My Little Track Star

Katelyn just finished a 4 week track program. This was her third year doing it and she absolutely loved it!!! Last night was her last night and I took my camera to get some pictures of her.


Getting ready to jump rope


Water break!

My smiling little track star

It's hot!

Doing the obstacle course

This is so much fun!!!

Getting ready to jump a "hurdle"

Turning around to see who she left in her dust!!!

Check out Katelyn's calf muscle in the picture below on her left leg - pretty impressive for a 32 pound lightweight!!!

Pretty good form on the "hurdles!"

Playing tag with Coach Kelly

Doing some drills

Katelyn's Track Videos

Rachel's 100m Individual Medley

Rachel's 25m Freestyle

Another Swim Meet

Rachel had another swim meet on Tuesday night against two other swim teams. She did so great in her 4 events! She swam the 100m individual medley, the 25m freestyle, the 100m medley relay, and the 100m freestyle relay. In the 100m IM it was just Rachel and her teammate, Amy, competing. Evidently, there aren't a lot of 8 & under girls that swim the 100m IM in our league. Anyway, at our first practice meet a couple of weeks ago, Amy beat Rachel in the 100m IM by almost an entire length of the pool. Tuesday night, Rachel started out strong in the butterfly and backstroke and had a couple body lengths lead over Amy. Then it was time for the breast stroke leg, which is Rachel's worst stroke. Amy caught up and went ahead right before the turn. In the last leg, the freestyle leg, Rachel & Amy were swimming pretty much the same speed and Amy kept the lead she took over during the breast stroke and ended up beating Rachel by about 3 seconds. While we were a little disappointed, we were also really pleased because Rachel has gone from getting beat by almost the entire length of the pool, to just being beat by 3 seconds! That shows how much she has improved in just a couple of weeks!!!

In the 25m freestyle Rachel came in 3rd place. Another girl beat her out of 2nd place by just a fraction of a second.

In the 100m medley relay, Rachel's team was disqualified on the breast stroke leg of the relay. But Rachel did well on her freestyle leg (the anchor leg). The sad thing is they were the only 8 & under girls medley relay team, so if they hadn't been DQ'd, they would've won 1st place!

In the 100m freestyle relay, Rachel's team won 1st place! Of course, they were the only 8 & under girls team in the freestyle relay!

Rachel is improving so much! And the good thing is she still gets to compete in the 8 & under division again next year!!! Her butterfly has dramatically improved over the past 2 weeks. If she can just work on her breast stroke now! We think she was actually tired in Tuesday's meet. They did a pretty long warm-up, and then she leads off the meet with the 100m IM. Then she has to turn around and do the 25m freestyle. You could tell she was tired in the 25m freestyle. I think we'll ask her coach if she can do a lighter warm-up since she swims the first event and it's a long event!

We're so proud of how well Rachel is doing in her swimming!!!


Here's a picture of Rachel in between events.

Katelyn hanging out at the swim meet.

Swimming the freestyle.

Rachel and her friend, Jesse

Getting ready to dive in

Father's Day 2009

On Sunday we celebrated Father's Day. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera out when the girls gave Robert the presents they had for him. We had nursery Sunday morning, so we were kind of in a hurry to get to church early. As usual, Katelyn made Robert a ton of gifts! She did, however, also decide to just grab some random things around the house to also throw into his gift bag since she was getting pressed for time!!!

After church we went to Mamaw & Papaw's house to grill out and swim. Katelyn had made Papaw a gift at church. It was a rock that had a bird on it and they had put a magnet on the bird and glued a metal piece to the rock so that the bird would stay on the rock. She was quite proud of it!


We got Papaw two different hats to wear to help protect his head from the sun. One hat is for golf and the other is for just working out in the yard. The girls thought it was funny when he put both hats on!!


We will see Papa in a few days to give him his belated Father's Day gift.

All four of us have been blessed with wonderful fathers!!!

Rachel Swimming the Butterfly

Rachel Diving and Swimming

Katelyn Diving and Swimming

Rachel's Second Swim Meet

Rachel was all excited about her second real swim meet! Puddin & Papa drove in from Cookeville to watch her, and Mamaw & Papaw were coming to watch her too! HOWEVER, when we got to the pool we were told that the other team had called and forfeited. What a bummer! Rumor has it that our opponents are known for being difficult to deal with - evidently they think everyone should come to their pool and that they should never have to travel! Anyway, our coach decided to make it fun for our kids so we had a mock meet. Everyone could swim in whatever event they wanted to! Rachel swam in all SEVEN events!!! Those 7 are (1) the 100m individual medley, (2) the 25m freestyle, (3) the 25m backstroke, (4) the 25m butterfly, (5) the 25m breast stroke, (6) the 100m freestyle relay, and (7) the 100m medley relay. She had so much fun!!! We still used timers so that the kids who wanted to know could keep up with their times. Robert recorded all of Rachel's times on his blackberry so that we could see how she did compared to last Thursday's meet. Let's just say that Rachel put on quite a show for Puddin & Papa!!! She swam so well!!! She improved all of her times from the previous week by quite a bit. For example, she swam the 25 freestyle 3.5 seconds faster than last week and the 100m IM 13 seconds faster!!! That's quite a bit! She had so much fun and did so well!!! She has another meet on Tuesday!

Correction

In my previous post I gave the results of Rachel's first official swim meet. In that post, I said that Rachel had won 1st place in the 25m freestyle. I said that because that's what her ribbon said! However, we have figured out that they actually gave 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place ribbons to each heat! So Rachel won her heat - there were 3 heats. Sorry for the misinformation!!!

Swim Meet Results

The results are in! Rachel got her ribbons this morning at swim team practice for the swim meet they had last Thursday night. Here is how she placed:

girls 8 & under 100m individual medley: she was the only competitor so she came in first, but she did get DQ'd on the breast stroke leg of the medley. We saw the judges hand go up to indicate a disqualification with just a couple yards left to go. But they did go ahead and give her a 1st place ribbon.

girls 8 & under 25m freestyle: she won first place!!!

girls 8 & under 25m butterfly: she won second place!!!

girls 8 & under 100m medley relay: she & her team won first place - but they were the only team in the relay!!

So not too bad for her first swim meet - 4 events and 4 ribbons: 2 first place finishes, 1 second place finish, and 1 first place finish that was disqualified

She is doing so well!!! She has another meet on Thursday night.

Friday Night at the Pool

Friday night we went over to Mamaw & Papaw's house to eat pizza, swim, and catch lightning bugs. One of my childhood friends (Melanie) who grew up across the street was home with her family because her grandfather had passed away. We called over there and asked if any of them wanted to come swimming. Bob & Melanie and their 3 kids, Anna Grace, Clay, and Kenlee Hope, came over and swam for a while. Robert helped Anna Grace and Clay with their diving and even had Kenlee Hope jumping off the diving board and swimming to the ladder with very little help! I think they had fun! Here are some pictures from our evening.

Slip & Slide Fun With Friends

This evening the girls had some fun with their new Slip & Slide and water guns. Robert set the slip & slide up along with extra plastic and the girls went crazy! They had so much fun! He had also bought some new water guns so we all got in a water fight! Then we called our neighbors and Mike, Tate, and Carter came over for some fun. Rachel and Katelyn were so funny - they would laugh at anything Tate and Carter did - it didn't matter what it was! Enjoy the slideshow!

Playing in the Rain

This evening we had a little rain shower, so we decided to let the girls play in the rain before having to take a bath. They had a blast! Here are some pictures from their fun.

Swim Meet

Rachel had her first real swim meet this past Thursday. She swam in 4 events: (1) the 100m individual medley, (2) the 25m freestyle, (3) the 25m butterfly, and (4) the 100m medley relay. The team we competed against was a small team, and actually didn't have anyone competing in the girls 8 and under division, so Rachel was just competing against her teammates. In the 100m individual medley, she was actually the only one! When she saw that she said "Well, I guess I'll win 1st place unless I get disqualified!" There are several judges who walk around the pool and watch the competitors to make sure they are doing the strokes correctly. One little mistake and you get disqualified. We won't know the results until Monday's practice, but Robert & I think Rachel got disqualified in the 100m individual medley. We're not sure why, because we didn't see her do anything wrong, but we saw one of the judges raise her hand, which usually means a DQ. Regardless, Rachel did awesome!!! She did very well swimming all 4 strokes and did them well. And if you haven't tried to swim 100m, it's not as easy as it looks!!!

In the 25m freestyle, there were 3 heats but we think Rachel may have come in 2nd. In the 25m butterfly, we think she got 2nd or 3rd. In the 100m medley relay, it was just Rachel's team competing, so unless they got DQ'd I guess they won 1st place! It was funny because they combined several events when there were just one or two swimmers. So when Rachel and her team of 8 and under girls were swimming their medley relay, there were also 2 teams of 9 and 10 year old boys swimming their medley relay. Rachel swam the freestyle leg of the relay, which is the last leg. She and one of the boys were neck-in-neck coming to the end. Rachel says that she beat him, but we're not sure! It's not like she was really competing against the boys, but I guess it's a pride thing! Guess she gets that competitive gene from me and Robert both!!!

I guess we'll find out for sure the results of the meet at Monday's practice, but Rachel did GREAT for her first official swim meet! Since she's 7 swimming in the 8 and under division, she is competing against lots of 8 year olds. She has really done well and loves it!

Rachel waiting to be called for the 100m individual medley

Rachel getting ready for the 25m freestyle (she's the 3rd one from the left looking down at her arm)

Rachel swimming the freestyle

VBS 2009 - Boomerang Express

This past week we had VBS at our church. It was called Boomerang Express, which was an Australian theme. We had a good week and the girls had a blast! Katelyn's best bud, Kylee, was able to come too!

Here is Rachel modeling her VBS shirt

Katelyn modeling her shirt

VBS sisters

Katelyn & Kylee (with some boy) in crafts
Katelyn & Kylee showing off their koalas

Katelyn & Kylee decorating their boomerangs while modeling their Aborigine headbands

Katelyn & Kylee with their Aborigine masks

Rachel was in the big kid crafts, so I wasn't able to get pictures of her because I was busy in the preschool crafts. Sorry Rachel!

Our children's pastor, Pastor Chris, challenged the kids to raise money to help some missionaries in India. He said he'd have his hair shaved into a mohawk if they raised $3,000. Well, with today's economy, the kids came up a little short, but Pastor Chris was a good sport and went ahead with the mohawk! Here are the pictures to prove it!