Summer standards

swimming at the lake on Friday afternoon
The meet - Staging before event
getting ready- gotta make sure those goggles are on good and tight
take your mark --
GO - the 50 backstroke

There are a few things we can expect to do every summer regardless - swimming and going to the lake. This year Carter and Cami did swim lessons (although Carter refused to believe he was in lessons and preferred to call it "pre-swim team") with a group of their friends and Cade swam on the Summerlin Seals swim team. They have all done really well and have improved alot.

Cami is now able to swim all over the pool by herself, she has finally mastered picking her head up to breathe. It is so nice to be able to just sit and watch her swim and not have to constantly be rescuing her because she thinks she can swim but really can't.

Carter has learned all the strokes and how to dive. He especially enjoyed having a "really cool" male teacher this year and a class of all boys and doing races against each other.

Cade has improved tremendously since he started at the beginning of summer. His favorite events are the backstroke and freestyle. Today was his last swim meet for the season and he swam both those events.

It reminded me alot of when I was younger and Allison and I did swim team. I never realized how much work it was for my parents, especially my mom, to take us to practice everyday at the beautiful state of the art Garside pool or the lovely Dula pool and sit in the sun and watch us all summer long year after year! Then to spend every Saturday traveling around town (usually to the ghetto pools in NLV) for swim meets only to sit in the sun again all day long and cheer for us. I am thankful that they did it and always encouraged us.

Now that I am the parent doing all that I kind of wish I was still the kid swimming. There's nothing like the excitement of competition. I can remember the feel of winning a race and trying to better my times. There was always that one kid you swam against every race that you went head to head with and pushed you to go faster. I miss those days. Although I do not miss traveling by school bus everyday after school with crazy Ms. Luckens to Dula for high school practice. Our coach was this crazy teacher who didn't really know much about swimming, she had a daughter who was a competitive swimmer so I guess the school thought that was good enough. She used to get these "visions" in the middle of practice and have us do all kinds of weird things. My favorite was a drill we did with our swim caps pulled down over our eyes so we couldn't see where we were swimming. Not sure what the point of that was but it was pretty funny to watch. She referred to us as "her tweety birds." I also enjoyed the foreign exchange students who would join the team but really had no idea how to do more than doggie paddle. Although I hated going to practice every day at the time I enjoyed the meets. I usually swam the 200 free and the 500 free and occasionally the 100 free. Usually when I swam the 200 I would lose count of my laps and think I was done and come sprinting to the end only to see the person in the next lane do a flip turn and keep going. That was always bad. At least in the 500 they had counters that kept track for you. I made lots of good friends on the team and always looked forward the the next season and the adventures with Luckens.

I hope Cade continues to swim and enjoys it. This was a tough season for him, he was the youngest in his age group and swam against a lot of older and more experienced kids. He is used to being so good at everything he does in the world of sports without a lot of effort on his part so this was a challenge for him. But he stuck it out and did well.

We also went to the lake yesterday afternoon. I love going to the lake. The kids are getting old enough to be able to do things like skiing and wakeboarding and they enjoy going. Cade is getting better on the wakeboard and both Cade and Carter skied. Everyone rode the tube. Cami decided next time she wants to try skiing! She is such a little dare devil. She rode the tube with Allison and Bryan and kept saying "go faster." Her favorite part was being whipped around in the toilet bowl! We saw some coyotes behind our little beach. The highlights were breaking the shade cover and sucking a rock into the propeller. It wouldn't be a Torrance family beach trip without some sort of adventure! Other than that it was a great evening at the lake!