Divide and Conquer and First Swim Meet

Life has been so crazy lately. For the first time, we (as in Paul and I) are really having to take a divide and conquer approach to our evenings! Between swim, golf, Beta meetings, volunteering, dinner, five kids and homework for three - our evenings are CRAZY!! A typical afternoon would be something like I get the little two up from nap around 2:30. Caleb gets off the bus at 2:50. I drop Caleb off at the Library around 3ish, on the way to pick up Bryce and Isaac from school. After they are picked up I pick Caleb up around 3:45 and have him to swim by 4. If it is a non-golf night, we hang out at swim until practice is over around 5:10. If it is a golf night we drop Caleb off, take Isaac home to do homework and change and take him to golf. Hopefully in that time Dad is back with Caleb (who he picks up on his way home from work) and he stays with everyone else while I take Isaac to golf. We get home between 7:30 and 8 and Isaac eats dinner and finishes homework . Somewhere between all of that we do practice test for three for spelling, vocabulary and whatever test they have, listen to two read and do any other homework the three have. The crockpot has been well used the last couple of weeks for dinner!

I watched Isaac play a short game in golf last week. He really impressed me with how well he did! He knows what club to grab for where he is at on the course, pretty good at judging how hard to hit and is able to make the ball go to the green. It was nice to see him having so much fun doing it, too.

Caleb has had one swim meet so far. It was basically just a meet to get times for all of the kids. They are placed in heats against other kids around the same time as them so it is a little bit more fair (these are 6th through 8th grade kids competing together). He is his worst critic and came home quite upset that he finished in "last place". We explained that he is competing against himself more than anyone else and as long as his time is getting faster at each meet than he is doing well. We also told him that most of the kids have pools at home and swim regularly and have for most of their lives - unlike him. He was in a bad mood most of the night, but it made him work harder and listen more at practices, so it was probably a good thing.

His coaches have told him several times (and me) that he is, by far, the most improved student on the team. He has a friend on the team that has a pool. The kids dad has invited Caleb over several times to practice and he actually gets in and works with him. I can't wait until his next meet (this Friday) to see what progress he has made!

Here are some pictures from his first meet. I tried to show them to him the night of the meet to cheer him up. He, instead, got more upset because he was looking at the pictures and telling me what he was doing wrong (I wasn't breathing to the side, etc). I told him that it was great that he could recognize mistakes and that will help him see what he is doing wrong so he can fix them.