June 14 - Eat My Bubbles

Swim meet! Rick's dad came to watch Lila swim tonight. He also helped wrangle Lucy while we got the swimmers marked up and ready for the meet.

Lila with Papa after her warm up swim.

Nellie and Marcus watching Lila compete.

Lila had a great night. Here she is touching the wall after her 25m Freestyle. She was fast and left a few swimmers behind to eat her bubbles tonight.

This look says, "Please put that camera away so we can go home now."

It was a mild evening for once, so we played outside when we got home. Nellie decided to make some bubbles of her own.

Lucy loved watching the bubbles. She got a close up view as many of them were blown right in her face. Of course.

Lila caught fireflies.

My sweet girls all together!

On this day in 2007, Lila was modeling a sunflower dress.

On this day in 2009, Nellie was modeling a hat and a utensil.

June 2 - Go Wavemakers!

Today was a long, hot, hot, long day. Lila had swim practice this morning at 9:30. After practice, we went to Monique's house for a couple of hours to check on Baby Keaton and to meet Monique's mom who is in town visiting from Oregon. Then we went home for about an hour to get ready for team pictures and the first swim meet of the season. I didn't buy any of the photo packages, but I did manage to snap a quick shot of the team. Lila is on the front row, and she's the third girl from the right. She just looks so little in this photo.

After pictures, Lila ate some mac and cheese for her pre-competition meal. She was so excited to tell me this morning that her coaches told everyone to eat mac and cheese. An official reason to have one of her favorite foods!

I was a parent volunteer in the girls' bullpen marking the girls up for their races. You can see Nellie had to have her name written on her shoulder too.

Poor Lucy was once again schlepped around for hours on end while she was tired, hot, and cranky. I wore her in the sling as much as I could, but it was so murderously hot that she and I were both relieved to sit her in the stroller to chew on toys while I marked up the girls. She fell asleep like this for most of the pre-meet activities, so I was able to volunteer more effectively.

When Rick arrived, he took over the bullpen job of getting the girls lined up for their races at the right time in the right order. Organized chaos really describes the craziness of the entire event. Lila is on the starting block waiting for the first race to start while Rick (Coach Daddy) and her coach (Ken doll) stand by her side. I love how this shot captures the setting so well. You can feel the heat and humidity from the hazy cast and the chaos of all those little swimmers. Bonus points for capturing some lens flare from the sun and the perspective.

And they're off! Lila in mid-air.

Swimming between two Barracudas. This team is known for being tough. They have 170 swimmers and they've been practicing for the entire month of May. Our team swam fiercely and lost by a respectably small margin. After Lila finished her races, she was pumped up and beaming and declared that she wanted to do it again. I consider that a win any day.


On this day in 2009, Miriam fell down on her babysitting duties.

June 1 - Swim Team Begins

Today was Lila's first day of swim team practice and her first meet is tomorrow. They move quickly! I was surprised by how many kids are on the "6 and Unders" team. The practice session was complete chaos. No one knew where to go or what to do. We went to both morning and afternoon practice today, and I'll take her to morning practice again tomorrow before the meet, so hopefully, it won't be too much of a "throw them in the deep end" experience for her.

These kids are obviously missing their summer break from gymnastics. My poor couch has been serving as the gym.

On this day in 2010, we were at my friend Kathy's house where Nellie did some naked roller skating. Clearly, my archive pickings were pretty slim for photos from this day as this phone shot was the only one from June 1 in my entire photo library. I did try to Photoshop it to a PG rating.