Swimming in full swing
It is clear in our family when summer swim team is here...there is a permanent marking on each of the kids' hands with E H L....for those of you not familiar with swim team lingo, this stands for Event, Heat, Lane. They have their hands written on at the begninng of each meet to show them which events they are swimming. It is always a challenge to get one meets' markings washed off before the next meet a few days later!
What is so much fun is to see how much each of the kids has really matured and grown in the course of a year.
Now that Leah is swimming, Bay seems so big and grown up. He can swim all of the strokes now, but is really working hard toward winning his heat in freestyle. That's where the biggest competition is. He is at the bottom of his age-group, so he's competing against some pretty big 8 year olds!
Eric missed a couple of weeks due to his second foot surgery, but he is happily in the water and swimming now. There aren't too many boys his age on the team this year, so he is in high demand for relays!
And Leah has made great strides and is now going the entire length of the pool without stopping once. She is so excited to be swimming on the team. Her favorite part is wearing the team suit of course!
So proud to show her big brother what event is written on her hand.
The kids practice every weekday for 1 hour and have meets twice a week in the evenings, plus a few special Saturday meets as well. It is an action packed 6 weeks of chlorine, ribbons and pop-ice! 
What is amazing to me is that when we get home from swim practice, the kids are still begging to get in the pool at home! Of course, they have to compete for a little pool time at home with mom in the pool teaching swim lessons.
As you can see, this is what we have been doing, hence the blog silence. I'll try to update more often, but most likely it will have to wait!