For my brother, Tyler . . . with love

I am going to return to routine blogging.  My brother has just left for 2 years.  He will be a missionary in the Czech-Slovakia mission.  I just know I will suck at letter writing.  My days fly by one after the other and it's all I can do to concentrate on the next few hours so that no child is left behind or forgotten at pick up.  And yet, things do happen.  We do "stuff."  I am sure of it . . .  it's just that once the moment passes, I will likely not remember any of the good parts worth sharing.

Today was another swim meet.  All five kids should have been there.  Catherine missed it though.  She has been quite ill.  She has been running a fever for 6 days and coughing.  She is sick of being sick and she is tired of being tired.  So it was just the other four there swimming away.

Owen had his first meet EVER last week and loved his ribbon in freestyle so much that he worked extra hard on his backstroke so that I could enter him in both.  That would mean 2 ribbons.  When we got to the meet a member of the 6 and under relay was not there, so Owen got moved into a relay (that means THREE ribbons).  He was so excited.  He jumped in and proceeded to only kick.  No arms at all were used in his relay leg.  Who knows what he was thinking, but everytime he came up for a breath he was smiling!

Then he did freestyle.  This time his arms did their job and he kicked well and made quite good time.  That is until he got to the finish.  He treaded water right by the edge talking to Julianne without touching the wall for a good solid 15 seconds.  Everyone was yelling "TOUCH THE WALL".  He just smiled.

Backstroke was his best event.  He looked great and did great.  Officially he'll be disqualified for rolling past vertical to see how far he was from the wall, but, really, what 4 year old has counted their strokes to the finish???

He came back after each race and sat in his chair, pulled his iphone out of its ziplock bag and sucked on his ring pop.  He is so often MUCH, MUCH older than 4.

The rest of the kids swam great.  I love swimming because you can track your own individual progress so well.  While the changes day by day are subtle, over time the change is significant. Julianne's 50 freestyle in 2013 was 35.72.  Today it was 29.91.  Madelyn's 25 free was 26.00 in 2013.  Today she was 18.03.  Adam's 25 free was 40.68 in 2013 and today it was 25.89.  Catherine's 50 free was 46.97.  Last week it was 34.11.  And Owen???  well his first recorded 25 free was 1:06:23.