Last Fun Friday

Phoebe was as pleased as punch to get her ribbons from last night's swim meet—especially her speed breaker ribbon (because it's rainbow coloured). She did not want to "spend" her ribbon to pie a coach in the face (even though I explained that she would still get to keep her ribbon).

But Zoë got to participate in throwing pie at a coach (it's really just whipping cream on a paper plate—pie is too expensive to waste like this). She's somewhere in the melee below, I think...

I can definitely spot her in this picture:

The boys didn't get any speed breaker ribbons this time around, but that's okay—we had a long discussion about how constant growth can't really be expected (and isn't even necessarily good...like, for example, why should a company be expected to grow each quarter...why can't a company simply do well enough and leave it at that...but instead they grow bigger and bigger and swallow other companies and...is that always best?) and that it's okay to maintain a high average without seeming to improve for a while. Sometimes the best kinds of growth need more than a stopwatch to measure...or perhaps your growth is unrecognizable until suddenly it becomes visible because changes in technique haven't translated to speed yet. And sometimes you swim your absolute best....but you can't always swim your best because stuff happens (like wasp stings or simply having an off day)...so then maybe it was your absolute best for that set of circumstances and we can celebrate those slightly-higher times, too, then, because it's a brave thing to swim in a competition at all. It isn't all about winning or getting better...it's also about friendship and hard work and fun and dedication and...

My kids love my lectures (I'm pretty sure...yup).

Benjamin was a little upset that he wasn't ever chosen as swimmer of the week this year (or last year), but as I told him last year when he was a little upset (and holding a fistful of blue first place ribbons), the swimmer of the week thing can be pretty random. It's an honour...but...there are just so many kids! This year I comforted Benjamin by pointing out his fistful of red (second place) ribbons. He moved up an age range this year so is at the bottom of the pecking order (competing against bigger boys), so I think getting that many second place ribbons is pretty awesome. 

He also won the joke of the week and got a gift card, so that's fun!

Question: What do you call a 7 with pneumonia?

Answer: Sick Seven!

This joke is very funny for our particular time in the world (6-7 is huge right now—though it's losing some traction it's still fairly rampant) but may not be terribly funny in the future. 

Ms. Julie (thankfully) told the kids not to play sharks and minnows in the diving tank. They just get so crazy, diving all over each other! But the kids swam some mixed relays (putting little kids and big kids on the same team, and so forth) and some other fun things. 

We ended up staying at the pool as guests of team members at that pool, rather than going to our pool to hang out (our swim team is split between two neighbourhood pools). Unfortunately, this pool's shallow end is still pretty deep, so I had to have my attention trained on Phoebe quite a bit...which means it wasn't trained on the deep end so much. 

My kids know how I feel about sharks and minnows (I do not like that game—at least as they play it here with kids diving all over each other!) but they decided to play anyway. Fortunately, there were no diving incidents, but Benjamin did come up from the bottom of the pool and crack his face into the ledge of the pool (that juts out over the pool a few inches). He said his goggles flooded with water so his depth perception was off and he just—BOOM—ran into the wall. 

I didn't see what happened and he didn't really stop playing then either. I only noticed after Phoebe and I got out to get our little picnic lunch out. I set out a big container of watermelon and Benjamin came over to get some and I was like, "Whoa! What happened to your face?!"

And he was like, "What do you mean?"

He says it doesn't hurt, but I'm skeptical. Either way he's 100% getting a black eye. So his morning was full of ups and downs.

And, finally, here's Alexander, who was chosen as Swimmer of the Week. Coach Jeremy said he was proud of Alexander for swimming at the meet and not letting his friends in his relay down, even though he got stung multiple times just before the meet. 

Way to go, kids! No more early morning swim practice!

...until Monday...because it looks like we'll have multiple kids swimming at county...