Swim season and Run For Liberty

 

Swim meets are in full swing! The kids usually have sub sandwiches, gatorade, chips and fruit that I pack them to avoid paying an arm and a leg for stuff at the snack bar, but one crazy week I got them pizza and Jake was in heaven. I think a favorite part of the meet for the kids is digging into all of the food I pack for them.

 

Jake ready to dive in! Keep in mind that Jacob started this year not knowing how to swim. In fact, for the first three meets he still could not go more than half a length of the pool in freestyle. Backstroke looked like a drowning exercise. So for meets, they have helpers that are by the kids side as they swim. If Jake wasn't comfortable, he would give a grin to the girl waiting at the finish rope (6 yr olds only swim half length of pool) and motion to her to come forward. Jim was sure that Jake could swim a little better but enjoyed having the girl helping him out. And now, finally, Jake has learned to swim and earned his swim necklace so he can dive and swim all over the deep end.

 

Nicole getting ready to dive at the meet. I love how she totally knew where Jim was and gave him a big grin.

 

She is figuring out how to go faster in her stroke and works really hard not to peek at how the competition is doing :)

 

Michael starting his backstroke. He is a pretty powerful guy! He has won several times and you can tell he is giving it everything he has.

 

Jacob excited to be alive!

 

The crazy thing is Diana (of course right!). When Jim takes the kids swimming he takes D with him into the deep end and she kicks around a lot. This last time he let her go off the diving board first thing while he waited in the water. For over an hour at the pool all she did was wildly fling herself from the diving board and once in the water told Jim she wanted to go to the side by herself! She can prettymuch swim, it's crazy to see how fast she has picked up on swimming and we're guessing she'll do swim team next year.

 

We started summer school and so far it has gone pretty well. I'm amazed at how the kids can focus on work! We start off with an art warmup and the first day we had them draw the Scooby van in the middle of the table from the perspective of where they were sitting.

 

Diana had her fourth birthday! Her picture should be in the dictionary under JOY! Her energy and laughter are endless. Her ideas might not always be the best (understatement), but as she gets older she doesn't break/destroy/endanger nearly as often. I love her voice and the sound of her laugh. She is the most vibrant girl I know and I am blessed to be her mom. The world is a better, wilder, awesomer, crazier place for having Diana in it. And of course, she had to have a Scooby Doo cake.

 

Another art warmup- this time a self portrait while looking at our hall mirror I carried into the family room.

 

The whole swim team. The team is made up of residents from our neighborhood, so it is a great time to meet neighbors and makes for great playdates.

 

Nicole and her first win of the season!

 

I had an ob appointment and left Nicole in charge for two minutes until Jim got there. Our text exchange when he got home was a good peek into life with a Diana.

 

 

The kids decided to all wear their BYU gear the other day, it was cute to see them running upstairs to change and match their siblings.

 

 

Michael has begun playing electric guitar with Jim. For now it's mostly fooling around and learning little things here and there. He absolutely loves it. And by that I mean both Michael and Jim :)

 

 

Jim put on the 4th Run For Liberty this Saturday. We had some great sponsors and over a hundred more runners this year (over 300).

 

 

Jim and Nicole went to setup super early. I joined later around 6:30. The weather alternated clouds, sun, humidity you could swim in, and even some light rain.

 

I love the double rainbow we had to start the morning!

 

Nicole was in heaven setting up with the adults. The volunteers were so kind and Nicole had a wonderful time helping out.

 

The area soccer team gave us tickets to give the winners and also set up a stand giving out freebies. My kids kept going back hoping to earn a free shirt- Jake was lucky and got one and then that's all anyone else wanted :)

 

The kids with all of their swag.

 

A local fitness place did several warmups and it was fun to see everyone join in and be shouting out in response to the instructors.

 

Mike and Jake were just eating up the attention from the trainers and were eager to show their skills and try the obstacles out.

 

 

Jake showing his strength :)

 

The boy scouts did a little presentation that really set the tone to be patriotic. We also had a friend sing the national anthem.

 

Then the fun run was off! The one mile takes them far down the field and onto a gravel path surrounded by trees before they double back to the finish line. I was blown away when first back to the finish line, at 10 minutes even, comes Jacob! The other kids had blown off all their energy in the start or something, I don't know, but there was Jake, all sweaty. Then he just kept running past the finish line straight to the Railhawks booth hoping to earn more prizes haha. At this point, the guy was like "I think you look familiar". Of course the neon safety orange shirts I'd bought the kids to keep track of them did not help Jake's case. :)

 

Start of the 5k! Having 300 people run is a lot of people! We were able to raise over two thousand dollars this year for the Amputee Coalition of America.

 

 A friend watched Diana and Katy for me so that way I could be the photographer and not have to chase them around. It was such a blessing, because even with that help by the time I got home I had to sit down for hours to calm down the contractions.

 

Once the 5k began, Jake played soccer for a long time with the Railhawks guys.

 

Part of the awards ceremony this year was a Trader Joe's gift bag of goodies for whoever dressed the most patriotic. This year's selection was the best by far- I think it helped that the race was on the 4th of July weekend instead of a few weeks ahead like we've done before- and it was a close call between Captain America and Lady Liberty, but Lady Liberty won. The winner was decided by the cheering of the crowd, and I think everyone really enjoyed cheering for their favorite.

 

 

The fastest runner about to cross the finish line. 16:40 at a pace of 5:22. He finished before many people even reached the water stop!

 

We tried something new this year that didn't really work out but was fine. We invited a YouTube star "The Amputee OT" that several of Jim's patients follow- she posts a lot of positive and information stuff for amputees. We were hoping to draw more amputees from local support groups (or anywhere) but that didn't really happen so it was an expense that didn't pay off that way, but she gave a great inspirational message so that part was perfect!

 

The overall winners! I was so impressed with the fastest guy. After he finished he stayed near the finish and cheered people on with more kindness and enthusiasm than the people who'd just been standing by the sidelines waiting to cheer on someone they knew. I could tell it helped inspire runners as well as increase the cheering everyone else was doing.

 

We had two amputees run this year, it's always amazing to see the strength of character and perseverance in amputees that are active and living life. On a side note, I took pictures of each of the age groups of winners, and as I reviewed the pictures, I noticed that my safety orange kids were in almost every single picture either blatantly photobombing or just off to the side with their flags and fireman hats. Mike assured me they were just trying to be a patriotic background. Never know what will happen with kids :)

School done, summer's begun!

 

The Uromastyx are growing and more curious about the kids all the time. Perhaps their ears are becoming more adjusted to the joyful sounds of piano practice, one kid after another haha.

 

Jim took Nicole and Diana camping. They loved the adventure with Dad!

 

Diana loved the s'mores and tent. She kept changing outfits, and thought it was morning when she changed into her next day outfit. After taking a restroom trip in the middle of the night, Nicole said "Well I'm not tired anymore, what should we do?" Such a great time for Jim and the girls :)

 

Michael will be joining cub scouts in a few months, and they were kind enough to invite him to their day activity rock climbing. He was able to do every course he tried, most of them without the lines that give you automatic belay help.

 

For the Memorial Day holiday we made fairy/gnome/troll gardens. I loved watching the kids pick out flowers for their garden! We ended up getting too many flowers and now our backyard has a little extra color too.

 

Michael with his garden. He added a stone bridge and bench along with a campfire. The plants he chose were more earthy than flowery, perfect for his trolls :)

 

Jacob had a mix of the earthy with some color (no pink! :) And his gnome is reading a book, which was pretty cute.

 

Nicole's fairy garden is full of color and a glass pebble stream. Her fairy is on a unicorn and she has a little white picnic bench too.

 

Diana had a lot of help- she wanted to plant a million flowers so we really had to work to fit a lot in there! The kids have all since added more mini animals they have found. It will be fun to change the scenes and flowers out with the seasons.

 

Katy and me chillin on a cold day at the pool.

 

We had a few days of rain during swim team. It was kind of fun!

 

Jacob about to take his first dive- in the pouring rain! He is working so hard and can swim half of a pool length by himself. To get the swim necklace that allows him to play in the deep end by himself, he has to swim a full length. He has tried twice and not made it, and is still determined to get stronger.

 

Playing in the rain. Diana is a little fish. She does what she calls "slips" which is a handstand/sort of sideways flip. She makes friends with tons of kids and adults. Everyone at the pool knows her, she wants to be involved with everything going on. I love to watch her play in the pool, it is the perfect activity for her- constant motion! Katy likes to sit on the step for a while, then she braves out walking as deep as she can in the water while I follow right behind her. Between the two girls it's quite involved watching them!

 

Every now and then Diana will take a nap. She is storing up her energy so she can unleash the pure joy of her being at the pool!

 

The kids had their first swim meet last week. We had a job to do as well at the meet. Jim got caught at work and with a traffic detour from an accident, so we had quite the time poolside in the heat. The girls were dying to get in the water and they had pictures, volunteer training, etc so the meet hadn't even started so there was nothing to really watch. Jim was amazing and came straight in his dress clothes to relieve me at 7. Quite an adventure for the first meet!

 

 

Flare had most of her body shed this week and it looked so cool! Usually it's just smaller pieces, but this was awesome. I love seeing how amazing her colors look after a shed.

 

I planted several dozen sunflower seeds. The birds and "weed"-picking kids got all but two of them. But that's okay because I think between the two plants they are taking up all of the available space for sunflowers that we had. These plants are huge!

School got out on Thursday, and Friday Jim took the oldest three to the beach! They are waving goodbye. Jim took them to work for a little bit but they spend the afternoon at the beach.

Blissful way to celebrate the end of the school year! The kids made lists of everything they wanted to do at the beach, they were so excited!

Meanwhile, I was finishing up preparation for our summer. We had done a family night that week from a talk given by President Monson and talked about his encouragement to "gaze upward, look inward, reach outward, and press forward" and how this summer we would be having fun and growing too. Even Diana has a picture check off chart she can't wait to start.

I made a schedule of before and after baby since swim team ends right about when the baby comes. With the incentives for long-term and short-term good choices, I feel great about their excitement and our ability to do well this summer as a family even with a new baby.

All of the workbooks, part of summer school, ready to go!

 

Diana and Katy decided to have lunch at 10am with leftover pizza. We support Papa Johns and Chickfila a lot these days. Papa Johns gave me a 50% off coupon that lasts almost until the baby comes which really is awesome since that makes it same/cheaper than freezer pizza.

 

Jake had his last soccer game yesterday. It was blazing hot and with our small team he never subbed out. They coach had him as sweeper since he excels there, but with the sluggish way everyone was moving, it was like Jake couldn't help himself and started playing offense too. He was everywhere! The other team scored twice and they were all super sweaty. Jake was amazing and played like I've never seen him! He ended up scoring three times so his team won 3-2. I loved watching him sprint and work and dribble the ball. He was totally engaged in the game and it was awesome.

We celebrated by going to Chickfila and letting them trade their kids meal toys for ice cream cones. We even went inside and let them play in the play place which is the ultimate treat for them :) We talked with all the kid about working hard, win or lose, and how great it feels to try your best.

We had stake conference and went early so we could sit close enough to see Elder Ardern. Jim was able to have 6 hours of meetings during the week with him, and was so kind to treat me by watching the youngest three in the Primary room where it was broadcast while I was with Nicole and Michael able to really concentrate.

 

I took Nicole out of school to watch Diana and Katy so I could go to the "no kids allowed" Kindergarten luau and awards. I've always been allowed to bring my littles so it was frustrating, but Nicole did a great job and I was certainly able to enjoy Jacob so much more without keeping tornado Diana quiet.

 

Jacob's teacher was excellent this year and he has loved school all year!

 

Showing his orange lips from his cupcake.

 

Nothing says ready for first grade like leaving Kindergarten in a grass skirt!