really close race and he came in 3rd advancing him to Allstars! He was so excited! I was really amazed! During the meet they would announce the results of the events, and they would announce the swimmers moving on to all-stars. Trevor and I were so excited to hear his name called over the loud speaker. We just looked at each other and giggled. Trevor’s last event was the freestyle relay; again his team came in 4th out of 4. Too bad.
The swim team banquet was Sunday. This is held at Sugar Creek Country Club. Everyone (most everyone) really dresses up for the occasion. There is really good food, a slide show of pictures taken though out the season, and awards given out. Makaylie was recognized for being the female swimmer of the 4th meet. She received a gift card to Target. Then she was recognized for being the most valuable swimmer in the 6 and under age group! The coach told everyone that she and made first alternate to finals and then she pointed out that this girl is only 4 and has two more years in this age group. Makaylie got a good sized trophy for being the MVP along with the regular sized trophy that everyone else receives. Charlie and I were so excited for her and so proud to be her parents. Trevor was recognized as being one of the two 7-8 boys that made All-stars.
Again, the ride home was a little tough for Hunter; it is just too much to think that his younger sister got more trophies than him.

Hunter is totally thrilled to be taking these pictures. Still mad that Makaylie got more trophies than him. Charlie and I laughed because of his expression, but a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

My summer so far....

My Summer so far.... this is going to be long!

Trevor tried out for a select baseball team and he made it. What they do is practice, practice, and practice. They don’t really have a regular season of games; they enter tournaments that are usually over the weekend. So since the end of May he has had baseball practice Tuesday and Thursday nights from 6:30-9:00 pm! Then on Saturdays they either find another team to scrimmage with or hold another 2 ½ hr practice in the frying morning heat! They have had two tournaments that they have participated in so far. The first one we were out of town so that was great. I don’t think they played very well. It is a brand new team that they just started up so all the boys need to get accustomed to playing together. The second tournament was over the Fourth of July weekend. It was in La Port, which is like an hour away. So Charlie and Trevor went. They had to leave at 7:30 am Saturday to make it to their first game that started at 9:30. Then they had another game at 12:30. They lost both. They got home exhausted from the heat! It is like 95 degrees with 100% humidity! Augh! Then they had one more game to play on Sunday morning at 9:30. (I am not a fan of this Sunday stuff) If they lost that game then they would be done and come home in time to go to 1pm church. I was banking that they would lose. Charlie is the Sunday school teacher of the 16-17 yr olds. So Charlie calls me up at 11:30 to let me know that they won their game and had another game at 12:30! So I was a little frustrated because now I had to go to church with 3 kids and teach his Sunday school lesson. I had no internet at the time so l couldn’t even prepare because he doesn’t have a manual! So Sacrament meeting was frustrating and then I went to teach the lesson and most of the kids were gone on summer vacation, so we just sat and visited. I know, not good, but I got to know some of them better and I feel like sometimes having a relationship with the kids will help them to respect and listen to you better when you do teach something. So we had some good conversations and I was happy with it.

So that is Baseball. We have another tournament coming up the first of august so I will let you know how that goes. It is here in Sugar Land so it will be easier for me to go a watch.

Violin lessons are still going on during the summer. The boys are coming up on their 500th day of practicing in a row and Makaylie is at 200 days in a row! Boy I am a slave driver! The thing with violin is that you need to practice every day to progress. If you miss a day it is really like missing 3. The problem with me, is that I am only practicing once, maybe twice a week, so my progress is in the negative? Each violin lesson is an hour long, so every Thursday we have lessons from 3:30 until 7:30pm. I get to sit through the kids lessons so that I know what to practice with them. So it is a long time to sit. I think it is worth it though. It really teaches discipline. And the idea that you really have to work for something that you want to have accomplished is a valuable lesson to learn at a young age. Now whenever we have to try something new, and this is not just in violin, we know that it might not be easy the first time but if you practice, soon we will be able to do it. This is a great lesson for me too, not just the kids!

Do you see how I am just naming off the activities one at a time? SWIM TEAM!!!!!

Ok, swim team practices for Trevor, Hunter, and Makaylie started May 12th. Until school was out, we had practice right after school every day except Fridays. When summer started practices moved to mornings on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays 9:50-11am. Tuesdays, we have off! Hallelujah! Mondays are swim meets. So Monday morning we go to practice. Then we come home and since Mondays are laundry days, I am trying to get as many loads washed as I can. Then at 3:45 we go to whichever pool the swim meet is at. First, the Kids go to the coaches and get their swim numbers written on their hand. This is for the timers to keep track of who swam what stoke, heat, and time etc. It is a pretty impressive system. Then the coaches also will write on their arm what strokes and what heats the child is swimming. That is so great for me because with 3 swimming it is sometimes hard to remember who is swimming what and when. Then they do a couple of warm up laps. While they are doing that, I am setting up camp. (Chairs to sit on, cooler of snacks, water, spray bottles to cool ourselves with.) No one except swimmers is allowed in the pool. And at the home meets the place where we sit is a parking lot, so HOT concrete! The Meet doesn’t even start until 5pm. So already we have been outside for an hour plus, sweating because we have been running here and there, not to mention all the prep work and packing of the truck that had to be done before we even made it to the meet! Did I mention that it is HOT outside?

So then the Meet starts. The first part of the meet is a little crazy. Both Trevor and Hunter are in the same 7-8 age group and they swim first. The first swim they do is a medley relay, meaning there are four kids on a team and the first kid will do backstroke to the other side, and then the next kid jumps in and does breast stroke, the third kid does butterfly and the last kid does freestyle. So sometimes Trevor and Hunter were on the same team, and sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes they were swimming the same stroke, and then sometimes they were swimming different strokes. I wanting to know how the kids are doing, usually use my watch to time their laps. That would get tricky when they were both swimming at the same time, but didn’t start together.

Makaylie is in the 6 and under age group. They usually only do two events. The first one they do is a free style relay. It works the same as the medley relay, four on a team except they all do freestyle. The next event they do is individual freestyle. Makaylie is awesome. The girl just turned 5 last week, and she smokes everyone! Yesterday she came home with 2 first place ribbons. Two weeks ago she was named female swimmer of the meet! She has incredible lungs; she can swim the whole length of the pool without taking a breath! This last meet she swam her lap in 24 seconds! The pool is 25 meters/yards (some are meters and some are yards) long! That time is faster than what Trevor or Hunter swam last year! Some of the 6 and under kids will swim in the 7-8 age groups for backstroke. Monday July 14th, Makaylie was entered in the 7-8 age group for Butterfly! Forget the easy strokes; let’s just go for the hardest! She was in the second heat against 3 other girls, who are at least 2-4 yrs older than her. She held her own. She came in 4th, but one of the other girls was disqualified for her stroke, so Makaylie got the 3rd place ribbon! Her coaches are teenagers themselves, and they were so proud of her. There are two boy coaches that are brothers that are named Matt and Mike! Ha! (my brothers are Matt and Mike) So Mike scoops Makaylie out of the water afterwards and runs her to the other girl coach who congratulated her. Then he just stands there holding her hand, just as proud of her as he could be. It was really cute. Then he took her over to get her ribbon. Later on, someone told her that she was going to swim in the Olympics! After the meet when we were driving home, Makaylie asked me if she had to swim in the Olympics. I laughed and told her that she isn’t swimming in these Olympics. She was relieved. We have been watching the swim trials in awe at how awesome those swimmers are!

Trevor is awesome too. He is one giant muscle from head to toe! What can I say, my kids are athletes! (Thanks, Charlie!) His strokes this year have been backstroke and Breast stroke. I wish you could see his breaststroke! I have never seen anyone move so fast! I am not sure you can move that fast on land. He has consistently smoked everyone for the last 3-4 meets in Breaststroke. Two weeks ago, we were standing next to a parent of a kid from another team watching the breaststroke. You could tell they were fully expecting their boy to win. They were blown away when Trevor beat everyone by at least 2 body lengths! It was crazy!

Hunter is really good too. I think that he gets frustrated to have to compete with Trevor. It will be fun next year when he is at the top of his age group. He has lungs! He can swim the length of the pool in one breath! One funny time was at the beginning of the season. Both Trevor and Hunter were swimming the individual freestyle and in the same Heat. Hunter was not aware that Trevor was on the other side swimming against him. At the end of the race, Hunter got his ribbon and came to me all disappointed with a second place. He was sure that he had won. He said “Who beat me? I came in first!” Then Trevor comes up with the first place ribbon. I looked and Hunter and he looked at Trevor and I said “Sorry Hunty, he beat you by one second!” “Oh man!” Was Hunter's reply. After that Hunter has been doing different strokes than Trevor so it has kept the competition to a minimum. Hunter competes in the Individual Freestyle and the Butterfly stroke. He is usually in the 1st-3rd range.

I can’t believe what great swimmers everyone is. I guess that I got the bug, because I joined a master swim class. It is for 18 and older. I have been swimming for 3 weeks now, and it is killing me! I swim tues, wed, and thurs mornings. I have a coach that just puts me though the ringer for an hour and then I have to come home and start the day. I have a new found respect for my awesome swimming kids!

In addition to swim team, the first week of summer the boys went to basketball camp from 1-4:30pm. They learned a lot and had a great time. The second week of summer Hunter went to Art camp from 1-4 which he totally loved! Trevor went to scout day camp. It went from 2-8:30pm! It was so long that I pulled him out after only two days!


We also had a Home USA boating trip June 20-25th. We rented the sweetest house! It was up at Lake Travis in Austin again. This house was a four bedroom 4.5 bath. 3 of the bedrooms were master suites! It had a exercise room, home theater room, awesome kitchen, Flat screen plasma TVs in every room, office, Speaker system throughout the house, and outside, kitchette with icemaker and TV outside, a pool with spa and beach entry, a putting green, golf cart to take you to the double covered boat house! It was way on the north side of the Lake way deep in a finger so there was no boat traffic and the water was flat as glass to double dimples for the first 3 days! It was so fun. Charlie invited all of his office people in shifts. The first three couples came from Friday until Sunday, then the next 3 couples came from Sunday to Monday, and 3 more couples for the last 3 days. It was kind of nice to have the people cycle through, it was like a new vacation with each new group of people. We assigned each couple a meal. Charlie was in heaven with all the good home-cooked food. I guess that I have been too busy to feed him lately.

Lake Travis With Jason Moore's Family

Over Memorial weekend we took our new boat out for its first trip. We went to Lake Travis in Austin. We rented a little cottage and invited Jason, DeAnn and family to go with us. We had a great time. The water was really choppy so we didn’t get to test out skiing, but really enjoyed the smooth ride. I did manage to break a metal piece off the sunbrella, so we had no shade. Thanks to Papa Mecham, Trevor was constantly asking us if he could drive the boat. So finally I made a pact with him, if he wouldn’t ask to drive while the boat was full of people, then when we were waiting to load the boat onto the trailer, he could drive it around. He was happy with that deal and after that he was very enjoyable to be with. One of the funny stories that go with this trip is the actual driving to Austin. After we get everything packed up and are finally on the road, I ask Charlie if he knows where he is going. He said he did, and I believed him (big mistake!) because we had been to that part of the Lake before. Well we are getting closer to Austin and Charlie sees a sign for an interstate, and says to himself am “I supposed to take 183?” Now you know, interstates in TX go every which way, not just north and south like they do in Utah. So we turn off and start going down this road and we are not noticing anything familiar. So there we are towing this monster boat and Jason following behind and we have no idea where we are supposed to go. So we are calling anyone who might be close to a computer to look up were we think we are and tell us how we get to where we need to be. Finally after a few awkward turnarounds, and back tracks we made it to our destination in 5 hrs instead of 3 ½!