Kaitlyn's Mighty Marlin Race

Today was the last day of swim team practice for Kaitlyn.  She participated in the swim team feeder program as a Mighty Marlin this summer and loved it.

Today she chose to swim all four 25 meter races: freestyle, backstroke, kickboard race, and the noodle race.  All eight and under swimmers could race and ribbons were awarded based on team group (8 & under, 6 & under (swim at meets), and Mighty Marlins (don't swim at meets).

Here are videos from Kaitlyn swimming...


She won second place in free style with a 55.59 time.



She won first place in back stroke with a 1.29.59 time.

Oops...the camera operator seems to have experienced technical difficulties. :-)

She won third place in kick board with a 43.50 time.

She won second place in the noodle race with a 54.94 time.

Here are some photos..

The noodle race was the last one.  The girls were shivering while waiting to start.

Kaitlyn's friend swims for the team on the 8 & unders.  They all received paper plate awards after the 'meet' today.  Here they are being silly!

 Here are the two happy girls with their award ribbons!  Both left with smiles on their faces!

Serious Summer Fun!

This post simply shows all the fun we've had this summer!  We enjoyed going downtown, swimming (A LOT :-) ), movie nights with friends, and good ole flavor ice.  Daddy and I even found time for a great date night.  

During a bike ride, we stopped at the FDR Memorial for the girls to see the waterfalls.  The top picture is my FAVORITE of the bunch!!

Every day after swim practice, we must wait outside the gate while the lifeguards clean up from swim team practice.  The girls brought some library books to read while we waited.  

I don't have any pictures of Madelyn swimming because I go in the water with her, but she's still adorable when it's break time and we have lunch or a snack. 

Silly face time!

Kaitlyn practiced her diving with daddy.  

Kaitlyn and her friend tried out some cannon balls and straight jumps.  

Kaitlyn took the swim test from the Lifeguards and got to jump of the diving board and go down the water slide.  Victory!!

The last few Friday's, Kaitlyn and two friends got together for a movie night complete with pajamas, pizza and American Girl dolls.  The mommies hung out upstairs to give the girls their own space.  

Daddy and I went to a Kastles tennis match.  The main star was Martina Hingus.  Daddy mentioned how he enjoyed watching her as a kid when she played the professional ATP circuit. We enjoyed a concession dinner, which was amazingly good for concession food.  Dave enjoyed short rib sliders and I had a Thai beef salad with a carrot cilantro vinaigrette.   We hope to go again next year since the season is only three weeks long.  

For Kaitlyn's birthday, our wonderful neighbors gave her pumpkin seeds.  Daddy discovered our first pumpkin this month.  Now we are all on pumpkin watch and guard.  We have three as of today!!

Madelyn enjoyed a Flavor Ice after a few hours of swimming!  

We hope the fun continues!!

Daddy's Birthday

We celebrated daddy's birthday early since he had to travel for work.  Thank you to all the wonderful family members who sent gifts for daddy to open.  The girls enjoyed helping.  

The girls gave daddy a Lego White House kit for his work desk.  It had 500+ pieces.  

Princess Kaitlyn & Princess Madelyn's Kitchen: No Bake Cake Pops

Princess Kaitlyn & Princess Madelyn made no-bake cake pops with our fun babysitter.  They came in a kit.  

Kaitlyn said that they tasted delicious.  The smell was enough for me to stay away.  The babysitter tried one and did not recommend them either.  Hence, a new plan formed...finding out how to make yummy tasting cake pops.  

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Princess Kaitlyn & Princess Madelyn's Kitchen: Banana Bread

The girls modeled my latest aprons and most fun to this point - Hello Kitty and Tinkerbell.  

We had about five bananas that were close to spoiling, so we opted to make chocolate chip banana bread.  Clearly, the girls like chocolate!  This time we made silly combinations of fruit and bread.  

Would you like lemon skittle bread?  

Would you like blueberry golden graham bread?  

Would you like strawberry cheese bread?  

Would you like apple cinnamon bread?  Now I can get behind that one!

Would you like grapefruit milk bread?

After all of those possible combinations, we decided banana chocolate chip bread made the best choice for summer time.  The girls also wanted to make sure daddy would eat some.  

We made seven mini-loaves.  I'm going to out daddy and tell you that he ate two when he got home.  

They were a success!