summer trip to tennessee

Back in June we took a week long trip to Tennessee. We hung out with family, did some fun day things with the kids, and had an adults only white water rafting day. I didn't take a ton of pictures while we were there, but I always manage to get some classic shots. Like this one at Firehouse Subs. 

Let's not forget the tour of the Mayfield Dairy plant where you are required to wear these fancy hairnets.

Did you know they take all the rejected containers of ice cream to a local pig farm? Interesting fun fact. We saw a lot of chocolate pint container go right into a garbage can. After the tour you get a scoop of ice cream. That's pretty normal.

One day we went to cousin Hannah's grandfather's house from her dad's side of the family. Got that? It doesn't matter. He had a golf cart and we rode around the neighborhood for about an hour. The girls loved it!

The highlight of Addison's trip was holding and feeding sweet baby Connor. It was pretty fun for me too.

And that's all I have in the way of pictures, other than the rafting trip. Hopefully I'll get those up soon.

scuba diving, part two

I felt better the next day. My ears bothered me a little, but I was prepared for that. I was ready to tackle those last two dives so we headed off to Devil's Den. I lived around Gainesville my entire life and have never been to this place. You start at the top of a narrow and steep staircase...

And then you go down a little further...

Until you get to this. Why didn't anyone ever tell me about this place? It's incredible!

I loved everything about it, except for the cold water part. We finished up all of our skills on the first dive so the second dive was all for play. Mark took his camera down there and we got some cool shots of us pretending like we knew what we were doing.

 All we had left to do was to log our dives and have Mark sign off on everything. That was the easy part.

None of this would have been possible if it wasn't for Mark and April. We've been neighbors now for 10 years. But honestly, they are so much more than that. We've been through all kinds of highs and lows with them and they truly are some of our dearest friends. I love this lady.

And there you have it. We are now certified divers!

And let's not forget about Timmy. He curled up in our bags and hung out with us all day. I really wanted to bring him home. He was the sweetest thing.

Now we're all ready to dive the Keys in August.

scuba diving, part one

I thought to myself, there is no way I'm ever going to make it through this. When our friend Mark said we could become certified divers, Michael was thrilled! Me? Not so much. I have this little fear of drowning that caused me to almost hyperventilate every time we talked about it. But I figured I give it a shot. The lessons start out in the pool that is only 4 feet deep so what's the worst that can happen. I can just stand up. 

Those first few breaths underwater were pretty terrifying. Breathing underwater is great for fish. Not so natural for humans.

I had a whole new level of confidence the next time we got in the water. And I figured that by the time we got to our open water dives I would at least feel like I wasn't going to die. 

The time had come. We drove over to the springs outside of Gainesville. I had to make it through four 20 minute dives in two days. We walked down to the entry site at Blue Grotto and my palms were sweaty just looking at this hole in the ground. 

I was really worried about two things: my breathing and my ears. Much to my surprise I had no issues with breathing. I jumped in that freezing water with three layers of wetsuit on and not once was I nervous about drowning. I did have some trouble with my first descent. Learning how fast or slow to go down is something we couldn't practice in the pool. At a max depth of 6 ft you don't have to worry about clearing your ears. On our second dive I went down face to face with April. I modeled her pace and how often she was clearing her ears. It helped me tremendously! I realized that it wasn't a race and I could go as slow as I wanted. It's so nice diving with people who have been doing this for 20+ years. You learn a lot just by watching.

Two dives down. After all the required skills were complete we spent a little time just looking around. We saw a neat school of fish and Virgil the resident turtle. That thing is friendly, but scared the crap out of me when he came up on me from behind, swam under me, and came up near my face. April got a good laugh out of that one. I got a good laugh every time we entered the water. That 72 degree water rushing into your wetsuit and down your spine is no fun. All sorts of girly screams came out of us. That night we had a nice dinner with Mark and April and took our final exam back at the hotel.

For the record, I scored higher than Michael.

swim meet

I've looked into swimming for the girls in the past.  Practice is during the summer, normally the morning hours while I'm at the work. And that just doesn't work. When I heard about the JaxParks league that meets at 6 p.m. everyday I thought "that might be doable". The first practice was on Monday and here it was already Wednesday. I might be too late. Lucky for me, the Sandalwood Sharks still had some openings on the team.

Both the girls were required to swim 25 yards across the pool before they could sign up. Addison hopped in the water and swam across the pool with no problem. Morgan never got the chance because we live in Florida and it rains every afternoon. With rain comes lightning and practice was cancelled.The coach was kind enough to take my word for it and signed off on her application. 

Here we are on Saturday morning. They girls have one practice under their belt. Addison freaks out when she has to do the butterfly and Morgan sinks like a rock when trying to do the backstroke. Here's Morgan getting ready for her freestyle swim.

In the younger group freestyle kind of means just getting from one end to the other. Look at her giving it everything she's got.

She made it though and I was super proud of her. 

Addison spent half of the practice on Friday night crying. She was exhausted and like I mentioned, couldn't do the butterfly. Her anxiety was in full force all morning because she wanted to switch from the freestyle to the backstroke. I pulled out my supermom powers and made that happen. First up was the breaststroke.

She had her place card and was ready to go.

She did great! This is me telling her how proud I am and giving her every encouraging word I could think of. My heart was about to burst I was just so happy.

The hardest part between races was the wait. None of us knew what to expect. And the entire thing was completely disorganized. At some point Morgan declared that she was done. She did not want to sign up for the swim team and she just wanted to go to Wendy's and get a Frosty. I then pulled my mean mom card and explained to her that she committed to this and she was going to do it. Then we could get a Frosty.

So she did the breaststroke and it was one of the cutest things I've ever seen. 

Addison's last race was the backstroke. She still needed some work on rotating her shoulders, but remember she only went to one practice. I think in time she could be really good at this.

Her sweet little face. She loved every second of it.

Both of the girls swim like fish. They always have. In the Spring I was worried about Morgan picking it back up, but that quickly went away. She can now dive down to the bottom to get toys. Learning the skills to do the strokes has been a little challenging, but they're getting there. I keep telling them they just need to practice.

I think this is going to be a good thing. Something that I hope they will continue for a long time.

conducting business

One of my favorite pictures of all time.

Maybe next time she'll close the door.