Big Swim Meet
Originally uploaded by rhondamt

This weekend we finished the summer swim season with a two day swim meet. Cooper's swim team raced with four other swim clubs. Cooper himself had five races over two days. He really enjoyed the swim team and improved so much. By the time the nine weeks were over Cooper had taken 11 seconds off his 50 meter freestyle and 6 seconds off his backstroke. He also learned the butterfly and the breaststroke. While he certainly hasn't mastered those two, he swims them much better than either of his parents could!!

Saturday was eight hours( we checked in at 7:30 a.m.) at the pool so Nate and Lizzie spent a majority of the day with Nana relaxing and playing at her house. They did come over to cheer Cooper on for a couple of his races, visit with Grandma and Grandpa a bit and eat a bunch of contraband snacks from the snack shack before going back for a rest to Nana's nice, cool house. It was hot Saturday!! Grandma and Grandpa came down for several hours to see all of Cooper's races. Swim meets are a lot of sitting around, brief bursts of excitement, and then more sitting around. All of Cooper's other meets were Wednesday evenings and Nana, Granddaddy, Lizzie and Nate had been able to catch a few, but being an hour away, this was Grandma and Grandpa's first opportunity to see a meet. It is so great for Cooper that he has this supportive cheering squad. I don't think he realizes how rare it is to have two sets of grandparents attending and cheering your sporting events.

After his races ended, Grandma and Grandpa had left, and he and I packed up our car and were ready to go when Cooper decided he really did want to stay to hear all of the awards announced. You see, when the championship team is announced it is tradition for the entire winning swim team to jump in the pool and celebrate. So we waited....and waited...and waited some more. It was worth it though because somewhere around 3:00 p.m. they announced that Cooper's swim team had taken the championship and he and all his teammates and coaches (with clothes on!) jumped in the pool cheering and having a ball. Cooper thought it was very cool.
After the swim meet I picked up Lizzie and Nate and headed to a birthday party with all three kids. This party was all about jumpy houses, inflatable slides, and dogde ball. After the pizza and the cake were inhaled and we came home I had three very tired kids. Especially, my nine year old. I think he was asleep before I could climb the bunkbed ladder to say "goodnight".

Jeff had class all day Saturday so he took Cooper to the Sunday events. Sunday was just for fun. It was optional and none of the times are recorded, but if a child wanted another chance to race or try a new stroke in a race then they could. It had about half the kids and ran about four hours. Cooper swam his fastest freestyle yet and Jeff was able to get it on video.

I hope next year both Cooper and Nate will want to do the swim team. It taught Cooper a lot about swimming and he became such a stronger swimmer. Plus, I love that it is competitive but really only with yourself and your own best time. That's my kind of team sport.