Go Matt Grevers!

Chris and I had an amazing opportunity last night to watch the Olympics with the Grevers' family and friends. We spent over 2 hours in the car to get downtown (unprecedented traffic with no reason!) and get our spot at ESPN Zone. In the end, there were probably more than 200 people there all cheering on Team USA and this young man. It was surreal to watch the swimming among so many other like minded people who are as obsessed with the sport as we are. Matt's mom was one of the first coaches for the team Chris coaches now. The family is very involved with local swimming as his brother and sister both coach local teams.

What a night to watch swimming, too! Team USA won three golds in a matter of minutes it seemed. The air was electric waiting for the 100 back finals. I don't think I have EVER been somewhere that loud in all my life. What an amazing race it was! While we all hoped Matt would beat Piersol, everyone was thrilled that he won the silver medal. His brother and sister were almost speechless as the cameras all panned to them. Several local news teams were there to witness the event and there were snippets of the party on all of the local news channels.

We had a wonderful adventure and don't regret the 3 1/2 hours we were in the car. We headed home and watched what was left of the live coverage. We finally headed to bed around 1 am. This is what this summer has been all about... adventures and time together.

Chris is off hanging banners at the pool today and I think I will head out to Target for some school shopping. I am so grateful to have these extra two weeks this summer!

Team USA!

It's no secret that swimming is a big part of my life. Every four years we have the excitement of the Olympics that shows of our sport to all of the world. Everything else on our TiVo has been erased to make room for the Olympics. We eat, sleep, and breathe Olympics here!

Last night was an amazing race in the 4 x 100 men's relay. I am so glad that we were able to watch it live. For those of you who are not swimming fans, this race will go down in history for many years. Jason Lezak came back and swam the FASTEST RELAY SPLIT IN HISTORY to win the gold for Team USA. This is even more sweet considering the French were talking smack and said that they would smash Team USA. Just didn't happen! We had all the windows open and I am sure that the neighbors knew exactly what was happening in our house.

Tonight we are heading downtown to watch the finals of the 100 back. One of our local swimmers, Matt Grevers, is in the race. He is the underdog behind Aaron Piersol, but we have high hopes for him! It will be fun to watch some of the swimming with like minded people... those who are entrenched in the swimming world.

Other than the Olympics, we have spent some time with friends enjoying the dwindling days of summer. Chris is running miles and miles preparing for the marathon. We spent the day at Great America yesterday taking in a few shows and games. It was very crowded, so the lines for the rides were ridiculous! After some pizza and beer we headed home to watch the Olympics of course!

I've finished my first reading assignment for class and have my first real class on Wednesday. I am grateful to have two full weeks left before school starts for me. I will head in later this week to start cleaning and getting things set up. I can honestly say that I am ready to go back. I am re energized and ready to start a new year. Of course if I had to go back tomorrow, I might not be saying the same thing!

Off to enjoy a BEAUTIFUL summer day here.

It's official!

I am now officially a student again! YIKES! I am heading back to school for a master's degree in reading and literacy. I have wanted to go back to school for years, but the timing just wasn't right and our focus was on building our family. I finally decided that I was tired of having my life on hold so I started looking at graduate school programs.

I started looking at online options, but eventually decided on a classroom format. It is held at the local community college which has a "university center" where larger schools come in and offer graduate and bachelor programs. I will have class one night a week with an online component as well. It will be intense... each 3 credit class is only 5 weeks long. It will be worth it though... I am set to be all done by the end of November next year. Not too bad... 14 months for a masters degree.

One of my coworkers and good friends is going to do the program with me. I am excited that there will at least be someone I know! She is out of town this week so she will miss the orientation but will be back for the first class next week. It will be nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of and to do projects with.

I am nervous and excited... it has been more than 10 years since I was last a student. I know I am at my best when I am busy so I hope that things will all fall into place. It HAS to be an easier year at school this year... I can't have another year like the last one!

I am off to enjoy my last real week of summer. Where did the time go?

I am so proud of this man...

Chris' swim season came to a close this weekend with the state age group championships (formally known as the Junior Olympics). It is hard to believe that it was just a year ago that we made the decision for him to leave the YMCA and focus on coaching full time. What a year it has been! His goal was to have his team finish in the top 15 of the state. Last year this team was 26th. It is a three day meet in Chicago, so he stayed downtown. The meet is LONG so it only made sense since he would have spent 3 more hours a day driving back and forth. When I talked to him on Friday he was feeling down because a few of the kids had not had the best swims. He had a few good swims, and one state champion on Saturday so things looked up a tad. :-) I knew I needed to be there to support him for the final day. What an amazing day it was! One of his swimmers took first place in two more events and the swimmer's brothers each placed in events too. Chris was just beaming. This is a family that has truly got it all figured out. Not only are the three boys amazing swimmers, they are also great young men. The kind of kids you just want to be around. Chris had the pleasure of presenting the medals to his state champion twice yesterday.

In the end, Chris' team ended up in 10th place overall out of 70 or so teams! This is a huge accomplishment and really solidifies that he is doing just what he is meant to do. I couldn't be more proud of this man and all he has accomplished. Not only did he meet the goal, he has created a climate within this team that is just amazing. These kids want to be around each other and Chris and strive to be amazing young people. Even after spending three LONG days together (14 hours each day!) they still wanted to get together last night to celebrate before heading home. Of course that meant we didn't get home until after 1 am this morning.

He is sleeping soundly now. Only two more days of practice and then he has some time off. Of course I have one week until things start really getting busy for me. But it will be nice to have some time this week just to hang out around the house.

Wordle

This is addicting... but look at the pretty things you can create!

Tagged

One of my closest friends from High School and I have reconnected courtesy of email and blogger. She just had the cutest little man in the world... who also happens to be named Christopher. Anyway, she "tagged" me on her blog.

10 years ago: August 1998
I was getting ready for my second year of teaching at Antioch Lower Grade School (now Antioch Elementary.... Lower Grade is a rotten name for a school, isn't it) I had a year under my belt and thought I knew it all! I think Chris was still working at Hastings YMCA, but I don't remember. We had one dog- Patches and one cat- Simba We aren't even thinking about having kids yet!

5 years ago: August 2003:
Getting ready for another school year... this time at Carl Sandburg where I have been since. Who knew I would fall in love with the middle school age group? I am so grateful I stumbled on this job in 2001. I work with amazing people and have made so many close friends. Chris was working at Leaning Tower YMCA in Niles. Long commute and things were starting to get ugly with the Metro YMCA association. We lived in our current house. Still only one dog and one cat! We were deep in infertility treatments. We were healing and going strong into another treatment cycle.

5 months ago: March 2
Hmmm... in the middle of ISAT testing I think. Chris was a the peak of his winter swim season and I had yearbook deadlines. I was preparing to run my first (and ONLY) 8k. We now have TWO dogs and a cat. Chris is coaching full time for Warren Blue Devil Swim Club and LOVES it. We've been on a "break" from infertility treatments for a year or two. We are healing from the failed adoption in October still.

5 things on my to do list for today:
1. Vacuum again. (Can I saran wrap the dogs to keep the shedding down?!)
2. Finish cleaning my studio
3. Spend some time with my friend Megan playing in my studio
4. Get the dogs out for some exercise if it stays nice and not too hot
5. Stalk the ISI Swimming Results page to track how Chris' kids are doing at the State Champs

5 bad habits:
1. leaving my shoes all over the house
2. eating anything chocolate
3. spending too much time on the computer doing NOTHING
4. watching train wreck TV
5. leaving shampoo bubbles all over the shower (Chris HATES that!)

5 places I've lived:
1. Round Lake Beach, IL
2. Houston, TX
3. Crystal Lake, IL
4. Bloomington/Normal, IL
5. Antioch, IL

5 things people don't know about me:
1. I am not a fan of birds. I am not really afraid, but I don' t care for them AT ALL
2. I once almost got into a bar fight with a little person (!)
3. I am a tad claustrophobic
4. I wanted to be a pediatrician or an interior designer when I grew up (can you say opposites!)
5. I can't watch scary movies... they give me nightmares. (My students make so much fun of me!)

5 people I tag:
I don't think I have 5 readers! LOL
1. Gloria
2. Kellie
3. Beverly
4. ???
5. ????

Library of Memories Update

One of my goals for the summer was to fully implement the Library of Memories framework. I took a class from Stacy Julian this spring and LOVED every minute of it. I wasn't able to keep up with all of the assignments at the end thanks to the end of the school year. The system just makes sense for me and I wanted to get it all set up before school starts again.

I spent most of today working on getting all of my finished Layouts integrated into the system. For those of you who aren't scrapbookers, I basically wanted to get my finished pages organized into categories so I could find them when I wanted to and others could look at them in a logical way. I decided that I would leave any pages that I did on Creative Memories pages alone... for now. I don't want to have to figure out how to separate them just yet.

So I started by taking all of the layouts out of their current albums. As a side note, whatever adhesive I used in 2004 failed miserably! I spent a good hour repairing pages with loose elements. So sad! I am hoping that my current adhesive holds up much better! Here is what it looked like when I pulled them all onto my dining room table:
The end result is the photo at the top of the post. I need to create a few more tags and actually need to get another black and red album to get things organized as I would like them to be. In sorting the layouts, I really started to see the patterns in what I scrapbook and what I really want/need to scrapbook in the future. I gave up chronological scrapbooking a few years ago, but I was never deliberate about what pages I did create. It was just whatever was closest to me. Now with this system, I can find my photos and really create pages that I want to create. I can create with intention. It is almost as if my love of the art has been reborn with this system. So that may be a little melodramatic...

I also did some cleaning in my studio before starting all of this. The side where I actually create is a MESS right now, but the rest of the room is in much better shape.These are the shelves in my "reading corner" The albums here are the chronological storage binders where all of my unscrapped photos are. I still have a few more years worth that need to get into binders. Right now they are in the triage area:The basket holds all of my memorabilia that needs to be filed as well. It is all starting to fall into place!

Here is the TV and table I have in the room when I have other people over to crop. It was our kitchen table in our last house! I would like to paint it white eventually and maybe even put on a glass top. The fan is necessary to keep the room cool. I have an OLD window air conditioner that has served me well up here! The fan just gives it a little extra help!

Here is my little reading corner. I would like to create a slip cover for the chair this week. We'll see how adventurous I feel. Sewing is really not one of my talents. :-) I leave that to my mom and sister!


I will probably spend most of tomorrow trying to get the other side of my space cleaned up. I really want to scrapbook now that I have most everything organized. I just need to have a clean space to do it in!