Summer PE - Swim, swim, swim!!

Another summer of swim lessons has come to a close. My children are disappointed and my husband and I are disappointed, too. I think we must have the best swimming teacher in the whole world! What will the children do each Monday and Wednesday from now on..... SCHOOL, I guess!

Miss Betsie has been giving lessons to children in our area for almost twenty years. For the past two summers Miss B and GMan have been refining their swimming skills. Miss B is on a synchronized swim team with Miss Betsie and GMan takes regular swimming lessons.

I'm so proud of what they accomplished this year. GMan was wearing floaties last year and afraid to go in the deep end. This year he dives from the board, swims the full length of the pool and gets dive sticks from the bottom of the deep end. What a vast improvement!

Miss B worked very very hard on her synchronized swimming team this summer. She is getting lots better at diving, and does front and back flips in the pool - plus it's difficult to "synchronize" with everyone else. I love it that she has to really listen and pay attention at each practice to succeed. Work can be FUN!

We already signed up for next summer's lessons - that's how popular this teacher is. You have to reserve your spot a year ahead to get in! I count this as another one of our many blessings!

The Kitchen Helper

It's back to a "normal" schedule in our house these days. Last week we were in upstate New York having a wonderful vacation, so coming back to reality has been a little difficult. All of the local school children returned to school yesterday, so it seemed appropriate that we begin our schedule as well. My big goal this year is to try to RELAX and not be so hard on myself. But, I digress....

One of the ways I'm trying to make my life is easier is by getting some help in the kitchen at dinnertime. With a nine and five year old this shouldn't be too hard, right? I found that once dinner was put on the table I was feeling a little resentful - because my kids were sitting on the sofa watching tv and then when daddy came home everyone would come to the table and nine times out of ten the kids complained about what was for dinner. That made me sooooo mad!

I've started having the kids trade nights as the "kitchen helper". In their daily chore pockets (I will post more on that later) I created a card that says "kitchen helper". The child who has the night off is welcome to watch tv, play the Wii, or just in general enjoy their free time. Last night my daughter, Miss B was my kitchen helper. Tacos were on the menu, so I knew this would be pretty easy for her to help with.

She loves a "project", so she decided dinner would be a party for daddy. After she set the table, she gave everyone a few silly bands to wear -- notice that the ones for dad correlate with his interests.

She helped me with all the taco preparations, and also fed the dog (I really don't like that job - I don't know why!).

While she and I were having some time together in the kitchen, my son had been sitting in the front yard with his ball and glove waiting for daddy to get home. Once dad got home, they threw the ball until we called them in for dinner. My daughter had such pride in her dinner, and there were no complaints!! After dinner she was responsible for helping me clean up. It's amazing how fast it can go when you have help.
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