Sometimes...

Sometimes you line up the perfect shot for the butterfly (my favorite stroke to photograph), and then the coaches and stroke judges stand in your way, and you miss it. Then you get home and realize you have a back stroke photo that you love.  Sometimes a girl enters a meet anxious to PR in the freestyle and does not do so, but then she PRs in the back and butterfly.  Sometimes two kids who you drew into this whole swimming adventure can't swim on May 31st, but they both win their freestyle heats on July 5th.  

Sometimes an ordinary day with an ordinary meet makes you smile :)

God Bless America!

Happy birthday to the land that I love!  Yes, we have some family problems right now, but we have persevered through family problems before.  We need to work on unity because united we stand.  Hopefully, we can let God lead and learn to love and encourage each other.  We still have much to celebrate, so we did just that!

On Monday the 3rd, we enjoyed a terrific neighborhood celebration with a live band and a fireworks show.  We met up with friends and had such a nice night.  Julia and I did this for the first time last year.  Andy joined us this year, and I think we now have a new tradition.

On Tuesday John and Tessa graciously hosted a family celebration.  The kids did a little swimming and enjoyed sparklers and fireworks.   I was once again impressed by the big cousins.  As kids will do, they decided to get the pool water moving in a circle.  That was sometimes overwhelming for the little ones, so the big kids (really young adults actually) just scooped up the little kids and carried them.  Reagan just learned to swim, and the water was over her head.  When she lost confidence and struggled, they scooped her up without making her feel like she failed.  So precious!

I came at Kallie with the camera, and this is what she did.  What a ham!

When this guy arrived, the first thing he did was climb up on my lap.  We had this conversation.

Isaac: I am a chameleon

Me: Does that mean you are going to become the same color as me, and nobody will see you?

Isaac: Yes

Who knows where kids get this stuff?  Funnier still is that Isaac usually has little to do with me.

We probably should not have put sparklers in the hands of such little people, but I promise they were heavily supervised.  We always keep a cup of water for the sticks, and everyone watches the kids to take the hot sticks from them when they burn out to make sure they are properly disposed of.  The grass was wet, and if one of the kids got scared, they simply dropped the sparkler out in front of them, and an adult picked it up to dispose of it.

Parted in death and reunited in everlasting life

My parents married 48 years ago today.  I will always miss them, but I will never worry about them again.  I know their future is secure in Christ.  Is yours?

I remember my mom talking about marrying Dad.  They met just three months prior to saying their vows to each other.  After a fight they broke up, called everything off then reconciled and pieced it all back together in short order.  Mom also told me that she married for life, no turning back.  She learned later that Dad married with the idea in mind that they would just end it if it did not work.  I always found that interesting.  Dad came from a two parent home while Mom was raised by a single mom.  I always wondered if her exposure to the pain of divorce in extended family factored into her determination that she would wed for life and if Dad's lack of exposure to that pain left him unaware of the devastation and thus comfortable with a back out plan.

It occurred to me recently, as I talked with a widowed friend about how it's hard to find a good thing in the loss of a spouse, that my mom was raised by a widow. Mom's dad died when she was only two years old.  At the time of his death, Mom's family was living near her dad's side of the family in Mississippi. I am not sure how long they stayed, but I don't think it was long before my grandma packed her children up and moved to Indiana to be close to her side of the family.  That move changed the course of family history.  I think it unlikely that my parents would have met had my mom been raised in Mississippi.  It's still possible, I guess, since it was one of my mom's maternal aunts who introduced them, but Mom would have been a different person.  She would have had a different group of friends and may have already been committed to someone in Mississippi.

The twists and turns of life are sometimes fascinating.  I highly doubt my parents married expecting to raise six children.  While both of them loved being parents to such a big bunch, I have always been under the impression that my dad was the driving force behind choosing to have so many children.

My parents own moves changed family history as well.  While living in South Carolina, neighbors led them to Christ.  Even that played a part, I am sure, in the number of siblings I have and certainly in the faith of my family all the way down to my own children.

To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.  My parents spend this anniversary in Heaven, and I can only guess at what they might be doing.  They may not even be aware of the date.  They have a child and two grandchildren there, and I am guessing both of them have spent some time with them.  Reunions are so precious.

The fixit summer

Grr...
This promised to be a very nice summer when it started, most notably because it is longer than usual. Our district has pushed back the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year by a week, and this year left us without the usual pile of weather days to make up at the end of the year.

Thus far it has been crazy busy, and that busy has been complicated by a vehicle repair, a home air conditioner repair, and a lock repair.  Just yesterday, a locksmith rekeyed our entire house because we could not open our front door from the outside, even with a key, when it was locked.  This is normally something we would fix ourselves, but the combination of Andy's work schedule and the fact that our deadbolts had been challenging for 10 years, and we could not fix them ourselves was enough for me to hire a professional to just fix it all and do it right.

After the previously mentioned situations, I was hopeful that life would resume minus repairs.  However, the day after receiving our vehicle back, the check engine light came on.  I suspect I know what that is, and it is a $1500 repair.  It won't hurt the vehicle, so I will check on it but probably leave it.  You can imagine my frustration this morning when my day started with a not so warm shower.  Andy turned up the water heater, but I am hesitant to hold out any hope that this will fix the problem. Grr.

On a brighter fixit note, Julia received individual instruction this past week on her swim starts and turns.  After a not so great start to the season, she really rocked her meet last night taking 2nd in back stroke and fourth in butterfly.  She's reached a difficult stage of swimming.  Since Julia is only a summer swimmer, the year-round swimmers have a distinct edge on her.  I was so proud of her for doing so well last night against an impressive team.

Today it's back to professional development for me.  I have completed nine hours this summer, and today I will tackle three more - they might start today but have to be finished by the end of the month, so they may not get completed today.  PD is another thing I am ready to put behind me, but the reality is that it is peppered throughout the entire summer.

I've been thinking

As much as we miss Dad, I think this has been hardest that Savannah was away when he died and had not seen him in months.  He never got to ask her in person about campus life.  As Father's Day approaches, I have been amused by one thing that we missed with Dad.

During my college days, Dad constantly stayed on me for not taking more hours.  He took 18 hours a semester in college and could not understand why I did not.  I reminded him frequently that I also had to work - something he did not have to do while in school.  Dad racked up some insane number of college hours over his four years.  It was a bragging point that he used against me.

Now I think about the hard time Savannah could have given him over all of this.  She finished one year of college with 60 hours of credit.  Technically, she returns for her second year as a junior.  Granted, she had opportunities that Dad and I did not as she completed something like 27 college hours while still in high school with AP credits, dual credits, summer courses, and online courses, but they all count, right?

It's been on my mind lately that we would have had some fun with this at family gatherings.  Dad was so proud of his grandkids.  One of Tiffany's last conversations with him was about each of them and their gifts and talents.

Grandchildren are the crowning glory of the aged; parents are the pride of their children.
Proverbs 17: 6 NLT

Our sermon on Sunday was about grandparenting, and while it got Andy to thinking about his relationship with his grandparents, it got me to thinking about my children's relationships with their grandparents.  It made me think about the kind of grandparent I want to be.  As young as I feel, my mom was a grandma by the time she was my age.  I know that season will be here before I know it.  It was funny that Andy asked yesterday if it is time for us to start placing bets on who will make us grandparents first....um, let's start with which one will marry first. :)

When it rains it pours

A little recap of the week behind us:

On Monday night Julia kicked off her swim team season with her first meet.  Storm delays sent us packing to our vehicles to wait out the weather.  It is well-known that this is par for the course every year for our meet against this particular team.  In fact, we gave our head coach a hard time because in the pre-team cheers, he said, "we are here, and it's not raining."  Um, did he really say that?  Yes, he really did, and he admitted to jinxing us as we were ordered off the pool deck.

Andy's boss was in town, so that means his company owns him 24/7 - as if that is not usual.  He left for work that morning, and we had to add a hot spot to his cell phone in order for him to attend the meet so that he could be at work on his computer.  There were two problems with this.  1. Swim team takes a village to run.  Every parent has a required volunteer commitment.  For us that means we have to work half a meet three times over the season.  Andy's first turn was Monday night.  He was to time the second half.  Andy always signs up to time the meets and always second half because he can't get there in time for first half.  I am not as comfortable with the timing position - so official and fast paced, but what could I do?  I had to fill in for him.  Our coordinator said he would be trying to keep the meet running and that if it went too fast to raise our hands and he would slow down.  To time, you have two people on each lane - a parent from each team.  You have either dolphin timers that start themselves and you have to stop them or you have stopwatches that you start and stop yourself.  For this meet we had dolphin timers - until we didn't.  The system went down, and they had to bring us stopwatches.  We had a particularly slow swimmer in our lane one time, and they started the next race while I was still recording the times.  That stinks, but it is fixable.  We raise our hands and someone brings us spare timers that were started at the beginning of the race and replaces our timers.  We raised our hands, and nobody came.  Poor kid did not get a time for that race, and I was overly stressed about this timing gig because it was dark, and I was having a hard time working the stopwatch.  UGH.

Julia was scheduled for three events - 1 relay, 50 free and an IM.  Because of the delay, all relays and freestyle races for the older kids were cancelled,  so we were there to see literally one race.  I was timing during her event, so I could not watch her finish.  It was not her best effort.  She's rusty after a winter of not swimming and reaching a place were competing against USA swimmers gets harder and harder every year.  I wish we could afford to put her on a USA team for the winter, but it's just not an option.  I did not know until the end of the meet that Andy's computer battery had died, so he could not stay to see her event.  He left and though she had intended to leave with him to clean her room for houseguests who were coming the next day (more on that later), she was stuck with me for the remainder of the meet.

It was close to 11p.m. before Julia and I made our way to the van to head home.  I started her (the van) up and started to leave my parking space when I realized something was wrong.  I had no steering.  What?! I backed her up and tried again hoping that I was just tired and delirious, but no - I could not steer the van.  I called Andy. He told me to call AAA, but since he was less than 10 minutes away,  I waited for him to verify that I was not crazy and had not overlooked something simple like being out of gear.  He came, and he saw for himself that something was not right.  I called AAA.  He took Julia home.  This is where I love my husband so much.  After a long work day, he returned to wait with me.  It was well after midnight when the tow truck arrived.


The tow truck driver also looked for a simple fix.  He found that the serpentine belt had slipped off.  I know that's a pricey repair, and I also suspected there was a reason for that that might be pricier still, but I hoped that it was as simple as replacing that belt.  Our mechanic called us the next day with the bad news.  A bolt had broken loose and flown into the engine.  His shop does not have the lift to get the van up to get to that, but his brother has a shop that does - across the state line.  So, another tow with a $120 price tag and a minimum repair price added of $500 which could go up to $1500 if they have to drop the engine became our reality.  We had our diagnosis, and the mechanic can not get to the van until the end of next week- almost two weeks after our incident.  That's when panic set in.

I could not help but be amused by this lettering on the tow truck.  I jokingly said that we are just doing our part to make towing great again.  However, not needing a tow - that would be great.  Driving a 10 year old vehicle with 196,000 miles on it does get scary at times.

Our calendar for the past week and next week makes me hyperventilate.  There is no more room to write another thing on it.  Last week my best friend from high school had surgery.  She's a widow with two small kids.  I was keeping her kids for two days and adding their practices, equipment pick ups etc. to the schedule.  Andy's boss was in town meaning he was working in a different location part of the time and had to be available for team dinners, and suddenly we had one vehicle between us.  I got up and dropped him off at work, and he bummed rides daily.  This is one of those situations where we miss Dad- of course, we miss him lots for lots of reasons.  He always had a vehicle to spare for his kids when theirs were being serviced.  He bought extra vehicles in part for that reason.  As part of settling his estate, we have already parted with his vehicles.


My friend is not out of the woods, her recovery is ongoing, and her kids are needy.  She's a widow, and they came to us very scared about her surgery and in need of entertainment and attention, totally normal for their ages.  I want to help more, but as Murphy's Law would have it, we hit another low...

Yesterday my husband informed me that our home air conditioner was not working.  Yesterday was Saturday, and after a week of 60 degree swim practices, it was hitting 90 degrees yesterday.  I don't know if I have mentioned this, but I am on a different pay rotation for this year which lowered my checks by $160 per month.  In addition, the first tuition bill came out for next school year, and tuition increased by $160 a month, so I am down $320 a month for a few more months until the rotation of my checks returns to normal.  My constant prayer this year has been that we would thrive rather than survive this year.  There is no money in the bank for a pricey van repair followed by an A/C repair.  I started thinking - okay, that's an old unit, and if we are told it needs to be replaced, we will have to buy fans and space heaters because replacing it is not happening.  It does seem, however, that a part needs to be replaced rather than the whole unit.  We will see today as Andy is calling someone a friend recommended.  Said friend has already given the AC guy a heads up.  Said friend is the same one who had surgery last week, and that's just like her -- taking care of someone else during her own time of need.  She's pretty special and very dear to us, so you can imagine why we want to help her and take care of those kids whom we also love.  They both have hearts as big as their mama's.

So those were the lows.  We are still down a vehicle, and I have lots of professional development this week.  In addition, Wyatt and Julia have overlapping camps, so it's crazy - another week where the calendar makes me want to hyperventilate.

However, there were some highs.
Kim's kids joined the swim team this year, so when I took them to practice on those cold mornings, those little water bugs stayed to swim after practice. They are non-swimmers.  I advise every parent I know to put their children on a swim team as I find it to be the very best way to help kids become strong swimmers, and it's such a great way for life-long exercise and enjoyment.  I shared with them that Wyatt wanted to go off the diving board, and Andy told him he had to swim across the shallow end of the pool without touching before he could do that.  Every time I took Wyatt to the pool, he practiced swimming across the shallow end until he could do it.  They started doing this and both of them could do it before the end of the week.  It was sloppy for sure, but it's a solid start. They just have to get down the lane alone to swim in a meet, so while they did not make the cut for tomorrow, I am hoping for next week.  Woohoo!!

On Tuesday Julia had her first dive meet of the season, and she took first place.  Her dives were solid but not spectacular, and some of the better divers had a rough night, but she's in the mix and capable of doing this well going forward.  Bonus - we did not get out to the parking lot and find we needed a tow ;)

On Friday I dropped Julia off with her friends for a few days of church camp. It's our last one as they stop with the incoming 8th graders, and she is the baby of our family.  We have so many great memories and friendships from camp, so I am sure she's having an amazing time.

P.S. We have air again.  $300 for a new fan motor, but it's working.  Now the house is cold in my opinion.  I was comfortable with 77 degrees - Andy- not so much.  However, I know that it would have gotten well above 77 if we did without.

The van repair was also much cheaper than expected at $440.

Three teens

It's now official that Andy and I are parenting three teens.  Time flies.  We had a very low key day - no dessert and just one gift for our birthday girl.

We also took very few pictures.  Julia is nursing a nasty sunburn on her face.  It's peeling and messy, so she did not want that saved for posterity.

Julia is very anxious to get involved with social media. I hate that for middle school, but we will be monitoring her.  She knows why I don't like it, and she knows her limits.  These kids are growing up in a very different and often more painful world.  When I was a kid, if you didn't get invited to the party, you might have heard about it and had hurt feelings.  Now you don't just hear about it, you get to see all that you missed played out in pictures and videos.  After going through a tough school year where we lost two students to suicide, these things are on my mind.  

Julia, however, remains her same easy-going self.  She's developing a very strong friend group that I think will make this coming school year one of the best yet.  They exchange 200 texts (easily) per day in their group text, and it's mostly silly, fun stuff.  They've already had an outing together, and I am sure there are more to come.  

What does 13 look like on this girl?  She loves Starbucks (frappes and refreshers), clothes and shoes.  She is not into jewelry except the one necklace she wears everywhere.  Julia still loves cheer and swimming.  She's diving and swimming this summer and ready to head to her last year of church camp.  Julia still entertains us.  She's a blessing!  Happy Birthday, sweet girl!