What's new and a few firsts

First...

High school swim meet:

Day of THIRD GRADE:

Day of high school:

Day of high school, take two:

Both kids had a good first week of school this year. Nathan has the same third grade teacher Hannah had so it feels nice and familiar. He was a little disappointed during the summer that he was in this particular class, he had his hopes up for another teacher, but has since decided it's okay to be where he is. He already has an assignment to give an oral presentation so we're busy at work on that. We went through a huge redistricting this year, and our school is now 70% new kids. It's weird to only recognize one out of every 5 kids but Nathan now has some kids in his class he knew from young fives at Waylee.

Hannah has also enjoyed school this week. She has a good schedule and a few fun teachers. She has enjoyed meeting kids from the other middle school and has thrown herself into everything social. She is on the swim team and practice for that began early August. That gave her only an 11 day break between swim sessions, so it was a super short summer for all of us. I especially liked the fact though that she knew several girls prior to starting school. Her first day of school photo was taken at 5:30 a.m. on the way to morning practice. We had to do a re-do the next morning when they got to start school at the regular time. Her first meet was August 27th and they did great. She had an imressive start to the season, and 3 meets in now, has continued to do better each race. It will be an exciting season!

Mike is busy at work and I have started back to work at the cafeteria. I really like that I am able to be home when the kids are done with school so I can't see giving this up for a while yet. Mike is still travelling very minimally, it's great to have him here. He decided to step down as parent board president of the swim club. That was such a time consuming position and after having done it for several years, he felt it was time to move on. I am happy he decided to be done with it! I stepped down in February and it felt good to be able to not be responsible for it all. He and I literally ran the club for 2 years and it's exhausting. It will be nice to just help out. We are now completely "board" free in our volunteering capacity!

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.

Summer Solstice Meet

This weekend was the Summer Solstice USA meet. It never fails that at this meet, you either freeze or fry. We got quite the mixture this time around. Hannah was scheduled to swim on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday but because of the terrible weather on Friday (the freeze part), the meet was cancelled. We did however, get to go long enough to set up the club's tents, and pay $8.00 to sit in the rain for two hours. When we returned Saturday morning, we found that one of the tents had been blown across the pool and the metal bars were snapped in half. We later heard that the Kalamazoo area had three confirmed tornadoes Friday night. (Thankfully we were spared any damage at our house.) The rain and wind finally stopped and we had 88 degrees and 85% humidity (this would be the fry) today. The missed events were divided between Saturday and Sunday and that made for quite a tiring schedule. Hannah swam the 200m I.M., 200m fly, 200m free, 100m fly, 100m back, 100m free, 400m free, and 50m fly. She did great and swam so strong. The coach was impressed with everyone's swims and was happy that after swimming so many hard events (especially in an outdoor pool) they all looked so good. Here's a few pictures of the weekend.

Jon, Evan, and Hannah huddled under Hannah's blanket. The girl's always tease Jon that he has a man crush on Evan. I think this look says it all.

Hannah and Kelin. It's tradition that I take their picture together every year at this meet. Kelin will be a senior this year and goes to the rival high school of Hannah's. They are so excited to get to finally swim high school together even if it's for different teams. Kelin has been a great support to Hannah for a few years. When she moved up to practicing with the senior group, Kelin welcomed her with open arms and made her feel so comfortable. They are also the "fly girls" as Kelin's mom has dubbed them. It has been great to see such a strong friendship develop between these girls.

The 50 fly.

The breast stroke leg of the 200m I.M.

freestyle

Today...

this made me sooooo happy!

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

Nathan is taking treats to school tomorrow for his "un-birthday". When I saw these a while back,

I knew I wanted to make some. So I did. They don't look quite the same.

Oh well. Still cute nonetheless. And as Hannah pointed out, they're second graders, they won't care. Nathan thought they were great, that's all that matters.

This is what friends are for

One of my very dearest friends, Cindy, turned 50 this weekend. She and her family were out of town for a sporting event, so our friend Marti and I could not pass up the opportunity to leave a little something special waiting for her when she got home. I kept hoping they wouldn't pull into the driveway as we were setting everything up. I cut out a ton of 50's and Happy Birthday's and we strung them from tree branches, taped them to the door, stapled them to tree trunks, and hung some around the flamingos necks. It was all topped off with a nice big sign wishing her a happy birthday. Now I can't wait for them to get home. I'm thinking of staking out the joint for when they return so I can see her face. I'm sure my phone will be ringing the minute they pull in...

Dance

Hannah had her Farewell Dance on Saturday. The theme was 8th grade at the movies. At first we thought it might be kinda silly, but the decorations turned out sooo cute! They had a giant directors board with all the dance details at the front door, all lit up. The hallways were decked out with lights, disco balls, movie posters hanging from the ceiling and a red carpet lined with papparazzi cut-outs and a huge Oscar at the end. One of the coolest things were some giant movie reels with the film rolling down the hallway and pictures of the kids on the films. The cafeteria was similar with big red and white popcorn boxes filled with white and yellow balloons. Pretty snazzy for a middle school dance!

Hannah attended a party before the dance where parents gathered to take photos and the kids could eat. The dance was a couple hours long and they all complained that it went by too fast. They were having such a great time. A group of kids got together at Culver's afterwards to continue with the evening but were forced to say goodbye when the restaraunt closed their doors at 10. Hannah says the night was amazing and totally fun. She commented that there wasn't even any drama with anyone, something that surprised us both. We all know how teeneagers are ;) I stopped in at the dance for a short time to take a couple pictures, and as I was heading out, the principal commented on how this was a great group. Normally, he said, boys line one side of the room and the girls fill the other. But these guys were really dancing! I am so happy that Hannah was able to have a great time with her friends and make some wonderful memories. It was emotional for me, to see her getting ready. I choked up and cried for a bit when I put her necklace on. I know there will be many dances to come, but I will always remember how fun it was to spend this first time with her shopping, getting her nails done, doing her hair and helping her get ready.