Mercury and Evinrude

After a weekend of swim meet I am exhausted, and I can't imagine how tired the girls must be. Just sitting in the heat of the pool for two days straight and helping organize little people and timers made me feel like I was the one who swam. My poor girls dealt with shivering, swimming and the chaos that goes along with it, and they had to go to school as normal today. I expect a lot of them.

We have now given the girls new nicknames, not that either of them likes them, but Mercury and Evinrude appear to be appropriate after the weekend they had. Can you guess why we chose those names?

Both girls had awesome swims this weekend, and both had swims that took them out of their comfort zone. Meaning, both girls begged me to let them scratch at least one event, and I, being an evil and horrible meanie, said no. Miss 10 swam a 200 IM (50 butterfly, 50 back, 50 breast and 50 free all in one race) and Miss 15 had to swim the 100 breast, which strains her former surgery incisions and makes her legs shake. Both took 2nd in each of those events. Hooray! They also swam events that they did incredibly well in. They will both bring home 10 different placing ribbons, including at least one first for each of them. Miss 10 being the anchor of a relay that won them the race and Miss 15 taking first in a backstroke event while suffering through yet another "heart spell" followed by a quick run to the bathroom to revisit her lunch, still, took first! Whoo! She was fine by the way, she blames her heart when that happens, I blame her nerves, whatever it was she was swimming and eating again within moments.

Both girls also were able to place ahead of rivals who they have never beat before, so they were excited. I was just happy they were happy, I really don't care where they place. But still, tears to see them cheering for themselves.

This week we have a fundraiser where each child is asked to swim 200 lengths or two hours. So back to the pool I will go to count lengths. Then Sunday, yet another swim meet. Then we are off until the State meet in March, where both girls have now qualified many events. Sigh... swim season goes on forever!