The Difference Adults Make

Rachel is thriving on her new swim team. The 3 coaches are all adults - not in their 20's, but full-fledged, gray haired grown-ups. The head coach has coached swimming for 35 years and really focuses on technique. Rachel has improved so much with her strokes that I'm really impressed. They continue the team all year with just December and May off and we plan to stick with them. It's only 2 days a week for practice during the school year, so that should work out well.

We had our first swim meet today. Man, they are exhausting sitting in the heat all day and watching the numbers come up so you can get your child over to the event tent in time. But we are usually done by noon or 1:00 p.m., so that's nice. Warm-ups begin at 7:30 a.m. Rachel never does well for the first meet and came in last in all of her events at this first one. Next Saturday she should do better. One of the coaches told me once the kids really get the techniques down (perfecting their strokes), they usually see a big jump in speed. One week isn't much time for that, but I suspect that by the end of summer, she'll be doing much better than she ever has before.

My parents leave Monday for Indiana to visit extended family there. We'll spend all day Sunday at my brother's visiting with them. It's been nice to see them, but difficult also - something I posted about in the last entry. And the difficult part is that we haven't been to church in several weeks because of when the family get togethers have been planned. So much so that Rachel was quick to want to go to a birthday party next Sunday when she would normally decide not to attend because it's on the Sabbath. I didn't tell her no but I know missing so much church isn't good for any of us. We do have one swim meet on a Sunday, also. On her old team, two of the meets were on Sunday's every year, so I feel lucky this team only has one. But it's times like these I wish I lived in Utah where this kind of stuff is less of an issue because of the high LDS population. But, the world is what it is and we'll have to focus more on our spiritual side to work through this.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! I'm so excited. This is the first year I've tried to grow anything - a garden item - and I picked out 2 container tomato plants. Well, I've got three good sized tomatoes on one plant and about 5 or 6 smaller ones split between the two plants! I can hardly wait to sink my teeth into fresh grown tomatoes in another couple of weeks. Yummy! If I'm totally successful with these this summer, next year I'll try more tomatoes and some lettuce which can also be grown in a container. With as much salad as I eat, that could have the potential to save an awful lot of money!