Big Steps

Saturday was Soren's first swim meet as a 9 year old. What a difference. I could not believe it. It was another demonstration of Soren's amazing attitude that keeps her positive and smiling no matter what. In all of her previous meets, her races were 25 yards (just from one side of the pool to the other). Yesterday she swam the 100 yard breast stroke, 50 yard back stroke, 100 yard freestyle, 200 IM (that is 50 yards of each stroke!) and finished with a 100 yard butterfly. If you know anything about swimming then you realize that is a crazy hard meet for someone her age. She is having a hard time with her dives. When she dives in, she raises her head and her goggles get pushed down off of her eyes into her mouth. Most kids stop swimming and either cry, quit, or take precious seconds to put them back on. Soren keeps on swimming. This happened to her in 4 of her 5 races. I felt so bad because her eyes were burning and she could barely get a breath with her goggles in her mouth. She just takes it in stride. She knows she is diving wrong and when she gets out of the pool she apologizes to her coach! Our coaches are AWESOME. They are nothing but encouraging. They go on and on to make sure the kids know how proud we are of them while at the same time teaching the swimmers to work hard and give 110%.

soren and coach shauna

Overall it was a great meet because Soren learned so much. She left there with a smile on her face and that makes me happy. I was afraid she would be discouraged by her performance, but it only made her want to work harder. She kept track of her times and compared them to the overall winner so she knows how many seconds she needs to shave off of her time to win. Crazy kid.

After the meet we went up to The Colony to watch Wyatt play basketball. Those 8 year olds play a pretty rough game! I was surprised how much contact there was. Wyatt's team won 28 to 2. I'd say that is more than a win.

After Wyatt's game, we went up to Denton to deliver Nana's new bike! It came late Friday afternoon. Pete stayed up til after midnight putting it all together. We decided to put clips on it but we are restricting Nana to the trainer for now. When it warms up we will put regular pedals on and take it out for a spin on the streets. It is going to be quite an adjustment getting used to a racing bike. I warned her that she will hate it at first because the posture is uncomfortable and her hiney will be very sore. What's not to love?!

reese helps dad put Nana's bike together.

We got home at 8 pm and Reese and I immediately collapsed into bed. Soren and Pete stayed up playing the gamecube and then even watched a movie. I could not believe Soren was able to stay awake like that. Friday night she went to a sleepover and stayed up until 2 am, I picked her up for the meet at 6:45 am and she was still going last night at 11 pm. I don't see how they do it.