Swimming with Champions

Recently, Joseph aka the Greased Shark had the amazing opportunity to swim with two Olympic Gold Medalists in a swim clinic.

Peter Vanderkaay and Megan Jendrick were the two Olympians that came, spoke and answered questions at a local pool.

They also raced against the kids and now Joseph can boast that he has beat a Gold Medal swimmer.

Of course, he had a HUGE head start.

But, we are not mentioning that part...

ahem...

My baby has wild woman hair!

My sweet little Lily Pad, aka "LP", has a major head of curls.

Right after she gets out of the tub they are at their finest.

The next morning...not so much.

I'm hoping that they "tame out" as her hair gets longer...

Maybe we'll start calling her Goldie Locks...

Swim Team

Each summer my older kids participate on the local swim team. It's more of a recreational league and not as competitive as the one that Joseph swims on year round.

It's at the local pool, which is only a mile from our house, and my kids can either bike or walk and I don't have to take them.

It is waaaaaay more reasonably priced then the swim lessons that the pool offers and they get to swim Monday thru Friday for the entire summer so they see a lot more time in the water and a lot less time at home, driving me crazy.

They also offer a sliding scale in the pricing department which means that you pay full price for the first kiddo and then for each additional child that you sign up, you pay less then full price. Each one is less money up to three.

You sign up three kids and the fourth one is free. I just love this kind of bulk pricing stuff.

Well, last year, I had five kids on the swim team. When I went in to sign them up, I asked about how much the fifth kid would cost me to swim as they only stated the pricing for up to four kids.

Apparently, no one had ever asked that question before. which probably explains why the man-child in charge looked at me like a deer caught in the headlights.

Because, the teenage boy in charge didn't know what to do the young man was feeling nice, he didn't charge me for number five either.

Buy three, get two free.

Me likey.

Here are some pictures of various swim meets for your personal viewing enjoyment.

Michael doing the butterfly, his favorite stroke.
Liz, waiting for her turn on the relay.

Lily, our future swimmer.

Joshua, Michael, Timothy and Joseph waiting in the bullpen for their turn at the freestyle relay. This is the ONLY time that they have put my four older boys on the same relay team.

It was awesome to watch! Michael swam the first leg, Timothy the second, Joshua the third and Joseph went last. They were so far ahead that during the third leg of the relay they were handed blue ribbons.

I love summer!!!

Where has my summer gone?!

How the heck is my summer coming to a close already?!

I feel like I am just getting started!

Only 11 days till school starts people!

Corey is gearing up to leave again so I have been cooking like a mad woman! what does that mean anyway? When women are mad, they cook? I don't know about you but that makes absolutely no sense to me. When this woman is mad, she goes shoe shopping. Hmmm....on second thought, maybe I don't want you to know that. Because you will look at the number of shoes that I own and come to the conclusion that I am mad all the time.

I still have tons and tons to do before summer is over!

Help!

Mommy and Lizard Liz

I just love this girl!!!

The zucchini are taking over!

Zucchini vs. Becky

48 loaves of zucchini bread later...I think I won this round!

We have some wonderful neighbors with nice gardens. Mid summer, when produce is abundant, our friends look to us as an easy target to unload the excess on bring us lots of fresh veggie gifts.

I actually get a kick out of figuring out what to do with what we are given. It's a challenge to not let anything go to waste. I know that makes me sound mental I like it. For real.

We were given A LOT of zucchini, most of it too big for me to consider slicing, cooking and serving to my family. So, I grated it for bread. Which, apparently, makes it grow. Seriously.

But I was feeling stubborn determined to use the grated zucchini and not just put it in the freezer and forget about it freeze it.

So, I decided to make as much bread as it took to use up all the grated zucchini. what a crazy decision!

I did make one slight change in the recipes that I had been using. Because there is a whole lotta oil in those recipes!

Last year when mom and I were canning pears we had pears that were still good but slightly too ripe to can. So, I sent those pears through my strainer and froze the pearsauce.

This pearsauce I substituted for half of the oil in the bread and I made a couple of different kinds of bread.

Yummy!

But no more zucchini...please...

The tooth fairy has a thankless job

Matthew, at the tender age of 5 years 2 months has lost his first tooth.

To say that he was super excited is a gross understatement.

The tooth fairy is a frugal gal but leaves the kids $1 for each tooth left under their pillow.

She would leave less money but coins=choking hazard around these here parts.

Some years past when the three older kids were losing teeth I, um, I mean, the tooth fairy was making several visits a week.

$1...and they are happy to get that.

Mostly because they are relieved to discover that the tooth fairy didn't totally space her duties. because for awhile there it was the norm for the tooth fairy to mysteriously come in the middle day after it was pointed out that she forgot to come the night before...again.

When the kids got old enough and got the whole game figured out they would just come to me with their tooth and ask for $1. Not much fun in that ,but at least that saved the tooth fairy from having to remember another stop on her nightly tour.

What totally cracks me up and leaves me shaking my head is stories of kids being left tons of $, gift baskets or $50 games. For one tooth? Seriously?

I wonder what this world would be like if we all managed to scale things back...

I'm game.

Unless that means I have to give up my shoes.



Then, never mind.