Slow and steady

I have to keep reminding myself of that. I swam again tonight. It's only the third time I've been in the pool for Masters. I really love being in the pool. It's the hardest thing I've ever done (except maybe giving birth, but at least I had good drugs to help me through that. LOL!). But I love it! Tonight I cramped up really badly -- from the knee down to my foot. The good thing, though, was the encouragement from the other adults swimming. One of the men even told me about how one night when he first started his whole leg cramped (it wasn't a pretty sight!). So, my word is present in my life today. Persistent. My next day back in the water is Monday night! And I'll be there!


Photo Actions by Totally Rad (Boring Selinium and Bitchin' B&W)
This is also my picture for today for the Picture Winter class. Yesterday's picture was a bit of sunshine:


Photo Actions by My4HensPhotography. I combined like 3 or 4 of them.
For this picture I sat on the floor in our game room and practiced focusing on the sap bucket with the sunflowers. Through a little bit of creative cropping, it looks brighter than it really was.

You may have also noticed that I added another badge to my blog. I decided to retake Ali Edwards' Yesterday and Today class at Big Pictures Classes. When I originally took the class in the Fall of 2009, I was really not feeling the love for scrapbooking, so I never truly embraced the class. Already I have completed the three excercises for the first week (I don't think I ever did it the first time) and have lots to think about! I'm going to take pictures of the worksheets this weekend and post here.

But the excercise got me thinking about all the layouts I haven't printed. One of my tasks for this weekend is go through all my albums and mark which layouts I've printed, so I can make a list of the layouts I want to print (and which ones should never been spoken of again!). I'll probably upload them in batches and send off to scrapbookpictures.com. I've used them before and have been really pleased with the quality and the colors. So my question to you digital scrappers is: Have you printed all of your layouts? If not, why not?

Well, I'm off to moan and groan and take care of my aching muscles.

We're finally done!

This was the last weekend for swim meets for this season! We had the Gulf Champs for 12 and Under with B and under times. For those of you new to swimming language, let me explain. USA Swimming (the governing body for swimming in the US) sets "motivational" times for age groups (10&Under, 11-12, etc.) by stroke (free, back, fly, breast, IM) and distance (50, 100, 200, etc.). The times go from B through AAAA, with B being the "slowest" of the competitive times. It's a big deal when a kid gets his first B time! So, how did we do? AWESOME, BABY! Both boys got personal bests in all their events. Adam got 3 ribbons: 4th for 50 Fly, 7th for 50 Back and 2nd for the 200 Free Relay. Geary earned 2 ribbons: 7th for the 500 Free and 3rd for the 200 Free Relay. Adam also earned his first BB time in the 50 Fly. Geary continued climbing up the ladder in the 11-12 bracket by getting another B time in the 500 Free. His coach told him that he swam a perfect race. His last 100 was the same time as his first 100. Geary is definitely going to be a long-distance swimmer. And both boys are awesome at the Butterfly! So how about a few pictures?
Adam on the blocks:


Chillaxin dude:

Adam Breaststroke:

Gman Fly:

Counting laps for Gman during the 500 Free:

The spoils of victory:

As always, more later!