Emily had a swim meet last night, her first of the summer swim season.  It was at Eagle Ridge in Raleigh, and thankfully I was not volunteering.  Of course, the benefit of volunteering is you're not bored.

Summer swim meets consist of "main events" which are scored, and "heats" which are not.  The top swimmers typically get to swim in the main events.

Emily got to participate in her first ever relay events.  She swam the backstroke leg of the medley relay for one of the Otters 7-8 girls relay teams, and her team took third place.  She also swam the anchor (4th) leg of the freestyle relay at the end of the meet, and took third place in that race as well.

In the individual events, she was in main events for both freestyle and backstroke, and in heat 1 for breaststroke and butterfly.  She finished 3rd (of 6) in freestyle, and 2nd (of 6) in backstroke, won her heat for Breaststroke, and finished 4th or 5th in Butterfly.

Overall, an excellent outing.  She had a good time, and won some place ribbons.  I'm anxiously awaiting her times to see if she set any personal bests.

So, Emily is in a year-round school.  We love it.  She goes 9 weeks then gets 3 or 4 weeks off.  Her "track" gets these 3-4 week vacations in September, December, March, and June.  It's nice because she doesn't have these long periods of time with no school, and we can take vacations when most other kids in the country are in school.  Like our trip to Disney World last September.  No lines, it was awesome.

Anyway, one of the disadvantages of the year round schedule is that there is NO room for make-up in the calendar.  When Emily tracks out for 3 weeks, another group tracks in.  The school is 100% full of chilfdren all year except the week of July 4th and the week of Christmas.

So, because school was cancelled yesterday (due to snow) and today (due to icy roads), Emily's make up dates are this SATURDAY, and Saturday, April 4.

Why April 4, you ask?  Well.... see, this is the last week of school for kids on track 2 (or 3).  Which would mean they'd have to come in for school on Saturday the 31st in the middle of their trackout.  I guess April 4th was the next available Saturday (after this Saturday) that all three current tracks will be tracked in.

Crazy.

Sorta takes the fun out of a snow day when you have to make up the date on a Saturday, doesn't it?

Last weekend, Emily participated in the RSA's Reindeer Meet.  She swam 50 yard events for freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterlfy.   She set personal bests in backstroke (1:05.76, an improvement of 1.53 seconds) and freestyle (0:59.49, an improvement of 9.51 seconds).  She got DQed again in both butterfly and breast stroke, but she's looking better.  I don't yet know the reasons for the DQs but I suspect it had something to do with her kicks.  It definately wasn't the two-hand touch this time.

We're very proud of her!

Emily participated in her second RSA swim meet, this one a dual meet between the RSA and the NCAC (North Carolina Aquatics Club).

Because she had a birthday party to attend Saturday afternoon, she was only able to swim Sunday morning, and the two events she swam in were the 50 meter Butterfly and the 50 meter Breast stroke.

As with last time, she was disqualified in the breast stroke event "only for one thing" according to her coach, and this caused Emily a great deal of excitement.

And she was *NOT* disqualified in the butterfly event, so this is the first time she's swum a legal butterfly.

I think her time was the slowest among all participants, but hey who cares!  Emily started swim lessons 9 months ago!  She can work on speed AFTER she gets her technique down.

Anyway, congratulations to Emily!

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.

Emily's last swim meet of the summer swim season is tomorrow night at Highcroft.  This will be her last opportunity to get another place ribbon, as she is once again participating in the main event for 6 and under girls backstroke.

It's unfortunate that she's missed 3 of her team's 6 meets.  She missed the third meet because she was at camp, the fourth meet she was sick, and the 5th meet she had a nasty case of swimmer's ear.  Tonight will be her first practice in a week, so hopefully she'll be ready for the meet tomorrow.

Considering that Emily could barely swim in February when we started her in the swim lessons at the YMCA, she's pretty good.  She participated in the main event for freestyle in the first two meets, and even now she's still one of the top 3 in her age group in the backstroke.

The weekend before last, she participated in the SWIM meet (Southern Wake Invitational Meet) and took 15th place in backstroke - good enough to earn points for our team.  There were about 50 6-and-under girls in that event, so we were quite proud of her.

She really enjoys swimming, so we're planning to enroll her in the YMCA's junior competitor program this fall and winter.  It's really just glorified swim lessons, more like a twice-a-week stroke clinic rather than full-blown swim team.  She's not ready for year round competition - and neither are we!

BTW, there are some pictures of the first swim meet of the year here.

So, we took Emily to the soccer fields today to learn how to ride her bike without training wheels. The nice thing abou the soccer fields is that they're grassy, but the grass is really short, and the ground is pretty hard. Not quite as painful as falling on cement, but easy enough to pedal on.

She's had her little 16" bike for quite a while now. She's not quite big enough for a 20" bike, and we want to get her good at two wheeling before we buy her a nice new 20" bike anyway, so now's the time.

Last weekend, we went for a bike ride on the American Tobacco Trail (a converted rail line, not paved, but the trail consists of screened gravel, so it's a pretty nice surface), and we rode for 3-1/2 miles. Not bad for Emily with her training wheels on, but it's tough! The training wheels really add a lot of drag.

She was pretty excited about going to the park today for practice.

It went really well too. We were there for maybe 40 minutes total, but by the end, I only had to give her a little shove to get her going, and she was riding all the way across the soccer field, and turning, and hitting the brakes to stop. She did awesome!

She did fall a few times. Nothing like I remember doing. I think I was 5 when I got my first bike. Training wheels aren't very useful when you grow up in the country, on a gravel road, with a gravel driveway, and hills in th driveway. I'm sure I started on training wheels but I don't remember them.

I do remember falling off the bike numerous times, getting scrapes on my knees and stuff. We had Emily put on jeans, and she wore knee pads and elbow pads and her helmet.

We just got back from Emily's second soccer game.  It's the first one Adrienne and I have been to because we were on vacation last week!

Emily's team sponsor is Biltmore Homes.  I think it's a little funny that we missed her first game because we were at the Biltmore Estate.

Anyway, I just published a few pictures to our Picasa photo album online.

Emily's really improving, she's much more involved in the game now, running after the ball and today she kicked the ball four times!  Biltmore Homes won again, I think the score was 4-0.  They won 6-0 last week.

Now I have to go out and do some planting.  I picked up a pair of nice fig trees at the farmer's market this morning, along with a confederate jasmine to plant by the mailbox.

It's not quite done yet, but here's a picture of Emily's new playset, designed by myself, Adrienne, and my dad.  Dad actually built it 6-8 months ago and it's been sitting in his workshop waiting for us to get approval for it.  Well, we haven't gotten approval yet but we decided to put it up anyway.

I'm actually pretty impressed at how nice it's turned out.  The very top part will have a canvas roof, and there will also be a canvas roof angling up over the area in the back that is enclosed by fence boards.  The swing is sturdy enough for even my 250 pounds to swing on.  Though I don't think I'd want anyone giving me an underdog.

I'll post a picture of the completed work after I get the canvas up and the fence boards on top.

Oh, it has a fireman's pole on the back for sliding down.  We haven't installed it yet.