Weekend swim meet

A was really into the swim meet!

Z & Daddy had some good laughs while we waited.

This weekend was B's first swim meet with his new team. Let me start by saying he did GREAT and we were very proud parents! Now let's go over the details because that is the best part (like the icing on the cake, the chips in the cookies, are you with me?).
I was responsible for getting my 9 year old to downtown Hippy-Dippy Land by 4:30pm on Friday, Oct. 12th - what that means is that I had 4 small children loaded into my grocery go-getter and I was a nervous wreck, since I had never actually driven to the city by myself. I guess it is no secret that we all made it just fine. When I got there I called to see if Jason was already there, no he was still at work - ugh the kids really out numbered me but I would press on. Jason called at about 5pm saying that he was on his way. I asked him if he could stop and get some cash to pay for parking. Sure he'd stop... at the ATM across the street from our subdivision. Here is his line of thinking, Sherry needs money, there's an ATM across the street from our subdivision I'll swing by there (passing countless ATM's in the process) so that he could use the restroom (sorry if that is TMI but I couldn't leave out that Jason added at least 45 minutes to his trip downtown to use the home thone)! I finally called him at 6:30 wondering where in heaven's name he was and he told me this - I about fell over. Jason finally got to the meet and we waited anxiously for B's first swim. Here’s the play by play from my eyes:

Jason is ready to capture the moment on video.

I’m holding A and cheering from the sidelines.

K&Z are anxiously watching and ready to yell, “yea B!”

B’s standing on deck, ready to go. B takes off his goggles. Jason & I realize something is terribly wrong – there’s B’s name on the board, there’s swimmers at their marks, B’s not on the platform, he’s going to miss the buzzer. Jason and I are both yelling like frantic fools when we hear Buuuhhhrrr – the buzzer sounds and B’s name disappears from the screen! I could see his face and I could tell that he was NOT happy, in fact pretty sad that he’d just missed his heat. He quickly went to one of the coaches and tried to get into another race, but that was the last heat. It was all I could do not to cry. There was my “little” boy all alone facing his big bad coach and his mistake all on his own.

Here’s how it happened, each end of the pool had heats – one side had even numbered heats the other odd. So it was a counting issue, we mistakenly taught him to count 1,2,3 but on that side of the pool they were counting 1,3,5,etc. (which he knew but had forgotten).

As sad as it was, his coach didn’t berate him and all he had to answer to was his own disappointment.

For us it wasn’t as simple. We had been there since 4:30 and 6:45 to see this swift moving young man and we missed it, the next event he’d swim in was the last event for the night and he was in the second to last heat, which was at approximately 8:45pm! As you can imagine we were sad but we were more concerned about B's morale.

Today, was a lot less dramatic. Thank goodness! B made all of his events (as you can see in the pictures he had his own coach to make sure he made it) and even did really well in his last one, Individual Medley – coming in second in his heat! He shaved 12 seconds off of his previous time. Wow!

So now with that story told many will say, “Oh, don’t worry B it won’t happen again, now you’ll be more aware.” Ahem, I don’t want to burst any bubbles but let me do a little flashback to September 29, 2004 (excerpt from an email about B’s first EVER swim meet):

He didn't get to warm up before his second heat because he darn near didn't get to race!!!! He told me later he was counting (and he'd gotten to 160 I think) which is why he didn't realize his group was up again. We saw the other boys and what was up and started yelling at him. He ran (fast walked, 'cuz you shouldn't run around a pool) and was only half way there when the buzzer went to start. You can imagine our groans until we realized that there was a false start and he made it around there in time for them to put him in his spot and get the other boy out of the pool!!!! New set of groans, thank heaven groans!!! We were very excited, especially since we had been there since 5:00 and it was at that time past 8:30!!!

Here’s the REALLY great slide show of B at this swim meet. You may think I went a little overboard here but Jason explained to me how to take a series of action shots on the camera. Fun!

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Last but not least - I really would love to have "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor to play with this movie clip but iTunes has gone wacky on me. Can anyone help me out?