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.