June Sports

Let's get this summer started! Play ball! We took in a Space Cowboys (formerly Skeeters) game in Sugar Land. Aunt Jenn and Addie came too. Addie spent a lot of time at the splash pad and playground, like we did last time, but the big kids are too big now. 😢

As usual, the neighborhood swim team dominates our calendar in May and June. This season we were downgraded from Division I to III, and it was a much better fit. We ended with a record of 2-2. Both kids made the team pic this year. Owen is on the back row on the right, and Hadley is directly below him 3 rows down.

The kids' favorite part of swim team is hanging out with their friends. These boys have been swimming together for years, although O and Jonathan moved up to 13-14 this year, while the rest got to swim in 11-12 again. Owen held his own as a 13 year-old swimming against 14 year-olds, some of whom definitely had a year of high school swimming under their belt!

Here's Owen with an exciting freestyle win. He's in Lane 4. Although he improved on all of his times from last year, his best stroke is still his breaststroke, for which he got to swim in the top medley relay a few times. He made it to Meet of Champs in the free (33.2s), breast (39.8s), and butterfly (40.97s) and finished with personal bests in all of them.

And here's Hadley with a beautiful backstroke in Lane 5. She swam the backstroke leg in the medley relays. Hadley improved in all of her times too, but just missed swimming the breaststroke and butterfly for 3 of the meets again. She did get to swim them in our last meet, and made it to Meet of Champs for freestyle (18.61s), but her goggles popped off when she dove in, which really threw her off in the saltwater pool.

We got whaled! Cute fundraiser for the team and a great photo op.

This seems like it was probably our last year of swim team. Both kids said something to that effect. Owen's friends are choosing other sports to focus on, and he doesn't like swim enough to focus on it without them. Hadley was frustrated that she couldn't get a blue ribbon every time. It's been a fantastic way for them to become strong swimmers, but we probably won't miss sweating during 7-hour swim meets and satisfying our 5 volunteer requirements every summer.

I'll leave swimming with our annual picture with our ribbons and medals. We swam in larger pools this year, due to changing divisions (down to Division 3 this year), so we had an interesting spread of colors, all the way up to 7th or 8th place (Heat 1 usually 😅). 

In other news, Owen is biking with neighborhood boys to the Mustang Athletic Camp 4 days a week throughout the summer. It's a Strength and Conditioning camp (Comprised of outside conditioning, weight room, and football skills) at the high school they'll go to in a year (!) and Junior High is from 12-2pm.🌞 Hot and sweaty time! But he loves it! 

To round out the month, Hadley tried out a tennis camp for a couple of weeks. She enjoyed practicing the 7 different strokes and might take some more tennis lessons down the road.

Okay, it's not sports, but the window installers got quite a workout, replacing 24 windows on the front of our house. You can see the old (top) with solar screens and the new double-panes (bottom) on the left. On the right is the makeshift scaffolding they put in place to replace the big window above the front door. Yikes!

And voila! The final product - double-paned windows just in time for our record heat wave! I definitely don't feel heat seeping in around the edges anymore. (We just have to figure out how to put the solar screens back on without using screws.)