Chlorine Is His Cologne

Have I ever mentioned how cool my siblings are?  I mean, seriously!  Taylor is like the hot shot on campus, Austin is freakin smart and knows exactly what he wants, and Katie...well, you know all about her.  And to top it off, they are all on the Student Council.  So everyone knows them, everyone loves them, and they all love each other.  It's so much fun to hear their stories from school: guess who I saw today!!  ...and they were all, ya know your the only freshman I talk to.  your cool.  Or Austin talks about how most of the people he talks to and sits with at lunch are the seniors.  I think Taylor really enjoys the whole school (teachers included) referring to Austin and Katie as "related to Taylor."  Apparently, Taylor is known at school as "Webb" or "T Webb" Austin as "little Webb" or "little T Webb" and Katie as "little little Webb" or "little little T Webb".

So about Taylor.  He is a star swim champ.  A new High School in the area opened up this year and any junior or senior who wanted to go it, could.  So most of Timberview's swim team switched over to Lake Ridge.  The entire senior class at Lake Ridge is maybe 300 at most.  I think I remember Taylor saying something like 240 seniors.  And 12 of them are swimmers.  It's soo cool because this makes the most well-known kids on campus the swimmers.

Anyway, so districts was this last weekend and Lake Ridge made it to Regionals!!

But let me back up about three days.  The swim team began this journey by tapering.  Which basically means they didn't lift a finger for the whole week.  Besides going to school, coach tells them to sit around and do nothing.  Even at school --  they take the elevator.  Can you believe it??

Day of districts.  Practice starts at 4.  His two races begin at 6.

A good family friend of ours was afraid he wasn't going to do so well in one of his races then he took first.  Another family friend just plain out rocks.

As for Taylor.  Just amazing.  He did so well!!  As proven by the following pictures.

And just to note: Lake Ridge made it to Regionals as did a select few including Taylor and our two family friends.

Congratulations!!

Cleaning-The-Garage-Saturday

I forgot how much fun a cleaning-the-garage-Saturday could be.  Dad starts early in the morning -- blasting his country music.  Of course I hardly do any of the work.  Rather, I find "old" things and oogle over them.  Some times it's pictures that we haven't seen for years and other times it's the softball bat dad bought me junior year of High School because I said I wanted to try out.  Even though I never did, my ambition brought the family closer in ways we never expected...

I remember some Saturdays we would spend a good few hours at the park down the road playing catch and hitting.  And it wasn't just me and dad.  Taylor, Austin, and Katie would join and we would laugh and have such a great time.  Dad always "worried" about hitting the ball too hard, hitting it into the forest that touched the park.  We would indulge him and stand on the edge of the forest then jet forward in an attempt to catch the flying ball that only made it about half way to forest edge.  He would run run run claiming a "HOMERUN!"  Katie would only hit.  Don't even bother asking her to catch or throw; it wasn't her thing.  She fancied the swing where she cheered us all on.  Taylor and Austin were good.  They tried to out do dad every time.  And though they came close, dad is still our farthest hitter and thrower.  Maybe now things have changed...

Today was a whole different story.  We didn't even make it to the park and we were missing half the gang.  Katie was at color guard practice (follows after me!) and Taylor was preparing for Districts.  So Austin and I did our best while dad cut off branches that he was sure needed to be "trimmed" off.  Afterwards, he thought the tree looked a little bare on the left side (or right side or however you looked at it).  Dad taught me how to catch again.  That's how bad I had gotten.  I was pretty okay in High School but things have changed since then. A lot apparently.