Swim Lessons and Doctor's Visits

 Tuesday the two year old and I stayed to watch the nine year old's swim lessons.  We haven't watched for quite awhile, and he's in level four now and doing some pretty amazing stuff.

They have all sorts of fun techniques for teaching.  He's learning all four strokes - back, breast, crawl and butterfly, plus beginning diving.

The entire hour of lessons is held in the deep end.

Here's one of the fun things they do. Each student gets a bottle cap that they have to balance on their forehead while swimming the backstroke.

 I had never heard of that before, but it did seem to help.  I was on the swim team in Jr. High and High School, but never learned much technique.  I just remember swimming never-ending  laps.  But it could be that my memory isn't the greatest, as that was roughly 25 years ago.

Anyway, I was impressed. His instructor has twin sons who are swimming record holders, so she knows what she's doing.

The two year old was very impressed - especially with the diving.  It was like he was at the Olympics or something - ha.  Standing and cheering for each dive. :)

He also enjoyed running laps back and forth in the balcony area.  Pretty cool the way our pool is set up.  Lots of seating in the balcony for swim meets.  Great visibility.

When we got home Thursday we found a whole herd of deer in our yard.  (This isn't all of them - just the ones I could get a good picture of).

They had been all around our yard in the fresh snow.

 While we were at the swimming pool, the five year old was at preschool.  One of his Hispanic friends had a birthday party at the school, complete with a fancy pinata.  He got to bring a piece home.

 He also brought this home - which I thought was a real fat crayon party favor but looking closer I realized it is gum.  How fun.  It's huge though - like bigger than my fingers.  And he doesn't like candy.  But I thought it was a fun candy I haven't seen before.

After all the excitement about birthdays, he was asking me when his birthday is.  I was trying to help him remember the date (he has the month down now but not the day). I also asked him if he knows how old he is.  He told me 30. ;)  My sweet sister asked me what that says about how old I am... yeah. Thoughtful of her.  ;)

 The two year old has been all about building things lately.  Those three bristle blocks I showed the other day are sure getting a workout.  You wouldn't believe how many hours he has spent building things out of them, or how many different things he tells me they are.  Quite an imagination.  I had some wood blocks set aside for Christmas that I forgot about until the nine year old spotted them and brought them out.  They look like castle pieces and you can build a nice big castle out of them. I'll have to get a better picture of them one of these days.  I had bought them second hand around the time we moved for the second time last year, and forgot all about them.  The two year old has spent hours stacking and building with them.

Today we spent the day in Jackson Hole.  On the way home, this mountain sheep tried to commit suicide in front of me.  I had to come to a complete stop ... so I had time to take a picture of him.   I meant to take pictures in Jackson, but just didn't ever get around to it.  The younger two had doctor appointments - just routine checkups.  We did a little shopping, had lunch at Pizza Hut and headed home fairly early.  It was kind of a pain getting around in town because they had the sled dog race going today - or at least they were prepping for it and had roads closed in the square so they could haul in a bunch of snow onto the streets.   They'll be here Wednesday - the most lovely day in our forecast.  It's supposed to be cold all next week, with temperatures "struggling to get above 0 degrees," with Wednesday being -20 overnight.  I usually take the kids out to watch the mushers but if the weather is nasty, it may not happen this year.  They also used to have them right in the middle of town, but now you have to drive quite a ways to see them. 

When we got home from Jackson, the sun was just starting to set.  The mountains had a very soft, pretty pink glow to them.

I love it when the clouds are all puffy and billowy slammed up against the mountains.