First Day of 1st Grade

First day of school again. Nathan started 1st grade with Mrs. Janssen. A bunch of his close friends are in his class including Samuel and Brigham. He was ready and excited to start again even after the fun summer he had. Here we go again.

Hanging with Gma and Gpa

Grandpas and Grandmas Sorensen and Dick were both here for Kamryn's baby blessing. They were also here for the City Swim Meet. Grandpa Sorensen and Dad volunteered to be timers down at the swim lanes. They had a great time. We also went to the roller skating rink with Grandpa and Grandma Sorensen. Fun times.

Swim Team

Here is the swim team story of 2015. We really wanted Nathan to be able to be on the swim team this year. He's only 6 years old but I knew he was so close skill-wise. We took him to the pool a few different times before swim team actually started. The only qualification for swim team is that you are able to swim across the pool by yourself. Well, we got him to do it (barely) and so we took him to swim team. Well the youngest kids swim in the lane right next to the wall, so the first couple of days Nathan was grabbing onto the wall all the time. His coach came to me on the third day and said they weren't going to make any final decisions until Friday, but it seemed like maybe Nathan wasn't quite ready to be on the team yet and maybe he needed one more year of lessons. I told this to Sean and that night Sean took him to the pool and had him swim back and forth across that pool without any help. We emphasized to him that if he wanted to stay on the team he couldn't use the wall, even though it was right there. The next day he did awesome and on Friday his coach, Abby, came to me and said "Wow! I don't know what happened but wow! He can stay on the team" So he swam everyday for two month of the summer. He swam for an hour during swim team and then also practiced water polo for an hour. He went to the swim meets and did pretty darn good in fact. Before his first meet he told me he wanted to win first place in all the races. Since this meet happened to be about 2 weeks after swim team started (2 weeks after he really got the hang of swimming at all) I told him just to focus on finishing the races. At the second meet I convinced him to race the 50M freestyle (that's the longest race for his age group - there and back in the pool). He got there no problem, but on his way back I could see in his eyes the look of sheer terror (like "I'm seriously going to die!") but he made it and he swam that race every other meet. It was amazing to see how much he improved throughout the season. At the last regular meet of the season Sean convinced him to do the butterfly (we realized he had never tried that race yet). We have a deal where if they race at least 5 races in the meet then they get their own Costco ice cream afterwards. That did the convincing and Nathan swam the butterfly for the first time and did awesome. I think he got second place. In fact that is the race that he qualified in for the City Meet (you have to qualify at the districts). He swam that and another race plus a relay at the City Meet during his first season of swim team. It was great. All the other moms would watch him swim and talk about what a power swimmer he is - he just powers through the water.