Julian's swim race

Today was Julian's last day of swimming lessons for the year. He will graduate up to the next level which will be the open swim level 5. For the end of the lessons his teacher, Nicole, organized a bunch of races for the kids to show off what they have learned. For Julian's group they did a total of 4 races. Julian did a great job and won the fourth race. His form has gotten really good and he is able to breath on both sides which I have found to be very important and very challenging. At the end of all of the races there was an awards ceremony where the kids all got ribbons for the winning of certain events (it "surprisingly" worked out that all kids got a ribbon for winning at least one event!), a certificate of completion and a medal. The woman who organizes and teaches the swimming classes does a great job with the kids. She teaches swim safety such as what to look for before going into the water like weather issues, dangers in the water, how to judge depth before diving etc. She teaches the kids without goggles so they can be comfortable without them in case they ever get into trouble they won't panic without their goggles. In the picture of the kids swimming Julian is the one in the front...you can only see his arm out of the water. That is the race he won. And yes, his hair is very long. Jaime told him he could grow it out until Christmas. I can't wait for Heather to get her scissors out!!!

Jaime and I did a mini training triathlon on Saturday. It was a 250 meter swim, 15k bike and 3k run. It was pretty windy and I was on my hybrid which was slow going. My swim was great...I was second out of the water right behind Jaime...but most of the fast people were off island so that is not a huge accomplishment for us although our swims have improved a lot. I came out of the water before the swim teacher which I was happy about. Once on the bike I slowed down and all the people who came out of the water after, me except for one, passed me. Oh well...it was still a good day of exercise for me. My run was slow too and I guess maybe it was the time. The race started at 3:00 which is a weird time for a race. All through my run I was burping up gasses from my Wendy's cobb salad that I had for lunch. Aren't you glad I got real personal in telling you all of that. You're welcome! Anyway, the race was small with only 8 or 10 people and I think I came in 3rd to last. Oh well...I'm poor and can't afford a nice fancy road bike so I'll just have to granny it until our money starts coming in instead of going out. OK, coming home on Friday! Excited about that!!!

The perverted lizard...no not what you think!

I had a big lizard in my tub the other night. It wasn't really huge but the biggest one I've seen in the house so far. It was about 4-5 inches long. It was having trouble getting out of the tub. His little feet weren't sticking. I called Julian to come help me because he likes to catch the things and.....I DON'T! So he was trying to get him and he climbed up his arm and onto his bathing suit that he had on. I shook his bathing suit to see if it would fall off. Then all of a sudden it disappeared. The things are so fast I figured it must have escaped somehow. Just in case I told him to pull down his pants to see if it was in there. We didn't see it so he went about his business. He was on the computer for about an hour when he stood up and pointed to where the lizards tail was lying squirming on the floor. He was laughing and I was grossed out! I said "Are you sure he's not in your pants?" And we were both laughing. He pulled them down again and we still didn't see anything. So at this point it was time for bed so I told him to go get his pj's on and brush his teeth. All of a sudden he started jumping around and acting all crazy (not unusual for Julian so I didn't thing anything of it). Then he stopped, looked at me and said real quitely and serious "He just came out, he's on the floor". I got up and he was sitting down there probably scared to death! I said "CATCH IT!" And started cracking up. We were both laughing so hard and he finally caught the poor thing sans tail and put it outside. He said that the lizards payback was that he had to sit in there with the stench of his bum. GROSS! Hahahahahahahaha. I'm still laughing just thinking about it.

On another note...they had a trail ride at horseback riding yesterday and on the way back they spotted a tiny baby sea turtle finding his way down to the water. He struggled a bit and got tossed by the waves as he entered but they watched him until they knew he was in there away from the birds. How cool is that?!

Julian had his end of term exams this week. He got a 93 on lang. arts, 92 in math, 76 on ss which is probably because it's all new material and I helped him study everything in his notes which he knew but there was other material that we didn't study about the other caribbean islands. He still passed which was good. He got a 83 on Spanish, a 100 on literature and his science test has not been graded yet. His teacher said he was done in no time and did all the extra credit as well. I'm sure he did great on it. So basically he now has a week left of school and they will probably not be doing much. They will finish getting ready for their Christmas show next Thursday where they are singing and dancing. It should be really funny. They are also going to the nursing home one day next week to sing to the people there. Then on Friday we are on the freedom bird!