A Day in Our Lives: July 2009

Monday, July 27, 2009

Sunday was the finals of the GKAISA city swim meet. As I mentioned in a previous post, Rachel qualified for the finals in 3 of her 4 events! Her first event of the day was the team medley relay. In the preliminaries on Saturday, they had qualified 13th with a personal best time. Rachel had been the anchor leg, which meant she swam the freestyle portion. After she swam her individual butterfly so well on Saturday, the coach decided to mix it up a little and let Rachel swim the butterfly leg of the relay. That proved to be a good decision as Rachel and her medley relay team finished 11th in the finals and took more time off their personal best! They were only 0.02 seconds away from being 10th! Way to go girls!!!

Rachel's second event was the 25 yard butterfly. She had qualified 12th in the prelims on Saturday with a time of 21.01. Yesterday she swam really well and finished 13th in the finals by swimming 21.12. She had a great race and we're so proud of her!

Rachel's third event was the freestyle relay. On Saturday they qualified 14th. Sunday they swam well, and ended up finishing 15th.

Rachel and her relay teams did such an incredible job this week-end and we're so proud of them! Rachel has been smiling ear to ear since Saturday! I think she really got into the swimming competition this week-end and is excited for next year. It's been a great experience for her to be on the swim team!

Here are some pictures from Sunday at the meet. This is Katelyn showing what being at the swim meet for 2 full days can do to a person!!!
Rachel, Averie, and Katelyn hanging out in the team tent and listening to music.

While we were hanging out and waiting for the next event, we were able to meet a former Tellico Village swim team member. Claire Donahue started swimming with Tellico Village when she was 6 years old. She went on to swim for Lenoir City High School, where she went to state and won in the butterfly! Now she swims at Western Kentucky and already holds several school records. This past year she was the only one on her team that made it to the NCAA championships! She was also invited to the Olympic trials for the last Olympics! Rachel thought it was neat that Claire's favorite and best stroke is the butterfly, since that has become Rachel's best! Here is a picture of the relay team with Claire. It was really sweet of her to take time to talk to them and have her picture made with them.

This is Rachel getting some advice and a pep talk from Coach Rob before her butterfly final.

Here is the scoreboard results after the butterfly. You can see that she finished 5th in her finals, which means she finished 13th overall. Not too bad at all for a first timer!!!

Saturday, July 25, 2009

2009 GKAISA City Swim Meet - Day 1

Today was the HUGE swim meet of the year! It is the largest swim meet in the Southeast, and the 3rd largest swim meet in the US!!! It was held at UT's Aquatic Center which is awesome!!! The big kids (11 & over) swam on Friday, and the little kids (10 & under) swam today. The top 16 from each event come back tomorrow to swim in the finals. The top 8 are swimming for 1st - 8th places, and the next 8 are swimming for 9th-16th places. There was over 2200 swimmers there yesterday and today representing swim teams from all across East TN. Rachel swam in four events: (1) 100 yard individual medley, (2) 100 yard team medley relay, (3) 25 yard butterfly, and (4) 100 yard freestyle relay. Rachel did AWESOME!!!! She improved her time in all four events!!! In the 100 yard IM she did so well, especially considering this is her first year ever on a swim team and here she's doing the hardest event! We originally thought she had finished 18th, which would mean she was an alternate for the finals tomorrow. But evidently something changed with someone else's time or something, and she got bumped down to 19th. Oh well! But she did great!!!

In the medley relay, Rachel's team finished 13th! So they get to come back and swim in the finals tomorrow!!! Rachel swam the anchor leg of the relay (the freestyle leg).

In the butterfly, Rachel flew through the water! She won her heat, so she got a heat winner ribbon. She also ended up 12th overall, so she gets to swim in the finals tomorrow!!!!

In the freestyle relay, Rachel's team finished 14th! So they get to swim in the finals tomorrow! Rachel swam the anchor leg of the freestyle relay too!

So not too bad for Rachel's first year on a swim team! And she's only 7, which means she gets to compete in the 8 & under division again next year!!! Watch out!!!!!

This is a picture of the relay girls with the team trophy they won at the Smoky Mountain Invitational a couple of weeks ago. (Amy, Logan, Rachel, and Madison)

This is a picture of the kids this morning with the team banner. Rachel is in the middle with a red swim cap on.

This is Rachel starting the 100 yard IM. This is the butterfly leg of the race.

This is the second leg of the IM - the backstroke.

This is the third leg of the IM - the breast stroke.

This is the 4th leg of the IM - the freestyle.

How cool is this? This is the results of Rachel's butterfly heat. Check it out - she finished first with a great time of 21.01! I like how the picture turned out with Tennessee above the results - makes it looks like Rachel is swimming for UT!!!

I have some videos from today too, but I'll have to save those to post another day. Wish us luck for the finals tomorrow!!!

Monday, July 20, 2009

Mamaw's Birthday Party

Yesterday we celebrated Mamaw's birthday. Her actual birthday is tomorrow, but we went ahead and celebrated it yesterday. When I asked her what she'd like for dessert, she said that she'd like lemon pie rather than cake. So she had birthday pie instead of birthday cake. The girls helped Mamaw blow out her pretend candles on her birthday pie! It was quite funny!

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Video of Katelyn Riding her Bike

Bike Riding

The weather has been so mild recently! Thursday after I had played tennis I took the girls over to the high school parking lot to ride their bikes. Our subdivision is pretty hilly and not a very good place for them to ride bikes, so we try to take them somewhere that's more flat. They had a blast and would've stayed out there much longer if I had let them! But, my tummy was telling me it was lunch time, so we packed the bikes up and headed to lunch.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Tuesday Fun

We had a fun day today! We started out the day getting some stuff done around here, and then we headed to the library for story time. We met our friends Kylee & Jacee there. After story time, Kylee, Jacee, and Mrs. Christy came back to our house for an afternoon of fun! We had a picnic on the patio and then the girls played on the slip & slide! Robert even got in on the fun for a few minutes! The girls played for a while on the slip & slide, and then they decided to dry off by playing on the playground. Too soon it was time for Kylee & Jacee to head home and rest since they have VBS at their church in the evenings. After a rest time of reading books, it was time for us to eat a little supper. I dropped Katelyn off at Kylee's house so that she could go to VBS with her, and I took Rachel to swim practice. After swim practice Rachel & I headed home and waited for Katelyn to get home from VBS. It was a full day of fun!!!

Katelyn on the slip & slide
Jacee decided she could go down on her belly too!