Ash for Secretary

 Ashleigh is running for Student Council Secretary.  Her speech and the voting are tomorrow.  There are five other students running against her.  She has given it her best shot, so we will have our fingers crossed tonight.  She had students tell her that if she made them one of these shirts, they would wear it for her.  She said some of the students who told her this were kids she didn't know very well.  Let's hope this makes them want to vote for her.  Her speech is really sweet, so I hope it goes well for her.

 These were her campaign posters.  It only took us 3 hours and that was with a ton of help from my paper/vinyl cutter.  She's worth it though ;-)

Swim Lessons

 A brand new swimming school just opened last week, so we bought a Groupon to try it out.  It is amazing!  The pool is a mix of sea salt and chlorine which helps the kids float a little and is much better on their hair and skin.  The pool is very warm as well as the changing rooms.  Since the pool just opened they do not have a lot of customers yet, so we are getting private lessons at the group lesson rate!

 They have tailored the whole place to kids.  They have thought of everything to make learning to swim easier.  If only we could afford to go year round!

 This is Dallin swimming!!!!  Really swimming!!!  He does have a small float pack on his back, but he has his face in the water and is moving his legs and arms.  This was the first lesson!!  Not only do they have an instructor in the water teaching them, but they also have a teacher out of the water grading them.  They receive a progress report after every single class.  It is incredible.

 It's hard to tell, but this Owen in the "kid car wash".  They get sprayed on with warm water before and after they enter/exit the pool.  It was hard to get both of them out of it.

Owen is learning the correct form for the strokes he already knows and is picking up the back stroke. He has been unable to do a back float even after two summers of swim lessons, but after just one swim lesson here, he was floating!!  They have a special flotation device to help him learn and it's a miracle worker!  Stay tuned for their progress updates!

A few weeks into his lessons, Owen got to wear flippers during his lesson.  He loved this!

Cross Country Races

 Our school district offers a few cross country races for the elementary students each fall.  Ashleigh has participated in them in the past, and this year Owen was ready to give it a try.  They really have no experience running and neither one prepared for the races ahead of time.  Although if you ask Owen, he will tell you he trained - he ran around the 1/2 mile block one time before the last race and does a few push-ups now and then.  He was confident that he would win his age category.

 Ashleigh did a great job considering she didn't train for the race ahead of time and how cold it was.  She ran 1 1/2 miles in 13 minutes. She ran the whole time though, which was an improvement over last year.  It was was miserably cold and it was very early on a Saturday morning when they would both normally still be sleeping, so I was very proud of them for trying so hard.

 Owen was a trooper.  This course went through a very wooded area, so I could not see him for half the race.  As I started to see kids finally exiting the woods, I began looking for my kiddos.  Kid after kid passed by and still no Ashleigh or Owen.  Those were the super fast kids though because all of a sudden there was Ashleigh and only 10 seconds behind her was Owen!!  I could not believe it.  That kid was running his heart out.  I have never seen him try at anything so hard in my life.  I started screaming at him just as he slowed to walk.  He quickly picked his pace back up and ran again.  He had only 1/4 mile left at that point.  I cut across the field and kept cheering him on.  The poor kid was dying, but then he saw the finish line.  This is him above just about to cross the finish line.  He crossed just 25 seconds after Ashleigh!  Amazing!

Owen came in 5th for his age group, which meant he didn't get a medal, but he was okay with that. He rocks!

 This was the first race they ran together two weeks before the final race last weekend.  The first race was only 1 mile and they both ran it in 8 minutes.  Owen ran the whole time and kept right up with Ashleigh despite never running any distance before and being hot in his sweat pants.  They were both awesome!

They awarded medals at this race to the first 15 boys and the first 15 girls, regardless of age.  We thought we had a good shot at winning one since there were only about 80 kids running.  Ashleigh placed 5th, but Owen was 17th, so he just missed a medal.  He was definitely disappointed until we talked about who the first 16 finishers were.  They were all 5th and 6th graders.  He would have won first place if they had awarded by age group.  We will get it next time!