Since I haven't blogged in ages, you may not know that my daughter Emily is swimming with the Raleigh Swim Association (www.swimrsa.org) and this weekend was her first big swim meet.

In summer swim league, she swam with the 6-and-under group, and her races were only 15 yards.  And that age group did not do Butterfly.

In this meet, she was swimming in the "12 and under" age group.  The races were 50 meters  (across the pool and back again), and she did all four strokes!  50 meters is a VERY long race for her. All we really wanted was to see her finish all four races.  Which she did.

There were very few 6 year olds entered in this event.  There were only 2 six year olds (and zero 7 year olds) entered in the 50 meter butterfly! 

Anyway, we were super proud of her.  The results haven't come out yet, but I think she came in dead last in 3 of the strokes and was disqualified for improper strokes in freestyle, but now she's at least got a seed time so she'll know next time if she sets a personal best.  She's competing against herself and not the other swimmers at this point.

She really had a good time, once the initial nervousnous wore off, and we asked her if she wanted to swim in the next meet in a few weeks, and she said she does.

Get out and vote.

I voted Saturday afternoon while Emily was at a birthday party.  Went down to the one stop voting location in Holly Springs.  There was no line, and I was in and out in no time.

IF you want information on early voting... even if you're NOT a Barack Obama Supporter, you can get the information you need by going to XX.barackobama.com where XX is your state abbreviation.  Ie, I went to http://nc.barackobama.com/ and clicked on the "North Carolina One Stop Early Voting" link.

I voted for THREE different parties in this year's election.