Kate still has soccer once a week and is in basketball camp this week. Ben plays a tennis match tomorrow, and still plays golf. He hasn’t made it to a single soccer practice because of conflicts with other sports but at least basketball is done. But football practice starts the week of Aug. 9th! If only we could figure out teleporting!

I wrapped up taking pictures and managing the website for the swim team, so at least that’s off my plate. See the pictures here:  HCCC page on Reach for the Wall.  I’ve got some videos from the last meet too. Caveat: Ted is the videographer. No more need be said.

First up:  Kate’s 100 IM race.  She’s in the third lane from the top. They sometimes combine races when their aren’t enough swimmers to fill all the lanes so that they can shorten the meet.  It was most welcome on Saturday, since it was 105 degrees, and boiling on the concrete pool deck. She was psyched to tie the 10 year old boy swimming next to her.

Staying with the Kate theme, the next two videos illustrate her pre-teen attitude perfectly. She’s either ignoring her parents or being mortified by them.

Next is Ben’s 50 meter butterfly race. He’s in the fourth lane from the top. He’s been shaving lots of time off his fly this year and told his coach before this race that he would drop another second (that’s huge in swim terms). His seed time was about a second slower than the fastest guy on the other team so he would have had to drop almost two seconds to win the race. Watch what happens.

And then we have the 13-14 year old boys’ medley relay. Ben is swimming the fly here too, in the fourth lane from the top. The really interesting stuff happens around the 1:30 mark. At that point, you hear the splash of the other team’s swimmer as he hits the water for their fly leg of the race. Ben doesn’t hit the water until the 1:40 mark, 10 seconds behind. He MAKES UP that 10 second lead and ties the race at the end of his leg. Unfortunately, our team only has 2 14-year old boys so the other 2 legs had to be swum by 10 year olds. They are fast 10 year olds, but no match for 14 year olds, so we lost. But what a race from Ben!

And then finally, here is a video of the championship trophy presentation. You might notice that the kids are also wearing their championship t-shirts, having put them on at the end of the meet like the NBA or NFL players do at the end of their championship. And swim teams don’t douse their coaches in Gatorade — they get their dunking in the pool!

And swim season has started. In fact, we’ve already had two meets and have a week off for the 4th of July holiday. I volunteered to take pictures for the team and to administer the team’s site on a site owned by the Washington Post, called Reach for the Wall. Check it out when you get a chance: HCCC site.  The cool thing is that they’ve used a couple of my pictures to illustrate a couple of stories, including today’s. 

My hyperactive children are also involved in every summer activity known to man, except for summer school (ha!).  Kate is on swim team, and also plays tennis and continues piano.  She is no longer participating in junior golf because according to her, “You have to be too quiet.”  Ben was at football camp this week, gearing up for the fall, is on the swim, golf, and tennis teams, and is also playing in a summer basketball league.  And the high school soccer team is holding informal practices already.  Football conditioning will start next week.  Phew!

Both kids also leave for the beach with Ted’s brother and his wife tomorrow.  We will be kid-free for almost a week! 

And finally, I’ve been experimenting with a new theme for the site.  Not sure I like it though.  OK, that’s enough for now.  I need to go make sure the kids are all packed.

Kate’s been working hard and finally got to swim as an official swimmer this week, in the 9-10 backstroke and then up an age group in the 11-12 breaststroke.  There are several year-round swimmers in her age group so it’s hard to crack into the official lineup (there are only 3 for each team per event) so she was very excited, and I think a bit nervous too.  In fact, in one of the clips you can see her going through the breastroke, including the turn as she prepped mentally for the race.  She got fourth in each of those races, just missing out on points for her team, but she was very happy with her performance, having set personal bests in both strokes.

Ben had a good meet as well.  He swam all 4 of the individual strokes (but not the IM), as well as leading off the 13-14 medley relay in the backstroke.  He set personal bests in all of the strokes except freestyle so he was happy with his performance.  A good day overall (if you don’t count my wonky camera).  Still pictures coming later this week!

The repair place has a 180 day guarantee so I’m going to take it back the next chance I have (probably not until Friday) and explain exactly what happens.  I might even take some shots there so they can see for their own eyes what the problem is.  If they can’t repair it, then I’ll just shoot with the Rebel for the remainder of swim season and look for a new camera once soccer season gets going.  Aaaagh.

In the meantime, here’s what I was able to get from yesterday’s meet.  The meet was not frustrating for the kids at least.   The team won and Ben posted personal bests in all his individual events.  Kate posted a personal best in the breast stroke but was slower in both the back and free.  Last week she had a personal best in the free but slower in breast and back.  I see a pattern here, so perhaps at the next meet she’ll get a personal best in the back but be lower in breast and free.  Who knows what she’ll have up her sleeve for the last meet of the year!

Ben shaved time off his freestyle and backstroke, and swam a legal breastroke for the first time!  I’m sure he’ll improve as the season progresses since he hasn’t really been able to make it to practice.  Kate took time off her freestyle but inexplicably added time to both her backstroke and breastroke.  She claims her foot slipped off the wall at the backstroke start but I’m not sure why she struggled with the breaststroke today.  Maybe just being cold since it was chilly in the rain.

On the photography front, I really miss my 20D.  These are shot with my old Rebel, and are soft, soft, soft.

I shot with a rented 40d since, as I noted in an earlier post, my 20D is acting up and is in the repair shop.  I’m sure the 40D is a nice camera and I would probably fall in love with it if I had more time to use it, but so far, I’m not so sure it’s that much of an improvement over the 20D.  At least for sports shooting.  There’s some softness in the shots (though that could be user err0r), but also visible graininess even at 400 ISO.  The 20D handles noise quite well, even at 1600, so I wonder if the noise really is there in the 40D or if I’m just being nitpicky.  This just confirms my thought that my next upgrade will be to a 1D body, rather than another xxD.