My grandkids under water!

I loved teaching baby swimming lessons for 35 years, but the most fun of all is teaching my own grandchildren!  Andrew inspired me to make the Learn to Swim with Miss Bea dvd when he was a baby.  He is my main star!  And now he is 8 years old.

Baby Andrew on the dvd cover

Knowing that I would only have a few more times in our neighbor's pool with the grandchildren, I got a cheapie underwater camera and took some pictures.  

Already now the water is much cooler.  

Caroline wouldn't even jump in this last time.  

Caroline is freezing after 15 minutes in the pool!

I had to bribe her with my hat to even get her in the pool and let her dunk me more than usual to get her to stay in the water.  

Caroline just swam to get the hat from the bottom.  We are practicing blowing bubbles.

Anyway, a few weeks ago when it was still hot outside everyone came to swim.

Mimi and grandkids minus Isabella.  (Look for her at the end of this post.)

They went under and through the hulahoop

Lauren

Lauren

Caroline

My kids swim with and without goggles so that they don't get addicted to the goggles.

Read about Andrew's first swim meet.

Durham is not too sure about the whole going under the water thing.  

I don't get to practice with him very often.  

Durham

Look at these eyes!

Maybe we'll have hot enough days again to heat up the pool again- and warmer nights!

I'm looking for an indoor pool that's closer than the one I used last year!

Isabella slept the whole time!

Good-bye Summer!

This weekend we went to the condo one final time before school started - for the kids that is!  I have been retired one year now and this is the second time that I can relax at this time of year and not be all stressed out about going back to school!  Don't forget that I loved it while I was doing it but now that I'm not, it just makes me happy!  We sure packed in lots of crabbing and beach in two days!

Andrew, Lauren and Isabella are ready for the beach!

Some beach activities:

Making real sandcastles!

fishing for small fish to play with!

crabbing at the pier

Yummy!  Crabs for dinner!

hermit crabs to play with!

Andrew found this moon shell with his feet while we were looking for sand dollars in the water.

It is the biggest moon shell we had ever found!  He said that he felt it and thought it might be a crab but still decided to pull on it.  It was stuck in the sand like it is stuck on his hand here!

Isabella is six weeks today!  She still mostly sleeps or cries for her bottle.  These moments of communication are so special!

I'm not tired of the Olympics!

Being retired, I am watching all the Olympics that I want.  I am recording the three channels that I get. In 24 hours this weekend I recorded 36 hours of competition and commentaries.  Of course I fast forwarded much of it...  and I had the remote control to watch all I wanted!

Don is begging me to watch something else with him tonight.  Before he went outside earlier, he said, "I'm tired of the Olympics!" :( 

But I cannot tire of the swimming and the gymnastics! I was so involved in the tennis that when my sister called she did not recognize my voice!

I love hearing the stories from the different cultures and backgrounds and the obstacles and hardships that many of the athletes have had to overcome to be there.  Did you know that Ryan Lochtes has a Cuban mother with a background much like mine.   In this Interview with his mother she tells how he loves the Cuban food that his 91 year old Cuban grandmother prepares for him.

No matter the age, the competitors give their all.  The oldest male participant is 71-year-old Hiroshi Hoketsu of Japan who guided his horse, Whisper in the dressage test at the equestrian arena.  This quote is from an interview with him:
 Faced with the inevitable question of whether this would be his last games, or whether he intended to return at Rio aged 75, he paused for an instant.
"No. I want to but I don't think I can because it's very difficult to find a horse to bring me to Brazil," he said. "My present horse is too old for that." Present. A small but significant word.

I think that the sports that we like to watch the most are those that we have tried ourselves.  Today the synchronized swimming started and I love it because I did some of that 30 years ago.  

I also get hypnotized by the sports that are so amazing!  - For me, the speed of ping pong, the stamina required in long distance races, and the awesome height and trapeze ability with the trampoline and the uneven parallel bars.

I wish they had shown more fencing, or did I miss it?

My least favorite Olympic sport? Women's weight lifting!

One more week of Olympics left!!

How about you?  What are your favorites and what is your least favorite?  Let's not comment on the commentaries or the announcers or the fact that we had to get used to watching a competition where we already knew who won!  That was a new one to me!

Google likes the synchronized swimming too!

Savor the Moment!

I have five grandchildren and want to spend my time with each of them.  I love them each so much that I want to be a part of their life.  I know that I cannot be with them all the time, (nor do I want to :)  but it is so special when I share my time with them.  I try to be there when I am needed and at other times too.  When I am not with them I feel that I am missing something very important.

Last week, Mary and Brian had their other two children with her family at the beach for the week and I volunteered to watch Isabella - almost one month old - so that they could go see the new Batman movie.  

I was so excited that she was awake for me.  We played and I gave her a baby massage.  We loved it!  (Read about the power of touch in Touchtime.org

After her bottle,   I burped her twice and then thought maybe she had another one so I held her while we watched some TV.

We were watching a new program on TNT, Perception.  We like it!  At the end, he was talking about time, past and future.  We only have the present and to "Savor the Moment."

Well, I started crying as I held my beautiful, sleeping, Isabella.  Too soon, her parents came and took this picture and took her away!  

Savor the Moment!

Grandchild Number Five!

Isabella Ann Skeens was born two weeks ago and since then we have not had a free moment!  We did not really have enough time with her before we left for St. Simons Island and then to Florida for the Sanchez Family Reunion.  Of course they did not come and we missed them terribly!

I sat in the hospital room holding my beautiful granddaughter in my arms and didn't want to leave her!  


Now we are back and I cannot get enough of her.  I am so glad that we live only fifteen minutes away.

Being with my grandchildren is the best thing I could be doing.  There is such a sense of loss when I have to leave any one of them.  I feel that there is nothing more important and no other place that I should be.  


Here is the post on the poems that I have written to my grandchildren.


I have not written a poem to my sweet Isabella yet!  


                             I think that I have not been with her enough.  


                                                                        Is it ever enough?

Why is my hair lighter at the roots after I color It?

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My hair just didn't pick up as much color at the roots!

I noticed this the last time I did my hair color and, I kind of ignored it, because the rest of my hair became such a nice shade of brown and full of highlights just like the box said.  In fact, I had noticed that I have more grey in the back, that this was the first time that I had my sweet husband help me to make sure that I did it right!

Well, at the park yesterday, while we were waiting for the fireworks I had plenty of time to “people-hair” watch.  I was admiring a lady with mousey brown hair who, I think had grey mixed in but because of her color, it looked good.  I also looked at several ladies who had whole heads of white hair and tried to see myself with hair like that some day; but I failed :)

Then I saw a lady with shoulder length light brown hair, a little lighter than mine.  I noticed that her hair was lighter at the roots!  OMG

I thought, why is it the opposite than most people who color their hair?  Their roots are darker!  Then I realized it is because they are lightening their hair.  Us graying folks are darkening our hair.  Do the roots have more grey that it is harder to dye? Or is it that it takes several times of dying before the color covers the grey.  My hair color seems fine after about one to two inches.  

Oh well, how does your hair do?  I’ll do anything to continue to color my hair but will not spend the money to have it done.  Maybe I need to try a new product…

Here is a picture of my newest grandchild, Isabella Ann.  When I went to see her at the hospital, I put on makeup and fixed my hair.  I think it was worth the effort.  For once I like myself in a picture!

Birds Getting in the Garden eating my blueberries!

5 Baby birds in a nest by my front light.  The kids climbed the ladder to look at it.

Since my retirement, one of my favorite things to do has been to work in the garden.  And work it has been!  Three weeks ago we had to cover it with mesh to keep the birds away from the blueberries but we saw one or two in there every morning and had to chase them out the gate because they could not find a way out. 

So Wednesday there were five birds in there so we know we had to do more.  Don bought more mesh and I tied mesh all around the garden in the heat of the day, sweat pouring down into my eyes.  (And I never sweat!)  I had been playing with the kids for the morning and we were going out of town that night or I would not have done it in the heat.  The only place without mesh is the gate.  If any birds get in that way they will have to find their way out or DIE while we are gone.  Julie and Robert were there to pick blueberries and green beans and cukes and squash and did not tell us of any dead birds so I guess there weren't any...