March

It doesn't feel like weeks since I posted. I suppose that's because I didn't have much to say. February was kind of crazy. First there was the strange weather (sleet, snow, hail as big around as a nickel or larger, rain, incredibly high winds that were pushing cars off the road, sunny warm weather, and bright sunny days WHILE it rained cats and dogs). Then there was just the usual chaos of having 4 kids.

Zaven and Caly just finished their swim season with the high school team, and yesterday I went and signed them up for the next session with the local community team, the Dolphins. So they only got about a week or two off. Practice starts tomorrow. But this is a good thing. For one, it doesn't involve any extra driving on my part since they can walk there after school and Scott will be able to pick them up most days. Second, they'll take their showers there which makes evenings and mornings a bit less hectic.

Zaven will be going to Upward Bound this summer and Caly's opting not to do the summer session with the Dolphins this year. I've got mixed feelings on this. On the plus side, it will free up a lot of time. I mean a LOT. Unlike the session that's about to start, the summer swim session is high-stress. They swim every weekday from 8-10 AM, so there's no sleeping in. Plus, there are meets two or three times a week. Meets take forever. Hours and hours and hours. 6 hour is the norm, but I've known them to last longer. Parents HAVE to attend and HAVE to work at least half the meet. They need judges and lane timers and people to put the results in the computers. None of this is hard, but it keeps you busy. So you don't even really get to pay attention to how well your kid is swimming. Plus, I can't bring Zoe and Quinn to the meets because who's going to watch them and keep them away from all that water while I'm busy working. And with practice every day and a couple of meets a week, it's hard to schedule all the other things you might want to do during the summer. Between family vacations and summer camps, you can easily end up missing a lot of meets, which really isn't fair to the rest of the team. Plus, the swim team is expensive. So there are some definite positives to Caly not swimming the summer session.

The negative to it is that she needs the exercise. Don't get me wrong, she's fit as a fiddle. But she's fit because she's on one swim team or another year round. She stays active because we know that when our kids are NOT signed up for something that keeps them active, they tend to settle down in front of the TV with a soda and some snacks and just sit. So I have to find some way to make sure that she's not just gonna veg all summer. Well, at least the parts where she's not in camp.