Our Summer.....

Has consisted of pretty much one thing so far, swimming. Hannah ended the school year not wanting to dedicate her entire summer to it. She knew that high school swimming began in August and she really wanted to take a little break. So I waited to sign her up for the session until she made up her mind on how many days a week she wanted to practice. Before the end of the first week, she had decided to attend 7 of the 8 practices offered. It was a huge commitment, 15 1/2 hours of practice a week with meets on top of that. Nathan decided that he would swim the summer session as well and decided on two days a week and made a goal to move up to the blue group at the end of the season. Both of them did so well! It has been fun to watch the improvements made by their hard work. Hannah feels a bit more prepared for the high school season and Nathan met his goal of promoting to blue group! The smile on his face when he was given the blue bracelet by coach was priceless.

While there hasn't been much of a chance to do alot, we have taken the opportunity to turn work/swimming trips into mini get-aways. Mike had some work to do in Chicago a couple weeks ago, so we joined him for the weekend. While he worked, I took the kids shopping and then we met up for dinner at Dave and Busters. Whenever we get to Chicago, the kids LOVE to go there. The next morning, Mike had to finish up at the lab so we went swimming. Then it was off to the new LegoLand Discovery center then a late lunch at Giordano's, and finally into downtown before heading home. It was alot of fun, and Nathan cried when we left. We really love Chicago :)

Last weekend, Hannah had a USA meet in Holland. We got a hotel room and headed up for a fun weekend. A bunch of us planned to go to the beach after Saturday morning's session and it was great! The weather has been so nice this summer. Very few humid days and not many in high temps. After spending the day at the beach, we freshened up and headed to Crazyhorse Saloon for dinner. They have the best steaks anywhere and it's a fun little joint. They have a tradition of putting a dollar bill on the wall when you go. Some are decorated really cool and others are folded into awesome designs. We've seen pinwheels, dress shirts and other funky things. The kids put their names on the dollar in crayon this time. It was cute. The tradition started after a couple of regulars started putting a dollar on the wall by their table every time they ate there, hoping it would catch on. It did, and before long they had thousands of dollars collected. When 9/11 happened, they took down all the money and sent it to the widow/widowers fund. Since then, they have donated money to cancer research and given it to families in need. Pretty cool. We ended the evening at the hotel arcade playing a little ping pong. Sunday morning's session went well and all the kids finished with great results. It's been cool to see our little club grow and start to make a good showing at these big events. We met friends for lunch then headed home. It was a nice break in the middle of a chaotic week.