miniMAP – 2008-2009…. what a long awaited event… It takes a long time to just write out what happened so I’m going to post pictures and tell the story that goes with them. Hopefully that will cover all of my bases. =)
Janee, Ashley, and Katie
My wonderful friends Jenna and Camille who happen to be cousins. =D
Wow! What a lot to catch up on! I apologize for the delay in a new post. Well…. what are we waiting for? Let’s begin shall we?
To start, let me say Merry Christmas to you. Here are some photos of my Christmas:
Here in Louisiana it truly is a ‘Winter Wonderland’. It HAS to be, for a couple days ago it was bright and sunny… now it’s SNOWING! I know you northerners have no concept of our feelings right now, but believe me… that white stuff is awesome! We even get up at 5 in the morning to see it!
Well, it has finally arrived to the dissapointment of many. Swim team is over for the year. Before I start sounding dreary and bla I’m going to say that we went out with a splash! State meet was absolutely amazing! As you may know from my last post about the City championships, I qualified to state with no time to spare (at all!). Anyways, we left Central High on Friday…
…in the big yellow bus. The bus ride wasn’t exactly as quiet as some would have hoped…
As you may know, I am on the Central High School Swim Team. Our season started back in late September and every 10 days or so we have a swim meet. I’ve been swimming two events all year for my individuals and two relays as well. My individual events are the 100 yard. Breaststroke and the 200 yard. IM. (For those who don’t know, IM stands for individual medley which means I swim 50 yards of every stroke) My relays consist of the 200 medley relay (of which I swim the butterfly leg) and the 400 or 200 freestyle relay.
Two days ago marked the start of City Championships. All of the teams come together for a humungo meet. The preliminary races were on Saturday. The top 16 of all of the swimmers in each event made it to City finals the next day. I ended up making it to the finals in both of my individuals! For my Breaststroke event I ended up placing 11th in the top 16 and in my IM I placed 16th, barely squeezing in there by .3 seconds. Wheeww!
The next day brought some excitement for sure! Finals were held at the Natatorium (The LSU swimming pool). My 200 medley relay was first, bringing with it, chaos! Luckily, it was all soon resolved and the judges accepted our time which happened to be a school record! Also, a personal record for myself. I was swimming the butterfly leg of the relay and swam 50 yards (which is across the pool and back) in 29.7 seconds!
Not quite a Michael Phelps race, but hey, I’m getting there.
Race #2 for me was my IM, which I ended up dropping 2 more seconds, putting my time at 2 minutes and 25 seconds; another personal record. =) My last relay was my third race which was the 200 freestyle relay. I swam 50 yards in 26.2 seconds. This was quite an improvement from last years time which was 27.7 seconds. Finally we come to my last race: 100 yard Breaststroke. This was my most exciting race, seeing as how I was stuck at a 1:15 all season (4 meets in a row) until Saturday (prelims) when I dropped it down to a 1:11 which was approximately 1 second away from the state qualifying time. At finals I dropped some more time, making my record a 1:10.13; this time just happened to be the exact time of the state cut! Talk about a stroke of faith! I couldn’t have made that time without God’s strength! I am so excited!
After the meet, the team drove a couple blocks down to Walk Ons where we visited and ate to our stomachs content. *sigh* what a wonderful day that the Lord has made. =)
P.S. – just in case I haven’t told you… I LOVE MY TEAM-MATES! theyprettymuchrock.
Last Friday, my sister, Josie, happily announced that she wanted a garden. Now, previous gardens suggested were ones planted in old canoos , toilets, bathtubs… you know… the stuff you find in people’s garbage. My dad quickly vetoed those pieces of legislation and Saturday, he went out and got some lumber. He built a small bed for Josie, and delegated the duties of picking up cow ‘presents’ for compost. I, along with Daniel, went out and started to pick up the biodegradable chips. This soon turned into a war of… who can dodge the best. Anyway, skipping forward a bit to today, I found Josie outside, contently working in her garden.
It seems as though she wasn’t the only one diggin in the dirt. Read the rest of this entry »
After hurricane Gustav came through and did a thorough job with our yard we, of course, had to get all excess waste out. This included a lot of cutting up of trees and large limbs. We figured the best way to make easy work of this was to use a chainsaw. Somehow, I get the impression that my dog would rather us have used rusty spoons to cut the tree into pieces…
As you may already know, I’m on the Central High School Swim Team. This is my second year. Yesterday was a historic moment for the Central High swim team ‘08. Our first meet! I must say, I was impressed. Though, half our team was made up of new members, we still did extremely well. We had several of our new members break records! Two on our team, who are year round swimmers, won first place in their events and we had multiple in-heat first places. Here is a break down of some swim terms regarding when you swim and where.
Event – this is what race you are swimming in. Example: Boy’s 100 Butterfly or Girl’s 50 Freestyle
Heat – Because there are only eight lanes in the pool, when there are more than eight people entered into one event we must split them up in to multiple heats. Therefore, if you have 13 people you would have two heats. The first heat containing eight people (maxing out) and the second heat containing 5 (the rest of the competitors in that event).
Lane – Self-explanatory, a lane is what portion of the water you are swimming in between two lane ropes. There are eight lanes. Read the rest of this entry »
Hurricane Gustav blessed us with a lot of branches, limbs, sticks, logs, twigs etc. I believe the only good thing that came of this is that my dad got to have some fun. =) I get the feeling he would hate to be a fireman… putting out all those beautiful fires an’ all.
