A lot of chlorine

Chlorine has become a big part of our lives. The kids swim in it all day it seems. The odor of pool comes and goes from wet towels and occasionally dry bodies. My sinuses get a good cleansing every time we help out and time for a meet. The next part of our interaction with chlorine came in the personal appearance category. It has been tradition with the swim team for the boys to shave their heads (well, their whole bodies) the night before region swim. After Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals with a full head of hair I think that tradition became less popular and we have altered the course of history and the boys are now all going blonde, platinum to be more accurate. This is a before picture of Michael as he left to partake of the yearly pre-region ritual.

Cody Applying blue (BLUE!!) color to Michael's head. I guess it is a fascinating process. The color changes as it progresses. Cody's mom does hair so I am comforted to know that it was in fact Clairol, not Clorox, and Cody is the youngest of other swimmers and has been bleaching guys hair for years before he got hold of Michael. Is this something we should really be sharing? Maybe not.

Lovely Walmart bag on the head while the color does its magic, and....

Voila! I am used to it now but for a couple of days I kept doing double-takes.

The girls don't bleach their hair (whew) but they, too, have a tradition. They don't shave their legs for... well, a very long time. Then, the night before region they shave legs and arms for immediate results of less drag in the water. Katie took 8 seconds off of her race so maybe it really works!

Here she is waiting at the blocks for her race, the first one of the second day. Katie did Awesome! She placed 12th in the 200 Free and 9th in the 100 Fly. She scored 12 points for the girls team and earned herself an athletic letter for swim from OHS.

The boys team and the girls team each took 2nd at Region. The boys scores were so close! If they were to combine girls and boys scores for an overall score, Orem would have won 1st, but they don't so, oh well, you guys are first in my book!!

At the start of the final heat for each event they announce each swimmer by name, leaving the swimmer with the best seed time for the last. Here's Michael at the start of the 100 back when they announced his name. He was justified in the confident number 1 he held up, he took 1st and the next swimmer to the wall was over 4 seconds behind him. Way to go!

Michael getting his 1st place medal. He placed 2nd in the individual medlay and his IM relay and 200 free relay teams places 2nd as well. They did an awesome job!

Cheering on the final race of the day.

Katie and her swim buddy Natalie!

Michael and his Senior comrades.

It has been so fun having these two on the same school team this year. They have had a great time together. On to State...

Warning: real life ahead

After Christmas, we needed some excitement in our lives so we went bowling with our good friends, the Hoyals. We played pool while we waited for our lanes to become open.

Hmmmm, who's winning?

McKay (the Hoyal's 6 year old hiding behind David) beat my score, well, maybe everyone beat my score. I didn't have the best day but way to go McKay!

January is one of those months where you aren't sure what's next because you are coming off of the biggest event of the year. It has been really cold and not too snowy. I can handle the temperature better if it's pretty outside.

We have been doing a lot of just normal life stuff. Today I got my tires rotated and the oil changed. I can't tell you what a momentous occasion that was. It has needed to be done for too long. This is what my January is, catching up on the management of life. I am more relieved than my kids are that the semester is over and we have started fresh again. Teenagers are wearing me out. I have a house full (David will count as a 1/2 because he is not yet 13) and I am more and more glad each day that generally blondes don't go grey because I would so be there! I think this is a lot harder than diapers. You don't have to pray about how to change diapers or when to have nap time. Life nowadays requires a lot more brain power. Well, on to the next event...

Last week was the last regular swim meet of the year. It was the famous Battle for the Paddle. It is the Orem vs. MountainView meet. These two teams swim together twice a day all year long because they swim in the same club but for different school teams. They know each other well and this makes for quite a rivalry. Michael and Katie made a poster to take and decorate at the pool.

Here are the Orem High Swim Team Captains, Joe, Michael, Amy and Rachel, holding the coveted paddle. Orem beat MountainView pretty badly this year. This is the 11th consecutive year that the tigers have won!

Go Orem!

New Year's Day. This was a kind of heritage meal, I suppose. My mom's birthday is Jan. 1, I cooked my great-grandma Kate's ableskever's in my grandma Eleanor's pans. The taste takes me a long way back. It was just as good as I remember.

Out with the old, in with the new. We have had this desk and file cabinet in our family room almost as long as we have lived here, which will be 12 years this April. I have already mentioned the excessive number of teenagers in the house, and they need the computer all at the same time it seems. So, we sold the old desk, bought two new ones and have added another computer to avoid gridlock. It was sad to see it go, it had SO much storage space and the best part...you could just shut the top and it looked clean (such a farce). I am almost done getting the new desks situated with organizer boxes, etc. but I am really struggling not having everything in one big pile. I can't find anything anymore. I'll learn.

Here is Michael and his Preference date, Katelyn Albach. They went sledding and had cocoa for their day date.

All dressed up for the dance. Michael and I went to Saver's and found a pink shirt for $5 that matched perfectly! Sweet! They look awesome, don't they?

While Michael was at Preference, Nelson, David and I went night skiing at Sundance. This was David's first experience night skiing and he had a thousand questions on the way up. How bright was it? Where were the lights? etc, etc. We had a great time and we spent some time helping David improve his slalom. On one of his turns near the end of the night he kind of skied over the end of his pole, oops. He was proud of the damage, here it is...

Whoa.

We have decided that next year for Christmas we are not getting our kids anything except giant cardboard boxes. Maybe they are still like little kids after all. These are the boxes our new desks came in and they had two days of cardboard heaven. They cut, duct taped, decorated, napped in, and thoroughly enjoyed the 100 cubic feet of boxes left over from the desks.

Can you read what Caroline wrote on the outside of her box? After all of the stress and worry teenagers can be, I love them more than ever. "I love my life", it says it all.