Total Package

Today is Donald's 12th birthday!  I can't believe that he is growing so fast.  He has changed so much in the last year and is growing out of the childhood phase.  He makes me laugh so much and I am so grateful that one of my best friends is also my son.

His sense of humor cracks me up!  The other day we were on the pool deck and he was getting ready to get in the water for practice.   He pulled his sweatshirt off and I said "Hey, look at those washboard abs!" (It's kind of an inside joke because everyone keeps commenting on how he is getting a swimmer's body and he always responds by lifting his shirt and saying "washboard abs!").  After I said it, he responded sarcastically, "I know, I have a nice body."  So I said, "And you are so humble too."
Then he concluded with a smile, "I am the total package!"  So now our family and his coach have decided his nickname is Total Package (TP).  I think we might get t-shirts made.  We are going to chant it at swim meets.  I just think it would be the coolest thing if in 5 years we were all at the Olympics cheering on TP with our TP shirts and TP groupies.  :)  See what happens when you try to boost a kid's self esteem, sometimes it snowballs out of control, but, I am loving every minute.

 Our swim team tradition for birthdays is called the gauntlet.  Everyone else lines up along the lane lines while the birthday boy swims down the center and they splash him with their kickboards.  It's fun to get all the attention sometimes and the three dozen donuts that I brought to practice made it even better.

Happy Birthday TP!  Love you!

On Your Marks....

 We had such a fun weekend, that I am sure left Eli completely exhausted (actually this was evident in him sleeping during the entire car ride home this afternoon).  It all started on Friday morning when I was invited to an award assembly for Eli.  They don't tell you what they are getting the award for ahead of time so you never know if it is for academics or demonstrating one of the life skills. 

Eli got his for Academic Achievement in Math.  It is so funny how one of our kids is so math oriented and the other is so reading oriented.

A couple hours later we picked the boys up from school and drove down to Palm Springs for a swim meet.  This was the first one that Eli got to swim in and he was so nervous.

  Friday night was mostly for the older kids and had some of the longer distances, which Donald is still conditioning for.  Donald did his favorite event the 100 breaststroke and finally broke over into a red time.  He is only a couple seconds away from the blue time actually.  He cut about 9 seconds off his last time, so he is still improving a lot.

 Here he is warming up with Andrew on Friday Night.

 This was their warm ups early Saturday morning.  This hardly represents the chaos that is an invitational swim meet.  There were tons of teams, some even came down from Utah and Arizona.  Kind of overwhelming for a seven year old who has never done this before.  Donald's first meet was this past summer and it was a dual meet (only two teams), so he was initiated a little easier, but he still gets nervous.

This was Eli listening to his coach trying to "Talk him down".

I have to say that although it wasn't Donald that was doing this, it is still one of my favorite pictures.  This is Dylan (one of the boys on Donald's relay team) helping Eli get ready for his backstroke race.  He was so sweet to help him.

The first event for my kids that day was Donald's 200IM.  He cut about 6 seconds from his time.

Then Eli swam the 25 backstroke.  I was so nervous at this point that I was nearly crying.  Eli's heart was almost beating out of his chest, but he had a great start.  He slowed down about half way through the race, but he finished it and did not get DQ'd so he was pretty proud of himself.

I have to say though that he got first place in cutness, but I could be a little bias in that.

After that Donald did his 50 backstroke, which is one of his least favorite events, but he still cut 4 seconds, so he is gradually getting better.

Then Donald did his 50 breaststroke and missed the red time by 0:00:47ths of a second.  Although, there were three timers and they went by the slowest time, which I don't think is very nice.  However, he did win his heat, so that made him feel good. 

Then Eli had his 25 breast stroke which he is still getting the kinks out of his kick and they are super sensitive about the form, so he got DQ'd on that one.  Really he mostly has been practicing freestyle, but that event was on Sunday and we aren't having the kids swim on Sundays, so he had to enter into the breaststroke instead.  He did do it faster than the backstroke though so he is a lot like Donald in that.

Donald's next event was the 100 freestyle and he cut 18 seconds!

After that he was in a 4 x 50 freestyle relay and his team took third or fourth (I didn't check all the times) out of 24 teams.

Here is his team getting ready.  I just love all their expressions!  Cisco, who is the one bending down, was a little upset that one of our girls hit him in the face with her googles.  The rest of them were trying to convince him to use his anger to fuel the race.  I think at the end of it all the boys didn't care what place they got, but were mostly happy that they beat the girls team time by quite a bit.  Oh, the 12 year old drama!  Just a little taste of the upcoming teen years. 

I totally love this sport my kids have latched onto and our fun team.  Don was asked a couple weeks ago to be on the board as Meet Manager and they asked me to help out with the Christmas party.  Good Times!

The Middle of Nowhere

We have some friends who live down the street that have a trailer and quads and they like to go riding and camping all the time.  They talked me in to going camping in the middle of nowhere in the middle of November...(very cold!)  At least we didn't have to sleep in a tent.

 Donald on a quad

 Eli and Don on his dirt bike

Me on a quad...freezing!

It really wasn't my cup of tea.  I had fun with the people, but riding just isn't something that I get excited about.  Don loves it though, so at least I tried doing something that he likes :). 

My empty wall

So this is my entry hall as you come in the front door.  Yes, I know my house is very neutral, it is still a work in progress.  I actually really like the colors, you can't really see the wall color in this picture, but it is a very clean, warm color.  The problem I was having though was the wall to the left.  It is very empty.

 There are a couple different places in my house that have groups of picture frames on the wall.  In fact the wall next to our bedroom is covered in lake pictures.  The wall in this picture is way to big for something like that, plus I wanted it to look a little more formal since it is the first thing people see when they come in.  So I decided to keep it simple and just add some vinyl to it.  I knew the pattern I wanted, but didn't know what it should say until Don suggested I look in the hymn book for some ideas.  Here are the results.....

 I know it is really small, but I wanted to get the whole wall in the picture.

 I love the font and the size.  The song I chose was 'More Holiness Give Me'.

I tried to make it look like the wind was blowing it or it was flying around like a little bee.  The wall doesn't look so empty now, but if I want to add something there later there is still room.  I wish the pictures really captured what it looks like in real life, it actually turned out pretty cute.

I am the nucleus!

*Warning, you are about to experience another nerd moment!*
For the last couple weeks Donald has been learning about cells in his science class and so to help him remember the functions of each of the organelles inside of cells, I told him to figure out something in our house that could symbolize each structure.  He started by saying that the electrical outlets were the mitochondria because they provide the cell with energy and the fridge could be a vacuole because it stores liquids.  Then I asked him what could be our house cell's nucleus and he said "You! You control everything in the house so you have to be the nucleus."  I was so honored....I am the nucleus!  It is funny to me now though because my nucleus status is based on how happy he is with me.  The other day I told him to turn off the video games because it was bed time and he said "You're not the nucleus anymore."...Like he can demote me or something....silly boy.  Then a day or two later I did something he liked, even though I forget what that is now, and he said, "See....and that is why you are the nucleus!"
I like being the nucleus, it makes me feel like I have power- wa ha ha!

Why I feel like throwing our TV into the pool

Back in May when our lives became a bit chaotic and we started our summer of moving around I put our Directv account on hold until we figured out where we were going to be permanently.  We have now been in this house for about three months and the 6 month postponement that we are allowed is up, so last week we had it hooked back up again.  Personally I was enjoying the fact that I didn't have to deal with cheesy tween shows on Disney and endless sporting events.  But it is back now and I have just been trying to avoid it mostly.  For the past two nights I have been up grading till way early in the morning and then compensating with afternoon naps.  My internal clock is way off and even though I have no work to finish tonight, here I am at 12:30am, unable to sleep.  A couple hours ago I decided to try the TV.  Perhaps there was something that I could occupy myself with.....No not really!  I now feel like throwing the darn thing into our pool.  There are absolutely no redeeming qualities about it at all.  In the hour that I tried to find something that did not completely drive the spirit away from my house I saw about 40 political commercials for the up coming elections, all of which contradicted each other.  I clicked through at least 10 murder shows and caught a glimpse of a man getting brutally hit by a car.  Continued clicking and ran into a show where a guy was feeling his girlfriend up on a roller-coaster.  And all that was highly seasoned with a sprinkling of slutty girl commercials saying that they knew guys did not really want a date when they call in and so instead they should call them because they will give men what they really want.   Why did I even get TV to begin with?