Long Time ~ No Blog!

The last weekend in July marked the beginning of the end of summer. . . it was the conference swim meet for the kids. They all had a great summer! ~and a lot of fun!! Mason went undefeated in all his individual races the entire summer until the very last race at the conference meet. He lost by less than 1/2 second in the 50 yd. backstroke, his very last race of the summer! We are proud of all three of the kids and how hard they all worked this summer at their swim practices. Saturday night of conference weekend, the kids got all cleaned up for the massive dinner/dance for the approx. 400 plus swimmers attending the conference meet. We all had a great weekend. It's sad to realize that in less than two weeks the kids will be back to school. I think I dread the homework as much as they do! And I hate that the school gets my kids for more hours of the day than I do!

Last week, we also had our dear friends, from Colorado the Chelf clan, come to visit with their three kids, for almost a week. The time flew by too quickly ~ but we had lots of fun times - documented by photos, of coarse, to cement our memories of their stay. We hung out in Decatur for the first 3-4 days, spending lots of time at the pool and just visiting. Then we ventured to my Aunt and Uncle's lake home (or should I say lodge) on Lake Sara in Effingham. There, we went boating, tubing, knee-boarding, jumped on the water trampoline & off the boat dock, grilled out and did some more visiting. The kids are like one big family when they are together. We are blessed to have such great friends!

To end our crazy busy past couple of weeks, we headed to Chicago for the state swim meet last weekend. Mason had qualified to a couple of events. We only made it to Chicago for one, the 50 yd. breast stroke. He did well, finishing 17th out of 46 boys in his event. The top 16 went to finals Sat. night - Mason was 1 away from the finals. He was disappointed ~ but we were very pleased with his efforts! We spent the weekend in Chicago hitting all the end of summer sales getting some school clothes. We also were able to attend church at the Wheaton College Church on Sunday. It was a wonderful service and a great campus. Hope all is well with all of you out there. Sorry we've been so busy the last few weeks. We hope to catch up with all of you very soon!