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! ;)

T-ball

We're back from the beach and I'm trying to get caught up!

Arabelle played t-ball through the month of May. She really enjoyed it and did great! I took my camera to one game, so here's a few shots.

Mae was ready for this game to be over! ;)

A couple of video clips: 

After our last game, we went out for pizza with our best buddies! 

The girls sat together at their own table and thought they were so grown. :)

Play Ball!

Arabelle and Bo had their first t-ball game yesterday. They were really excited and WILD before the game.

Ready to play!!

They both did really well playing the field. They ran after the ball and got several of them!

Arabelle had a really good hit:

And so did Bo:

Here's some action in the field. I love how Bo just runs towards the plate, but doesn't actually cross the line they spray painted on the field to keep the kids back. 

No, I didn't take my good camera this time (just phone pics and video). I just wasn't feeling it yesterday after sprinting to the road to keep Bo from driving a little ride on toy into the street (He NEVER does that....I don't know what got into him!).

Thanks to Sambo for helping Jared re-direct a little out there!

Ready for t-ball!

The kids' t-ball games start next week, so we went to the ball field for a little 'practice' this morning.

They both hit the ball really well! Arabelle enjoyed running the bases, but Bo would hit the ball and run after the ball instead of running to 1st base. :)

Here's Bo in action:

And Arabelle:

Of course, we had to visit the playground after our practice:

We're excited for the first game on Monday!!

Soccer Practice

Arabelle has been taking soccer lessons the last 9 weeks (next week is the 10th and final class). She has really enjoyed it! Her cousins Rhianna and Gigi play too. :)

They usually play some soccer games to practice their skills, then have a 2 on 2 or 3 on 3 game at the end.

Arabelle was SO excited 2 weeks ago when Sambo came to watch and this last week when Mamaw and Papaw came. She made sure they watched her the entire time. Each time after she scored, she'd turn and say "I did it again!".

Think Arabelle was happy??

Let's play!

 Bo and Tripp have a lot of fun playing together too (and sharing snacks!)