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This morning my daughter told me she needed new fins for swim. Of course the day after someone else claimed free ones in the size she needs from one of my parent circles…. that’s not the point. I went online to order new ones, and I found the cutest Halloween swim suit and swim cap for my daughter. I decided I should spoil her because it’s fun and I want swim to be fun! Of course I want it ASAP now, but I am hoping it will work for a couple of years for her. It’s so much fun! I wish my big guy would wear the speedo version this Halloween season, but I seriously doubt he would it I got it for him. 😂

I am trying to get more into the swim mom thing. I have a kid on the high school aquatics team, and my other two are on a club team. And of course we love our summer league team!!

My daughter got to swim her last 25s at her last meet. I was excited for her to swim and try to get the best times possible since those will be her last official 25 yard races. 

My next step as a swim mom is to get IMR and IMX scores. They stand for IM Ready and IM Xtreme and are metrics used by USA Swimming. Each is a series of five events that you are scored on so that you can see how you stack up against other swimmers. If I didn’t make this my new goal, I would probably let the kids just swim 50s and the 100 IM. This will push them to try longer races and help me to have some good goals of things to sign them up for. 

Right now I have it planned so that both kids will swim all 5 IMR events in October. Then I can start planning to get them into IMX events and then we can continue to work on getting faster times once we hit those. As a lover of Evernote, I now have notes set up for each kid to track how they do at events and track their best times for their IMR/IMX events for the season. 

I am not planning to be focused on times but rather getting the events in. Even if they have swam the events before, it resets for each season on Sept 1. And of course my daughter just aged up so she’s going from being the oldest swimming 25s to the youngest in the 9-10 group. 

Here are the events and planned dates for my daughter to finish all of her IMR events:

▫️100 Free (swimming 10/2)

▫️50 Back (swimming 10/2)

▫️50 Breast (swimming 10/12)

▫️50 Fly (swimming 10/2)

▫️100 IM (swimming 10/12)

And for my son:

▫️200 Free (swimming 10/2)

▫️50 Back:  43.01 (he already has a time for this season but will swim again 10/2)

▫️50 Breast (swimming 10/12)

▫️50 Fly (swimming 10/2)

▫️100 IM (swimming 10/12)

USA Swimming has motivational time standards for all of the events by age.  Once we get all of the events in, we will start looking at where we can potentially hit various time standards.  That’s the next step. Texas Swimming Association also has championship qualification time standards.  Those are some tough times, but we will also look to see if there are any we are close to. And when we feel completely frustrated, we can look at Champ and Reserve times for our summer swim league since those are easier to make and really why we started swimming in the first place. 

First goal, however, is to get my kiddos into all 10 events this season (5 IMR and 5 IMX). We have very busy schedules, and I have been haphazard in how I select events for meets so this will be a good goal. The IMX events are much longer races so we will see how we get those sprinkled into future meets. 

Honestly, I am just glad I am finally paying attention. I still want it to be fun, but this will encourage me to get them in the right kinds of events for the year-round league. 

It is interesting watching my son develop as a high schooler. He has enjoyed things he’s doing, and has even done something I didn’t expect in marching band – he plays the synthesizer. 

He knows one of the band directors from last year, and he asked him if he’d be interested in doing the synthesizer. I found that to be interesting and of course encouraged it. He plays the trombone in the stands and the synthesizer (to help with low brass sounds) on the field. 

He told me he had been interested in synthesizer so I am glad this all worked out for him. It’s just like a piano keyboard (from what he said), but with different sounds. He took my keyboard I have from when I was taking piano lessons in grad school and tried out the music. He got it and is now practicing synthesizer at school. So much fun!

I am proud of him doing things he loves and pursuing these things on his own. ❤️❤️

Fun fact: in middle school he was able to play the six pan steel drum as part of a steel drum band even performed at Miller Outdoor Theater! 

My son is loving marching band which makes me very happy for him. It’s really crazy to see the effort it takes to get to football games and competitions. They have multiple school buses and a tractor trailer full of equipment. They also have two other large trailers. Tonight it looked like the semi and 4 busses, but I know I have seen check ins for 6 busses although I think they combined two of them. My kid is one the trombone/baritone bus. 

Tonight he was really getting into the game which is also good. It was an away game that they won in over time when the other team missed an extra point. We watch football at the house, but he has never been super interested so it’s great to see him learning the game.

Another interesting thing is that he is looking into playing the synthesizer in the marching band. He got his music today and was very excited. The challenge is that it’s basically piano music, and he does not play the piano. I have a keyboard from when I took piano lessons in grad school so he is going to try and figure out how to do it. I love that about him. I love that he’s having fun.

There are still some things about band that confused me (like where is the water bottle I ordered), but he is doing a great job figuring it all out.

I feel great today. 

Before work I opened a package from Dillards since I had some extra time today.  I found some great sale items at the end of August from the community tab of someone I follow on YouTube (I can’t find it again!).  I have been using my black MCM tote and red MCM pouch/shoulder bag and some other random things.  My wallet has been my Damier Graphite Louis Vuitton key pouch. I can easily clip it to my key and it holds my necessary cards, a small pair of glasses, some tummy meds, and cough drops.  I also have a pen pouch and some random things in my bag right now, too.

Anyway, I found a strawberry mini skinny ID case and a strawberry cosmetic case that I thought would be super cute with my backpack. I then found a blue bitty bogg bag to make my swim mom bag.🙂 Finally, I rounded it out with a pillow quilted card case in a dark olive color that is not my normal color palette but appealed to me. Those were all unboxed this AM and the strawberry SLGs are currently in use. 🙂

I grabbed a latte before work, and had a slow start which was nice and peaceful.  

I feel like I am on top of things with my kids and the school year.  My oldest is doing well with everything he has going on.  He is learning to balance conflicting priorities.  My younger two have their outside of school activities (swim, scouts) at the same time which makes logistics easier.  I am really so proud of all of my kids. I was going to pay a neighbor who swims at the DI collegiate level to teach my daughter flip turns this summer, but a hurricane messed up the pool and timeline and we never got to it. Fast forward to tonight – I am watching her do flip turns. I had no clue she could do them. Ha! Very happy with the kiddos right now. 

Next mom win for the day was booking my daughter’s birthday party. Score! The next win was getting middle child rides to and from his orchestra social tomorrow so the rest of us can go watch the big guy play water polo. 

That does not mean that I don’t have a huge to do list, but I feel like I am not missing anything big so that’s really important to me.

Yep, I am having a good day.

It’s back to school time!  My oldest started high school on Tuesday!  He has been balancing playing water polo and being in marching band really well.  I am so proud of him.  If he can get the school stuff down, too, then we will be all set.    My middle kiddo started 7th grade.  He has been really good about doing chores and helping around the house.  He is motivated to show he’s responsible so he can play more video games. 😉  My daughter is sassy and ready to take on 3rd grade!  She picks out her clothes the night before and loves riding the bus because she sits by her latest bestie.  They have the same birthday (separated by a year) and their maternal grandmothers have the same birthday.  The younger two are planning to swim on our year round team so I need to get them signed up!  I am hoping their practice times will overlap.  

I ordered new socks, underwear, shorts, and some school shirts for my oldest.  My middle kid needed lots of school supplies.  My youngest got her supplies from an order I did at the end of last year (love that for elementary).  I still have more back to school shopping to do, but that’s OK. 

I am also working on a new family calendar system. We got really complicated this year!  I started using the Apple calendar system since we all have iPhones.  My friend had started using a Skylight calendar to organize her family so I looked at that a little.  It has a display you can hang and you can do chores and more on it.  She is using it to replace her white board.  I will definitely check it out next time I am at her house, but the Apple calendar has been good so far.  My son loves to be on his phone so he actually uses it so far!  Curious if I can do something similar for chores and home work next.

More to come, but the kids are back in school!!

DAY 1 (Monday, July 8th)

Hurricane Beryl has made landfall.  The storm made landfall to the west of us which, as us gulf coasters know, means we are on the dirty side. Lots of rain and wind happening because of the way hurricanes spin. 

After the swim meet last night, a bunch of folks went to the pool to sandbag at the entrance and get everything secured. Hubs just left to go check on things.  Yes, he’s kind of crazy. We still have high winds whistling around the house. 

It was windy all night, and we lost power just before 4 am. There are a bunch of branches in our back yard. The lounger chairs we had stacked under the breezeway actually were blown towards the gate!  Powerful winds!

I was not planning to transition out of summer swim season immediately into a day of hunkering down, but here we are. 

It’s early in the hurricane season, but hopefully things don’t get too bad this year. 

…later that day…

We have no power, no internet, no 5G. Disconnected!  We started up the generator and then had the router going, but when the internet died we became disconnected. We can still make phone calls and send SMS messages.  At least we know the storm has passed. We were still getting some pretty strong bands throughout the morning. 

Hubs is out and about doing some cleanup and checking on things. The bayou got over the berm at the pool so it’s a mess now. The new roof at the marina has damage. Did you know he’s the pool and marina rep for the HOA?  Busy, busy! We had branches from one of our trees fall on the garage of a neighbor behind us so he is going to remove them and inspect the roof. He also has another neighbor that needs help with a tree. Too bad we left the chainsaw up at the property!

Tonight we will set up to get A/C in the back room.  Right now my dog is laying across my chest to get some of my fan action. Love her!  I am sipping iced coffee from our generator powered fridge. That’s a luxury!  It’s like when we go for a trip in the camper for a week and I get home to my shower that runs the entire duration of my shower. It’s glorious. 

…later that day…

We cleaned up the in-laws house and the house behind us this afternoon. Hubs went to help some others while I got the kids bathed, and now we have the back room set up to sleep in. 

We have two generators we can gang together, and we are doing that now. It has allowed us to power the fridge, the deep freeze, the entertainment center, the portable A/C, and of course make a charging station. 

For the portable A/C – as the storm was coming, hubs went out and bought one. He was a little worried about spending $369 on something we might not need, but it was been great for us and keeping that back room cool now that we have it set up. I think it’s a great investment in our hurricane preparedness. My neighbor was talking about getting a hotel room for a couple of nights if they had power, but this is perfect – home with the dogs. 

We also have gas water heater and stove so we can shower and we made tacos for supper. Not too shabby! We had the main house entertainment center hooked up so we could power our router, but then the internet stopped working. Doh! So we connected the back room TV and stuff which allowed us to put a movie on for the kids before bed. That’s something we have done so many times in the trailer. Even when boon docking we let the kids watch a movie as they go to bed. 

We all fit in the back room, but I didn’t want to sleep on that couch so I am in bed with a fan blowing on my face. 

Yesterday I was prepping the golf cart for the parade and was walking out of the garage and my old, worn crock hit something wet, and I slipped. 

I mostly caught my fall with my wrist (scratched my palm), but I also hit my shin and got a little scratch (very minor you can’t even see it today). No big deal, right? Jonny helped me up and we went on our way with our festivities. I noticed the wrist was sore and didn’t do a great job driving the golf cart, but it was manageable. 

I woke up to it being really sore and painful this morning. My hubs offered to get a brace for me, but I told him to get on his way because it’s a busy day (he went to fix his buddy’s brakes and then prep for swim meet). I went to CVS, and I am glad I went because there are a bunch of options and sizes! I ended up getting a really simple yet not super supportive one so I had something to stabilize. I wasn’t super happy with the selection and what would meet my needs so I decided to just try the simple wrap one. 

Well, it’s good, but I decided to do more research to order the perfect one for me. I found a great one, but I can’t get it until tomorrow. It was tempting to get a similar one with same day, but I wanted the best! No big deal – I have the current one and will get the more serious one going forward. I think it will be especially good to wear the sturdy one at night so I don’t continue to cause pain from however I sleep on it. 

My biggest problem is that I don’t want to wear the brace to work even thought I should. I hate showing signs of weakness. Ha ha!

My oldest is Star Rank in scouts so we decided he needs to knock out some Eagle required merit badges this summer.  To go from Star to Life rank, you go from 4 Eagle required merit badges to 7. I want him to get to Life because Eagle is by far the hardest to accomplish, but to get to Life, he needs 3 more Eagle required badges. 

The four merit badges he had for Star were First Aid, Swimming, Environmental Science, and Hiking. It counted for four required badges, but that’s really only three that count for Eagle because you swimming and hiking are either/or badges. My goal was to get him four more Eagle required completed this summer, and he was on board because he knows he needs them. 

I signed him up for Emergency Preparedness at Moody Gardens on Sunday.  They have great merit badge classes. We worked on prerequisites that morning which is really stressful for me, but honestly the kid was not tracking when we were doing these things. We got it done, and I was able to drive him there and drop him off and pick him up easily. A lot of other scouts in his troop ended up taking it at summer camp, but he did Camping even though it was a partial. 

We decided that this would be the week of merit badges. We signed up for Communication, Citizenship in the Nation, and Citizenship in the World three days in a row at the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS). I also signed up my other son who is Tenderfoot rank for all three of these merit badges at HMNS this week. If I am taking one kid, I might as well take both!

We started the prerequisites for Communication and Citizenship in the Nation a while ago, but of course for both we didn’t have everything buttoned up until the night before each class. That is so stressful for me as a mom. 

Tomorrow is Citizenship in the World, and thankfully there were no prerequisites for that class so my stress this evening can switch to other areas…such as packing for my son’s trip to Summit Bechtel. They leave Friday!!

I took off this week because we have a lot going on this week with these merit badges, the championship swim meet, the trip my oldest is going on, and the 4th of July celebrations in my neighborhood.

I am super happy that my oldest is enjoying water polo so far. He said it’s been fun learning the skills. I just hope he can step up to the aggression because it sounds like water polo players are pretty tough on each other. 

He did his team picture today. He was supposed to wear jeans for the pictures, but he hates wearing jeans. He told me he didn’t have any, but I knew he did (yep, I am the one who bought them). I went into the guest room where he has been sleeping to see if they were in that closet, and he was acting weird. I went to the bed where he was standing and they were under the bed. He tried to hide them from me. Oh my. 😂

Yesterday he tried on the suits. I ordered him a 36 because that’s what his jammers are, but he said they were too tight and didn’t cover his bum when he tried the brief style on (Delfina brand). So I ordered him a 38. I hope they are tight enough!! He said they are, but he’s not used to wearing that style of suit. And, yes, he’s a big dude! The boys suits are $50 and the girls are $92 with $13 each to add number and name. Boys don’t have add ons. The girls suits are Jolyn which I have heard people talk about but don’t know much about. 

I am super happy that all of my kids are good swimmers. He’s not the fastest, but he has the skills to get it done! He will also be swimming a lot more in school next year so he might improve overall, too. It will also make him a better coach for our neighborhood team next year. I love living in a place where the big kids teach the little kids how to swim.