10 posts tagged “swimming”
About three months ago, I did this post about Stephen's Shadow:
http://coleclan9rdfc.vox.com/library/post/stephens-shadow.html Here we are 3 months later and Sam has indeed made a drastic improvement in just this short time of training! He could not even make it across the pool without stopping but now, he makes it look SO easy. This season of swimming has shown him that he absolutely LOVES to swim, even though every workout was grueling.
Steve too has been working hard with all his different strokes and has been fairly happy with how he has improved in the butterfly! Stingrays ends for the boys next week already. The time there was quick but very beneficial. The coaches are tough but they certainly helped to train the boys to swim correctly. Steve hopes to continue training well this summer (in prep for a fall triatholon and the Grace swim team) when our neighborhood pool finally opens in two weeks as he leads his siblings in a challenging swim workout routine. I hope he isn't too tough with them?!?!
Us Coles and our Fernandez friends had a really special night at the Winter Sports Banquet at Grace Academy! We were thoroughly ecstatic when AMANDA received the most improved award for the individual who continually kept getting better and better from the first day of practice to the last meet with the most amazing amount of personal best times!
As for STEPHEN, we were overjoyed when his name was announced as the recipient of the Lion Heart Award! This award is given to the one who put the team above himself, was an encouragement to his teammates, employed consistent hard work at practice and meets and also showed increasing improvement during the season. We are so proud of him! He has really grown into the meaning of his name, "servant leader." This video is for Howard, who due to always having to work on Thursdays was unable to be there tonight....
Now that Grace Lions is over for the season, Steve and Sam have started a 3-month training stint with the Stingrays, a homeschool hour swim club down the street from us that uses the same pool that Grace did. That will take them through till May when our neighborhood pool is finally open for the season! Sam has decided that although he 'likes' basketball that it isn't a sport he wants to continue unlike his brother Chris who is learning to love it more and more. So, since big bro Steve loves swimming, he wants to learn to love it too. We shall see how he fares this Spring!
The Grace Lions season officially ended yesterday with the team having their own private meet to beat their best times for the season. This truly was a bunch of neat teens; very encouraging and inclusive of one another from 7th to 12th grade. The Coach was also a big hit with the students, truly an "awesome" man and very inspiring!
The other four Cole kids were able to help time by pressing a button in case the touch pads failed and had fun contributing to the meet. Afterward, the whole crew was treated to a free dinner at one of the swimmer's family restaurant in Charlotte. What a treat!
Here's Steve swimming his leg of the 200 IM relay against two very elite schools in the area. They came in 3rd out of 5. One of their regular team swimmers was unable to swim so in light of this, they were happy with their performance!
Yesterday had three pretty significant events occur!
Take One...
We had our Christmas party with a group of families from church who have become very dear to ours over this past year as we met monthly just to fellowship and mutually encourage one another not as couples or just kids but as families. This has especially been important as our church family continues to expand and you can sometimes feel disconnected from the mass of people. Meeting with a few families regularly has kept us feeling a bit more plugged into Church of the Redeemer. Here's a photo from toddler to teen playing the draydle (sp?) game together after which we sang Christmas carols and of course ate lots of yummy treats.
Take Two....
Stephen had his first meet with his Grace Swim team and for their first year together, they did a fantastic job competing. He beat his personal time in his specialty stroke, the 100 breaststroke. His relay team of 4 guys came in 3rd in the 200 IM medley where Steve swam the breaststroke and 2nd in the 400 free relay! The other videos we taped were too large to upload so we'll try to get one next time of him breaststroking but for now, here is Steve in the 50m free. He's the guy towards the top of the screen with the blue cap.
The team has bonded pretty well over the
past month of daily practices. This is a great bunch of students who are very encouraging towards each other. After the meet they celebrated by having the buffet at 9 at night. Steve ate and ate and ate. All that hard swimming sure works up an appetite.
Take Three....
While I was at the swim meet with Stephen, the younger three kiddos had their Christmas piano recital. Since it was Sam's first one, we wanted to highlight him tonight! We are proud of the progress he has made in just 3 months of lessons. The other two did super as well.
My older 3 kiddos wished that Club H2O in California would have thought about this concept for when they HAD to swim in the outdoor pool during the winter. The concept of "a bubble" over an outdoor pool. Since it gets much colder here, there would be no winter swimming out here without it! It was freezing last week when it wasn't up yet and of course the weather this week has been in the 70's. Ironic.
This is how it looks on the inside. It is warm and cozy in there and if anyone walks by and hits the bubble from the interior or exterior, all the condensation from the top will fall off and it feels like it is raining!
Other random shots and news:
- Uncle Matt was accepted at the group home in Asheville and the Coles Sr.'s are thankful. They are hoping he transtions well when he goes in 2 weeks and that it will be the necessary stepping stone to get him into the Marshville home that is only 30 minutes away in the future.
- The photos on the right are ones of Chris and Paige trying to strengthen certain muscles during a co-op day on nutrition and exercise. Check out Chris's funny face! They were competing on who could stay in this position the longest and
he won(Paige just informed me that she won)
The older Cole kids and Fernandii gals did some pool competitions at the local Y today. We're back to our normal Spring weather over here in the low 80's with a nice breeze so it was a little cooler than usual to swim but they went anyway! It was a good break with all the packing havoc going on at our place and the unpacking frenzy that our friends were doing having just come back from their time away. We were kind of crossing paths before we head off in different directions again.
OUR NEXT POST! Hopefully, Washington D.C.!
The kids have been swimming since about 3. Howard and I maybe have had one unofficial swim lesson in our lives meaning we don't swim well unless you count the doggie paddle as swimming. We hit the pool again this morning with an agenda in mind. It is Stephen's goal to get his dad to do 250 yards (10 laps) of straight laps without drowning himself. I think it's going to be a bit harder than we thought but they had a great start anyway. The video on the right shows a bit of the rocky start but that is how it is with many things we train for, right? Always difficult in the beginning stages, but with determination, hard work and God's grace, hopefully a tad bit easier to do each time.
It's Jonah's FIRST birthday in IDAHO! Hope you had a great 4th birthday Jonah Cole Hussey! ( We really love his middle name :o) We missed celebrating with you! We hope you have many more years to be the bright, cheery boy that adds much spark to the Hussey family (as you can see from all his photos in the smilebox).
As the title suggests....
We took our FIRST (the 3 guys anyway) swim at the pool yesterday! VERDICT was that it is still TOO COLD. "Ice cold" to quote Chris and Sam. They can't wait for it to warm up just a bit more so they can be "fishies" all summer long.
We paddleboated with the cousins for the FIRST time this season at a lake real close to us! It was such a spectacularly perfect Spring day, I wish I could have captured it. (It won't be our last though so we'll remember to bring the camera next time). It did start to get very breezy toward the end of our hour and we were peddling hard against the wind. We got out just in time because a couple of hours later, it started to rain.
