Life moves pretty fast: Swim meet countdown

The summer swim season has officially begun!

We had our mock meet last night, which means we only have five weeks of swimming left the season (minus the county competition). Swim meets have always marked the passing of summer, but this year their passing (which hasn't even truly begun because we, uh, haven't had an official swim meet yet) feels a bit more ominous because it's also more or less counting down the time we have left here in Georgia. 

We. Have. So. Much. To. Do. 

But last night we just sat for a few hours and watched the kids swim.

Our competition pool (which isn't our pool but is a pool within our cooperative swim team...we take turns practicing at our pool ad at this pool) got a new deck addition this summer, which is nice because the past couple of years they haven't allowed us to put children on that side of the pool so we had to clump all the kids on the other side of the deck and put the other team out on the parking lot...and neither place was particularly suited for this purpose.

We're glad we don't have to do that anymore. The new deck is much nicer. And "I'm kind of liking the jail situation we have going on," Miss Julie, our team manager, joked. 

We call the area the kids hang out the "bull pen" anyway, and it honestly is rather helpful having it be an actual pen rather than having the kids sprawl out all over whatever nook or cranny of the deck they can find!

I watched the first have of the meet and officiated the second half of the meet. Here are the kids each doing their freestyle events...

Alex:

Zoë:

Benjamin:

See how nicely he's breathing into his shoulder there, Alexander? That's what we want to see (rather than lifting your whole head out of the water to breathe)!

Here's Alexander doing his backstroke (bright yellow cap):

By the time Zoë had a turn at backstroke it had started pouring, but she did awesome—was quite far ahead of everyone else in her heat):

Here's Phoebe enjoying the rain:

Fortunately it didn't thunder (and it really only rained for a little while) so the meet could continue. Last year we got rained (thundered) out on multiple occasions so we're hopeful this year's meet days can be a little clearer... 

Here's Zoë diving in during a relay:

And here's Benjamin competing the fly leg of a medley relay:

He asked me how his timing was, breathing-wise...so I will say that from the pictures I have it looks like he's breathing a bit late. He should be breathing what his hands are just exiting the water and his head should be ready to dive back down as his arms sweep over his head.

See how this swimmer (from Wikipedia) is breathing while his arms are back instead of while they're coming forward? This is the way.

But Benjamin is much improved from last year (thanks year-round swimming), so I'm sure he'll just keep getting better with time!

Here's a frog that was waiting to greet us when we came home last night: