mattie g

Big outflow gust just came through here. I think we're going to miss out on this one.

Yup. MN must be getting hammered right now.

Damn...that Fairfax County-Arlington-DC cell is so close, yet so far away.

I definitely hear you on that. We haven't planned a summer vacation before August since my older daughter started as an 8&U three years ago, and I can't see that changing any time soon! We have a few families who have taken vacations during the season in the past couple years, and we have other kids who aren't going to be here for certain weekends due to other commitments. It's definitely frustrating, but a team our size doesn't have the luxury of turning away swimmers who might be missing meets. As long as the families tell us early on that their schedules are packed and we know which dates the kids are/aren't around, we can work around it. One of the families whose kids have missed lots of meets in the last two years is actually that of a former Team Rep and our current DC. They ran it by us, and even though we were disappointed that we wouldn't have them available to swim for more than half the meets, we appreciated their being up front about it. My co-Rep and I make a half-joking announcement at the May parents' meeting that we fully expect that everyone planned their vacations starting in August, and honestly most do. We just get the occasional family that does what they're going to do, so we just accept it and move on!

I had a feeling I knew which team you were…and I was right! Very cool ending for you guys! Pretty amazing when a meet comes down to close relays, and it looks like you guys came out on top. Congrats! We were surprised by how well our opponents swam yesterday. By the same token, we were a little off our own game, so we were only +2 going into relays. There were a few swing relays, one of which (13-14 boys) we weren’t sure would go our way but did, and that set us up for a finish we were confident would go our way. In the end, our girls mixed age pulled out a very surprising win without one of our star swimmers, which was a great way for us to win that meet. 3-0 start with our two toughest meets to come. We’re likely missing a few key swimmers for those, so we don’t have huge expectations, but ending 3-2 and tying for second in Relay Carnival after going up a division would be huge for us!

Just harvested 14 healthy heads of garlic. A few were separating already, so I'll use those first, but the rest are in really good shape (two heads were massive)! Far cry from last year, when I only harvested a couple runty heads, with the rest basically having rotted in the ground. Seed garlic was local, organic Music garlic heads bought from Wegman's in the fall. No Irish Spring needed.

I heard LWX radar is back online. Anyone else?

Yeah. It gets hot and it gets humid, but it's not that bad. lol

That's great to hear! It's such a fun meet, and the kids go absolutely berserk over it! For me, it was really comfortable down on the deck, which made it that much more enjoyable. We swam really well and the coaches were THRILLED with how it went. We didn't have big expectations going in, but we ended up tying for second (12 points off first). The best part about it was that we had no DQs outside of a false start in the 15-18 girls relay in which would have come in near last anyway (I *think* she rocked on the start). Far cry from us going into the season not sure if we'd even have any 8&U relays!

Of course there are!

NVSL Relay Carnivals tonight. One of the most fun nights of the season!

It's been an unreal couple months, to be honest. You know it's been an easy summer so far when it hits 87 with some humidity and folks are melting.

1.3" at the closest CoCoRaHs that has reported yesterday's rainfall. That puts MBY over 3" for the last week, despite completely whiffing on Monday.

Abd the skies then opened up.

Radar is more impressive than the rainfall so far.

Keep talking...

Gotcha. Yeah...that's plain as day and even if the Reps weren't aware of the rule (which is totally understandable), they should 100% defer to the Referee in that instance. What a crappy way to end a meet!

Just add to the chorus above…my co-Rep and I saw false starts on two different relays (both the other team’s) that didn’t get called. We both immediately looked at each other and mouthed “huge flinch”, but it’s just not worth making a fuss about it. There’s something to be said for holding kids accountable to play to the rules, but there are other ways to address it than DQing kids.

That sucks. I get the idea of being able to protest, but it should only be used in the most obvious of circumstances and if it makes a difference in terms of the outcome of the meet…and even then I question whether that card should be pulled. Full slate of DQs is hilarious! We have a small 8&U crew this year, and few of them are experienced swimmers, so our only boys fly swimmer DQed…but he was close! We had a really fun meet that was closer than we thought it might be. Our opponents had some much better swims that their seed times suggested, but we held them off in the end. And <Dad Brag> my girl had another PB in 9-10 free, nonchalantly going MUCH faster than any of us expected </Dad Brag>.

We often get a single ant infestation in our mailbox each spring that always follows a heavy rain event. I just nuke them and they're gone...not to return until the next year. We only got that one decent rain event at the end of April, but I haven't gotten any ants so far this year.

Makes sense since when we get general area-wide precip, we usually fall pretty much in line. Swim practices cancelled this morning due to the cool temps. Pretty wild for June 22!

About .8" based on CoCoRaHs nearby. Seems about right.

Lots and lots of underwater volcanoes?

Ended up with a few sprinkles (literally) after bedtime. Not worried, as we'll get ours this week.

Congrats on your kids doing well! It's always rough when lots of kids are missing. It's understandable, but never fun, especially for the coaches when they're putting their lineups together. My guess is that your team is bigger than ours, and we feel the pain big time when we miss kids, but no matter what it's always a blow to go into meets knowing you don't have your full team available to you. The positive to that is that it gives other kids a chance to swim in A Meets! Wow...free and back in only 1:15? That's flying! And agreed on the non-A Meet kids getting their chances to swim! We hosted last night and somehow got through the whole meet without a delay! Storms stayed to our west and south the whole time, but even so we still ended at about 9:00. It was a fun meet though, especially because we swam against our closest neighbors whose kids generally go to the same schools as ours, so we all know each other. It was also my 5-year-old daughter's first race! Great start (if I do say so my biased self) and got all the way across with no issues!