Third Book

I did finished my third book in September. The Cycle Trilogy is now complete, and if anyone wants some
holiday reading, you may find them here.

It is neat having THREE books on my shelf, although it is not like I have been so prolific that we are running out of room...

Perhaps I will write another one at some point...

Summer Fun

As always, we had a lot of summer fun on the water. We took the wave runners out a few times.

Bode is quite the daredevil.

Here is a good one of Bode and Ashley.

The dogs always like the time on the beach.

Here is a close up of the big girl.

We also had the threat of weather a couple times. We did put our storm shutters up for one of the hurricanes--better safe than sorry.

The water rose a little, but nothing that caused any real damage.

I wish I had more exciting things from the summer; Ashley has a bunch more photos on her phone, but I have gotten to the point where I just write those off--it's like they are in a black hole :-)

25th Anniversary

In September, Ashley and I celebrated ONE QUARTER OF A CENTURY of marriage. It is hard to believe we have been married for that long. I guess time flies when you are having fun. To celebrate, we went to an Auburn football game, and we also left Bode at home (he couldn't miss swim practice, and he is not a huge football fan, which makes Ashley wonder if he really is her child).

We spared no expense for our special trip. We stayed at a nice hotel, which happened to be the same hotel the Auburn football team was staying at, so we got to see some players wandering around the hotel. We had a nice room with a lovely view.

On game day, we went on a tour of the Auburn football facility. Ashely was in heaven and asked if she could move it. They have their hardware on display...

and have a pretty nice indoor practice facility.

They also have some graphic artist that does some type of imagery of the upcoming opponent. Auburn was playing the Bulldogs, so they had this imagery all through the building.

Before the game, we found the radio crew and got a picture. In the background are Ronnie Brown and Jason Campbell, stars from Auburn's 2004 undefeated team.

Because it was our anniversary, we paid for an on-field experience before the game. It was very cool to be on the field so close to the players. I felt like a dwarf.

I took some quick videos.

When the fans are screaming, it is very noisy.

We managed to get this picture. We like it because it looks like we are the only ones on the field and everyone is cheering for us.

We had a great time at the game. Auburn won, and you can't say that about a whole lot of Auburn's games this year :-( But we will still cheer them on the rest of the year, although we are excited about basketball season--Auburn is ranked in the Top 5!!!

Post State Fun

Following the state swim meet, a number of folks headed down to Orlando for some fun. We did Universal Studios and ate too much food. Here is a good shot of the three of us.

On one of the days, some folks and the boys went out to a hamburger joint where they did the Double D challenge.

Four of the boys successfully completed the challenge, with Bode having the fastest time, eating the burger in 6 minutes, 30 seconds.

They all got free t-shirts. Note the four boys that completed the challenge are also the four boys that swam on the Medley relay team.

On Saturday, the boys went to Sea World (Ashley and I stayed at Universal and did that park). Alice (Eric's mother) sent me some good pictures.

Bode said they got soaked on the water ride.

We all got to the park early Sunday morning and did Hagrid's motorcycle ride (the boys aren't in this picture because they were further behind us). I almost accidentally blocked Ashley out of the picture.

We got "lunch" at this candy store. We ordered a sampler of milkshakes which were amazingly good but simply too much food for us.

Sunday night, Alice and Dave (Eric's parents) took the boys to an Orlando Magic game.

We have other pictures from Orlando, but this is probably enough. We had a wonderful time and got home today. Bode and I return to school tomorrow while Ashley has to travel to DC this week, so I guess our little vacation is over :-( Happy Vet's Day to all.

State Swim Meet

 The state swim meet was this past weekend. All our boys swam PRs in their individual events, but we just missed making the finals in them with the exception of Jachym; he made the 100-breast stroke final and got sixth (he is awesome at this stroke).

Bode ended up 18th overall in the butterfly, just missing the B-final by a few tenths of a second.

He was a little bummed because he thinks he can break the elusive 53 second barrier. Bode also swam on the 4x100 freestyle relay. The team qualified 14th, so they made the B-final. However, the boys weren't all that concerned about their place in this relay, so two of the boys graciously gave up their spots and let our two alternates swim (Jaicob and Zack Radka traveled to the meet as alternates and would not have swum had Eric and Zach Smith not done this). Bode swam the lead-off leg of this relay and he smashed his personal best by almost 1.5 seconds coming in at 48.79. He was stoked because he now has an SES cut in the 100 fly and 100 free and two bonus cuts in the 200 fly and 200 free.

But the main event was the 200 Medley Relay. The teams swim preliminaries in the morning, and we qualified in fourth place. The finals were in the evening, and we knew we had to swim fast. Below is a move. Eric swims our backstroke (the first leg). The boy next to him is Ethan Ekk. Ethan is going to Stanford next fall. His best stroke is the 200-back, and he was in the top 8 in the WORLDs in this stroke. This is why he gets such a huge lead on the field. Note we also couldn't get down on the pool deck to cheer them on. Sarah took this video, and Ashley and I were not near her wish is why you don't hear us in the video.

Here is a better, wider-angled view of the same race.

You can see the boys throw up their arms at the end because the scoreboard showed them in THIRD PLACE!!! Even better was beating the dreaded Niceville team :-)

There is even a medal ceremony.

Here is a close up shot.

Below is a shot of the whole team on the deck.

We also took some post-meet pics. Note the boys 4x50 relay team took 6th in the state, so they also medaled.

And we have to finish with three proud moms...

We stayed in Orlando for a few days after the meet. I'll post some of those pics in a separate post.

Regional Swim

Yes, I haven't posted since June. This is quite a drought, and I really don't know why I have not posted. I can't claim that I have been swamped or anything like that. Life has been pretty good, and I hope to start posting with my usual frequency.

To make up for my lack of posts, I will post of bunch of separate items that summarize the past few months. Ideally, this would be in some type of chronological order, but I am not that organized with my pictures. Thus, I will focus on the most recent (and exciting) events, and then go back in time to publish some things.

The high school swim season officially ended this past Friday. Bode had a great season, but I won't spoil the ending. The Choctaw boys had a strong team this year, but things were made harder because every two years, the Florida High School Athletic Association reclassifies all schools via divisions. We have been in 2A for a number of years. This past summer, we were put into 3A (I looked at the final results, and we were basically one or two schools above the cut line). The swimmers in 2A aren't necessarily faster--it is just that there are more people in the schools, so the number of swimmers near the top is denser than 2A.

We also found out Choctaw is now swimming in one of the strongest regions. Thus, we were somewhat anxious going into the regional meet (and swimmers have to swim well at regionals to qualify for state).

Bode swam the 200 free and finished 14th in the region with a personal best time of 1:48.82.

He also swam the 100-butterfly and finished 9th in the region.

He missed qualifying for state in the 200-free by a few tenths of a second. I think he was 27th overall, and they take the top 24. He did qualify 20th in the 100-fly, so he was excited about that.

Where the Choctaw team excels is in the 200 Medley relay. Going into the season, the boys thought they could be in the top-8 in state (maybe higher) because they had four strong swimmers. Below is a movie of the regional medley relay final.

At the start of the video, Choctaw is in the third land from the left. Bode swims the third leg. I don't think you can tell by the video but Choctaw finished second in this region!!! What's even better is they beat Niceville, a much larger school in our area :-)

After the meet, we took some pictures. First is a good shot of the team.

Next is a good shot of Bode and me.

Finally a good one of Bode with Coach Jasson and the Fathead Ashley got made.

We were very excited with the regional result, but we were also very nervous about the state meet. Stay tuned!