Oh, What Do You Do in the Summertime?

I just love summer.  I love the break from homework and deadlines and expectations.  I love the heat and the downtime and the long days, and late nights.  I love the opportunity to spend time with family in a fun and unstructured way.  But still, we manage to stay pretty darn busy all summer long.

So, what do we do in the summer time?  We do jobs, and workbooks, work on learning some life skills (See Merrillee Boyack's The Parenting Breakthrough), we sit in the hammock and read, we play games, we go boating, we play with cousins, we eat snowcones, popsicles and ice cream cones, and this year at least, we watch the Olympic Trials. But most of all, what we do in the summer time is swim, swim , swim!

Every morning during the week the older kids practice with the swim team.  And then once or (more often) twice a week, we go back to the pool in the afternoon/evening for swim meets.  It is really fun to see how the kids have improved from year to year.  And it's fun to be on  a swim team that wins most of i's meets.  ( I think 13 of the last 14 years we have placed first in the Country Club League.  In 2010 we placed 2nd.  So, not too shabby.)

Samantha on the blocks.  It wasn't too long ago, (OK, a few years, but still) that she couldn't even dive off the blocks, but now she gets up there like a pro and just dives in...

 ...and swims whatever stroke is required.

 The girls really seem to enjoy swim team.  (Jonas only goes by force.  He's all about water polo but doesn't really dig the whole swimming laps thing.)

Samantha checking out some of the competition.

 And a big smile for the camera.

 Amelia lining up for her turn to swim.

 Amelia ready to start backstroke.

 Samantha ready for backstroke.  Swimmers, take your marks!

Go!

I was a little slow with the camera on Amelia's dive, but thought it was funny to just catch her feet before they went under water.

Samantha's dives have improved so much over the past couple of years.  She's always hoping for me to get a good shot of her diving.

You would think after all that time in the water, they would be ready to go home.  But no.  I always have to beg them to get out of the shower so we can leave.

A lot of days, it feels like we spend more time at the pool than at home, but the girls at least, don't seem to mind.

Amelia's been enjoying wearing Shawn's ironman cap.  (Yeah, somehow, he was the only one at Boise that ended up with the Kansas cap.  I suppose someone in Kansas ended up with the missing Boise cap.)

And if you're not ready for swim team, then you have to spend some time in swimming lessons.

So, yeah, we spend a lot of time at the pool.

We still find a little time for other things - reading being pretty high on the list for everyone.

And we even managed to fit in a movie with the cousins last week.

Brave.  And other than a few scary-ish parts for the little girls, everyone loved it.

Occasionally, we even find time to swim just for fun.

And sometimes, we are just busy saving the world or practicing flying.

Being a superhero has become a more regular occurrence lately.

And just in case you get tired of watching your older siblings swimming all the time, you can always find some dirt to play in.  (He was so filthy I really didn't even want to put him in the car, but he had a great time.)

So, what do you do in the summertime?