I just sent an email to my coach . . .

Asking her to place an order for me the next time she places orders at Swimoutlet.com.

Red, size 7 please!

Hahahaha...

I did make them tomorrow . . .

Today . . .

And immediately after this picture he decided he didn't really want it, handed it to Livia, and the whole thing fell apart smearing peanut butter down the back of the chair and leaving a broken apple-marshmalow mouth splattered all over the floor! Oh yeah, the other half of the mouth that I couldn't reach immediately then is still stuck to the floor...

Better git (yeah, "git") that cleaned up before the Queen arrives...

And these beauties,

Are now saggy, withered and brown thanks to the cold snap we all knew was coming after our deliriously summer-like weather last week.

But, never fear, there is a light at the end of those two non-sunny storied. Tonight I went to see "Monumental" at the theater. I can not say enough times that you must watch for this film/dvd/online version of this account of our nation's founding by the pilgrims. It absolutely blew me away!

I'm going to make these tomorrow . . .

What? You thought I'd be here blathering on and on (and on...) about some ol' swim meet I was in this weekend? You thought I'd be recalling my times and races swum? Maybe showing pictures and medals...and what?...perhaps even video footage of me swimming???

Well, how wrong you were my friends, how wrong you were!

Actually...my computer has been going to work with SP since he dropped his and it's in for repair (thank goodness, dropping an macbook pro is only resulting in a $175 bill!) and since I am in a total recoup day today, and had choir tonight, there's no way I'm downloading photos and compiling all the thrilling details of the weekend.

So, I guess that's the exciting cliffhanger till the recap appears...

Oh, maybe I'll leave you with this. Yours truly is currently the 2nd place title holder of the women's 100 yard backstroke for women ages 40-45 in the state of Michigan! My arch nemesis, Jennifer Pope from the Grand Rapids area, holds the coveted 1st place position (and YES, there were more than two people swimming in that age group...six to be precise!). BTW, I heard someone call a woman "Jennifer" so I decided to go up to her and say, "Jennifer Pope?" and guess what, it was her (she?)!! So, I proceeded to tell her (bore her?) my engaging story of how three years ago I swam a meet with her and she and I were so close with our times. Some races she won, some I won. Then, over the next two years, I noticed she was blowing me away with her times and I figured she was certainly doing some good, hard workouts. Low and behold, she confirmed my hypothesis (oy!) and shared with me that she'd also lost 80 pounds in the process. So cool for her...but now, I need to get my but in gear because I need to be holding pace with her for sure!!

I knocked four minutes off my swim . . .

Tis my second annual Masters State Swim Meet this weekend. Tonight I swam "The Mile" over in Lake Orion to support the team. For a team to win at State's it's really more about numbers than times. That is, the more people you can get from your team to go to the meet the more likely you are to beat other teams. You score points for your team up to 8th place and double points for relays so if you're from a super fast team, but only have a few people turn out you can still lose the meet. Rumor has it we have a shot at the State Title this year, we'll see.

So, are you impressed? I knocked four minutes off my mile in tonight's race. Hehehe...I also knocked five laps off. I'll tell ya, that really makes a difference in your swim time. Confused yet? Well, at the Y where I usually swim my mile, the sign on the wall says 71 lengths = mile. So, that's what I always do (well, I do 72 because ending on that odd number really gets me if you really want to know, I break it down mentally to three sets of 12 laps, that's there and back...o.k., now you know...). Well, lo and behold, real swimmers swim what's known as a nautical mile which is 1650 yards...whoa, hold the phone, I just did some googling and a nautical mile is 2,025.37 yards now I'm really confused...all I know is, tonight my job was to swim 33 laps.

So, I asked some other guy if that meant I could do my sets of 12, 12, and then a set of 9. I'm not kidding, I asked around, I am NOT a mathematician you know. After I got the green light for my figuring off I went. I felt fine about the actual swim, I certainly didn't go as fast as I could because of this and that and the other thing, I won't bore you...ha...I'm sure you're to that point already...but the good news is I did my "new" mile in 26.37ish knowing that next year I'm quite certain I can do it faster (last year I did it in 28.44...and yes, last year I had to swim that funny 33 lap mile, which, I kept swimming past the 33rd lap and my coach had to throw a kick board at me to get me to stop...even after ALL of that, I still forgot all about that during my "training" for it this year...can anyone say..."you got five kids or somethin'?").

Anyone still with me?

Hello?

Hello?

(-:

Most of my team is swimming tomorrow all day and then Sunday all day. I'm off tomorrow since four of our five have various sporting events, one of them being a season ending basketball championship. Been an undefeated season for Lara and her team and they're quite assuredly going to be the league champs tomorrow around noon.

O.K. so what's with this picture???

How does it tie in to the novella I wrote above?

It doesn't!

I wanted to post a pic of the pool or swimmers or something but I completely forgot to take my camera out of my bag during the meet. And then, when I got home, I noticed my camera battery in the charger on the wall, so it wouldn't have mattered if I remembered anyway.

Lara doctored that picture over on some photo site called pic nic and I just found it on my desktop. Pretty funny!

Yeah...I know...

I just can't stop with the Pinterest business. It's so fun to scroll through their homepage. I don't have an account there (thankfully, that would take up too much time) because I don't like how you have to initially sign up through twitter or facebook. I've heard you can then cancel out of the connection to those sites, but I just don't like that they even make you do that, so I'm not joining (I'm not sure they care...). So, if I find something I like over there I just bookmark a link to it in my bookmark file (which is organized by home, recipes, kids, etc) and it works totally fine. Plus, then I get to share the pics that give me a little chuckle at 10:40p.m. or so, with you great folks!

(-:

O.K., off to reading about the youngest of the three Grey sisters, descendants of King Henry the VIII, from the mid 1500's. I've already covered the first two Grey sisters in the book (mentioned a few days ago here). Things didn't work out so well for Jane, the oldest. She was queen for nine days and then lost her head, literally, since her cousin (the next queen) Mary wasn't fond of her. The second oldest, Kathryn, is currently imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth because she could be a threat to the throne and now I'm on to Mary who, "is hideously ugly" so is not considered a threat to the throne. I an NOT EVEN KIDDING about that!!!!!

Chow!

There's a TON of stuff I need to be doing . . .

Absolutely NONE of which include downloading and blogging about a rock I used to smash my chicken!

Yep, you read that right...I used this rock to pound out my chicken the other night.

I used to use my heavy, marble rolling pin for that job.

For the life of me I can not find my heavy, marble rolling pin.

Way in the back of my mind somewhere I have this inkling of a thought that I had to throw it out for some reason.

So...

The other night I needed to pound some chicken breasts flat for this AMAZING recipe (oh, the tomato sauce was soooooo good...and, with the kids and stuff it only took me 2.5 hours to make....I'm not even kidding!) and I stood in the middle of the kitchen searching with my eyes for a good "pounder." Well, my "Ben" rock jumped out at me and it was absolutely perfect!!! He and I melted crayons on that rock when he was preschool aged and it's been hanging out on my counter ever since.

It has a bullseye target and everything!

I told Ben this will be my chicken pounder till my end of time!

(but I'm not excited about rolling dough anymore with a soup can...time to get a new rolling pin!)

And now, what should I have been doing???

Laundry,

Kitchen,

Vacum,

play recorders with Livia

(well, truthfully I've been doing that while doing this because she's shoving it in my mouth while I type),

Haul winter stuff to shed,

Work on Kindergarten photo book for auction,

All right, gotta run...

H-Man . . .

Still loves a good monologue...

Last week we took two cars to the PTL potluck in case I needed to leave early with a "no-nap-today" two year old. I didn't need to leave early, but the two car scenario had me riding home with Harrison and maybe another kid, can't remember (sorry other kid), but it was a pretty quiet car ride.

Quite enough to be in the company of one of H's free flowing talks.

It went something like this:

"If I were to get awards tonight at the potluck like I do at basketball I would have gotten one for "effort" and one for "Christ Like Behavior." Because, people were stealing other people's shoes and I really wanted to help them get them back. I mean, if Jesus was there he could have just talked with them and asked them nicely to return the shoes or he could have just touched them and solved it or something. But, since this is a sin-filled world I had to exert force to help them get their shoes back."

"Mmm-hmmm"

(-:

See what I'm talkin' about here folks . . .

Absolute quality time, every single night.

O.K., signing off to go read...for real.

You don't think I just do computer every night, do you?

Well, NO, I don't.

I've been reading "The Sisters Who Would be Queen" because for some absurd reason I'm still on a "reading about 16th century monarchs" kick.

And...

I've only had to renew it 32 times from the library so far!

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!

For real...

Finally though, I think I have to step up my game and finish the book. I wasn't allowed to renew the last time I was on my library account. Allegedly someone has it "on hold." Yeah, right. WHO else would try to check this book out intentionally?

Anyway, I have to finish it by April 4th, chow...

What in the world did we do before the . . .

INTERNET???!!!

I mean, what, we used to watch Laverne and Shirley and play Yahtzee?

Big whoop. You absolutely can not beat spending a night finding things like this dandy just a finger click away!

(I am getting positively itchy for "no tech" month!)

I'm not even sure how to title this . . .

Found this little creature tooling around the house today. She insisted on the vest and the glasses before our walk outside this afternoon. This is going to be one interesting gal, I tell ya. One interesting gal!

Yesterday . . .

This boy went and turned NINE!

Today we had his party.

And, what a beautiful day it was for a party.

H, his buddies, B, W & SP (got all that??) headed to the Y for most of the party and ended up back at the house for cake, ice cream and presents.

The requested cake was a chocolate caramel cake with reese's pieces on top, check!

I recall practicing piano as a kid with my tongue out like that.

Serious business, you know.

H's creative sister spent a good bit of time on this cool creation.

Love the basketball net.

And, I too, hope he had a "terrific cheesewheel!"

???????

12,730 . . .

Kind of fun trimming down the ol' iPhoto library.

Get to look through lots of pics with great memories...

Hoffmaster State Park, 2012

(um...2011, glad I have a good editor out there to help me catch things like this! (-;)

Hoffmaster, 2012 (yep...again...2011!)

Oh...12,729...

And, delete the ones that really don't need to be saved for posterity!

(-:

(Lara's creation with a remote control dinosaur and wax bendy things)

THREE TIMES . . .

I SWAM THREE TIMES THIS WEEK!!!

(training hard now for States, HA!)

That really is GIGANTIC news.

I honestly can NOT remember the last time I swam three times in one week.

Although, truthfully, I might have once this past summer and just can't remember.

I ALWAYS used to swim THREE TIMES A WEEK.

Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.

Like clockwork.

That stopped I think about three or so years ago.

Hmmm....let's reflect for a moment...Ah Ha...pregnant with BABY #5!

I won't hold it against her!

(-:

No, this is not Baby #5, but that's a pretty funny segue!

What you're about to see are pics that I intended to email people but never got around to it.

This one was for Kate. (-;

This one was for Lara.

We just did a fishtail braid for the first time this week, this looked like fun too.

This one was for Dad.

Yep, for Dad.

I thought this might have been his humor.

Well?

I guess this one was for myself because I didn't have anyone to actually send it too. I just thought it was funny and maybe if it sat on my desktop long enough I'd think of someone to send it to. Guess not. Heading to the trash right after I press "publish post" right...now!

Men Are From Mars . . .

Women aren't!

Me: "This is unbelievable."

Him: "What is?"

This would have rocked my world in another era, now..."Meh" (to borrow a "phrase" from a friend). I'm sure it'll rock some of your worlds, the mess, the sliding down the table and all...but hey, the Mars/Venus thing all works out in the end around here. And, I've been gone enough now while Mars has been in charge that I'm relatively comfortable re-entering the home to discover a table being used as a slide. No one's needed the ER on his watch................yet.

Sparkly shoes . . .

And two year old girls!

They really go together.

Crazy wigs and ten year old boys...

Umm...

I guess they go together too!

(-:

B and his buddy trying to cheer L's basketball team on to victory in today's State Championship playoffs.

Game 2 did not go so well unfortunately.

Won the first game this morning, lost the afternoon game and play tomorrow for some place other than first. It's all good though, the 7th/8th grade team hasn't even made it to State's in a looooong time (ever?, not sure)...so it's certainly a "we're very happy to be there" situation.

(Ended up 3rd out of eight, having lost only to the State Champs, yee-haw!)