Baby Babbles: July 2016

Sunday, July 17, 2016

District and State Swim Meets 2016

The district swim meet was in Douglas on Thursday, July 7th and the state swim meet was in Tifton on Friday, July 15th. To qualify for state, you had to place in the top 3 at district. For the state meet, you had to place in the top 8 in the prelims to qualify for finals.

Some of the younger kids:

There were 5 age groups swimming, so the meet took several hours with lots of time between Arabelle's events, so there was plenty of time for card games with friends.

Arabelle is there ready to dive in to the left of the metal pole. This was their freestyle relay. They took first place in both relays!

Diving in!

Results-

50 yard freestyle:

Medley Relay:

Arabelle and Lily became fast friends this season:

She swam the backstroke all year until the last regular swim meet, when they were trying to sort out who was swimming which stroke in the medley relay. They put her in the butterfly and she did great, so she swam that at district also and took 2nd place!

Freestyle pics:

Douglas Stingrays won district for the 13th year in a row!

Papaw and Mamaw, Jared, and Sambo made it to the district swim meet to see all her races. She was so proud!

The 7-8 and 9-10 year olds swam on Friday the 15th in Tifton. They have a parade of swimmers before the meet starts and we had a superhero theme this year.

Arabelle and her new friend Peyton, before the parade:

Her 50 yard freestyle was first, so she had to have some of Papaw's watermelon for a snack right after.

She placed 4th in the prelims! Here is the video for the 50 yard freestyle race. She is in the lane 2nd from the right. As you can see, she cut 4 seconds off her district meet time!

Ready to go for the 25 yd butterfly:

Here is the video of her 25 yd. butterfly in the prelims. She had a slow start and got 6th in her heat, but her time was 8th overall, so she qualified for finals. She was really surprised to see that when the times were posted!

They easily qualified for the finals in the 100 yd medley relay and 100 yd freestyle relay. I didn't get a video of those. Their winning district time for the freestyle relay was 1:21 and their prelim time was 1:13!! They FLEW that time and was seeded first for finals.

We had a break from 11:45 until the next warm up time at 2:45, so we went out to eat with Lily's family.

They swam one length of the pool at the warm up before they made them get out because of lightning in the area. Soon after 3:30, they called the first event and rushed them up there to get going.

50 yd freestyle finals video. She placed 5th!

25 yd butterfly final video. She had another slow start, but swam a great time! She placed 8th. If you notice, she was the only 7 year old in the finals and also was ahead of all other 7 year olds in the 50 free, so next year is looking promising. ;)

The girls placed 3rd in the 100 yd medley relay and knocked 3 seconds off their best time!

The girls were seeded first, but knew they would have a close race with Oconee County. It was a really fun race to watch and the girls came away with 2nd place with another really good time!

100 yard freestyle relay video

So proud of her medals!

Relay girls:

Arabelle had a great first year on the Douglas Stingrays and is so sad that it's over. She impressed us all with how quickly she picked up the strokes and improved her times each meet. So proud of all her hard work and we look forward to next year!

*I know she can't hear me cheering for her while she swims, but I just can't help it! ;)

Saturday, July 9, 2016

Mini Moments--Catching Up

So it's been weeks since I've posted new pictures. Sorry! Between swim team meets and practices and keeping up with four active kids and all that's involved in that, I'm always ready to crash when they go to bed.

Arabelle was a great help when Zeke was in his splint. We had some long, rough days!

One day was especially long, so we left for swim practice early and got some ice cream. We all needed a treat that day!

Father's Day pictures. Some people were a little grumpy about having a picture made (ahem....Bo).

Zeke was excited to ride Papaw's ranger when we visited on Father's Day weekend:

Watching the watermelons get their 'bath'. Lots of personality going on here:

Mae says she's ready to go to Disney World. :)

Jared had a judges conference at Sea Island, so we loaded up and spent a couple of days on St. Simon's Island. The first day we went to the pool and splash area at the park there. We had a picnic lunch and played for several hours. It was a lot of fun!

Zeke got his splint off the day before, so that really worked out well for the trip.

The kids loved climbing on all the big old trees there.

Back on a slide again!

We ate at Mellow Mushroom for supper that first night....delicious!

After the little ones went to bed, I took the big kids to the beach.

Alyssa came with us (of course!) since Jared was in conferences all day. We played games and went to the condo pool the second day (and the walk in clinic for an ear infection for Arabelle).

Then we did a picnic supper and played on the beach that evening.

It was a fun little get away!

Zeke can climb up on the sofa now and he thinks he's a big boy.

Two headed monster:

Arabelle, Bo, and I were playing Headbands the other day. You ask questions and try to figure out what your card is. I asked them, "Am I a vegetable?" and Bo said, "Uhhhh, is corn a vegetable?". Ha!

Bo had been sick for a week and I finally took him to the Dr and he had an ear infection also (but wasn't really complaining of ear pain). Smallest to tallest!