Summer, Week 5

The word of the week for week 5 was SWIM!

On Saturday, Andy took the 3 girls to the Omro Aquatic Center and they had a blast, swimming for over 4 hours!

Sunday we left for Illinois and as soon as we arrived, the girls dove into their suits and were ready to jump in the water at Andy's parents' home! Colin eventually warmed up to the idea of swimming and by the 3rd day, it was hard to get him OUT of the water!

Andy's Dad worked so hard to get the pool ready for our visit--they've had a nightmare "open" of their pool this year! Seems everything that could go wrong did...and no one had even swam in it prior to our arrival on Sunday! It was wonderful and refreshing!

Above, you can see some diving board shots...
Can anyone even believe we forgot our camera? Thankfully we had my phone and we were able to snatch some of Andy's Mom's photos she snapped!
Anyway...the diving board--the upper right one is amazing, but dark. My phone has such a delay, it was quite the feat snapping Jayna in mid air, catching the "pancake" as Colin called it! And the lower left photo--not really a diving board photo, but Ellie and Jayna were jumping in together and I kept trying to snap their photo...and time after time, it didn't work--this one, though, is pretty good!

We also had fireworks...despite missing Ben and Jimmy from "the fireworks team". However, Uncle Scott stepped up, bought some fireworks as well and he and Andy did a great show! Turns out, this opportunity has hooked Scott on a new hobby. Looks like we'll have many more years of fireworks, even if the boys aren't around for the 4th!

Here are the 3 Glynn girls waiting for the show to start:
And this year, Andy taught Ellie how to light some of the fireworks. You can watch her HERE.

Here is a little snippet of Andy & Scott's show....our new camera would have taken beautiful fireworks video, but at least we have something!

We also stayed with tradition and went to the Winnebago, IL parade. It's a very nice parade.

As you can see below, we got a small collection of candy. I told the girls that I am set on Dum-Dum suckers for the next year...

And we did lots of eating....I think all food was enjoyed by all in attendance...

AND...
Ellie even got to swim with Aunt Rebekah with the Freeport Aquatic Swim Team! When she woke up at 6:30am for practice, she said "Mom, I'm glad I don't have to get up this early for swim team practice at home!" She had a blast though!

Finally, some random shots of the weekend...
Colin LOVED the sand,
Happy Birthday part 2 to Andy,
The 3 Musketeers, I mean the 3 "oldest" men of the weekend,
AND...story telling by Andy's Aunt...

While we're on that story telling photo, I have to expand....
Andy's Aunt notices detail in EVERYTHING. The girls were mesmerized by her stories and when we returned home, I suggested to the girls that we work more at telling stories like Aunt Faye...with much more detail, instead of the many words that we seem to be stuck on: "like....um...ugh...like...um...ugh..". After we talked about that, I realized how similar we sounded to Mr. Schmidt, encouraging the 4th graders to use more descriptive words in their writing!