Eyrealm: Swim Meet

Lots of our kids spent incredible amounts of time in athletics! Basketball, tennis, hockey, baseball, cheerleading, dance, bowling and ping pong but it took us until the last few years when the next generation kicked in to have swimmers! Well, Saydi’s a great swimmer. And probably others that I haven’t noticed but none were really into the 5 a.m. practices and swim meets!

Actually maybe it was me who wasn’t into it! When I was a kid my mom put my sister Lenna and I, who were about eight and nine into a swimming class at the Bear Lake Hot Springs, which was the only place in Bear Lake which held enough water for swimming lessons except for the lake. There was not even a motel swimming pool in the whole valley!

Anyway there was what seemed like every kid in the valley and lots of wild chatter in that pool on the morning of our first lesson. In our list of instructions, we had specifically been told not to play on the ropes. I’m not sure that Lenna and I even knew what the ropes were! After a few minutes of playing around waiting for our turn to “duck under” there was a deafening scream from our swim coach named “Tiny Grant”. He was the football coach and weighed about 300 pounds. There was total silence as he screamed, “Get out of the pool!” We were horrified when we realized that his finger was pointed directly at US!

We did get out of the pool, totally humiliated, went to the changing room and cried our eyes out! We never went back. And to this day, neither of us knows how to swim.

SO imagine my delight when our Hawaiian Grandchildren (and also our Phoenix Grandchildren) have become expert swimmers! It is always swim season in Hawaii so, as mentioned in an earlier post, we arrived just in time to see their swim team practicing with the added bonus of a major swim meet on Saturday.

Both kids won ribbons and it was so fun to see their determination to do better! Ana won second place in her division for the butterfly!

And Camden got fourth place in backstroke. When I showed Camden this picture and asked him what he was thinking about just before this race up there on the block he said, “I was just thinking about how bad the belly flop was going to hurt when I dropped into the water! He is such a fun and funny kid!

I tried to catch Ana at the buzzer but this is all I got!!

This is how the kids keep track of what event they are in, what lane and what heat. Hundreds of kids went through the process in perfect order, along with some “Masters” who were adults who paid to compete which covered the cost for the kids. Pretty cool! Camden’s skinny little arm doesn’t show his fourth event. It was all so fun to see!

Afterward we went to a lovely beach with Jonah and Aja’s new friends and their cute family. Elsie got to see a turtle on this ride on a paddleboard with the other Mom.

Aniston is becoming a pretty darn good surfer! Jonah is not discouraged to do anything by his achy knees and Aja never ceases to amaze us with her undying patience!