Just in Time for Christmas (Part 2)

Just a week before the swim meet we were scrambling like chickens with our heads cut off to catch up from our long Thanksgiving vacation in Houston. It's official. I am an Aunt! Rob is an Uncle! Des is a Cousin! The Houston trip was in honor of the newest addition to the Paulsen clan...little baby Isaac. Oh babies are so fun, and so is Thanksgiving and pie. In that order of course. We had a splendid holiday de-stressing, reading, eating, sleeping, movie watching, house admiring, sight seeing, baby chasing, dog walking, warm weather enjoying, family picture taking, Emily and Harrison visiting, and my favorite...game playing. We played many rounds of Dominion, Nerts and of course Dance Dance Revolution and MarioKart. Overall it was just a great time seeing and enjoying family. Tiff you look amazing btw...

I can't believe Des was ever that small 

Playing with Grandpa at the airport.

Dear baby Isaac

Tina Puppy and her new friend

The iconic house of beer cans

Giant president busts

Just in time for Christmas (Part 1)

Hello again everyone! I always imagined that when I was grown up I would not let the holidays eat all of my time and stress me out...so I've just decided, I'm not grown up yet. : )  It has been a tornado of activity in this Maryland home since the holiday season arrived so here's an update, just in time for Christmas.

Starting with most recent activities....

Yesterday, in Cleveland, OH, I competed in my first swim meet since I quit swimming in college almost 8 years ago. My heart is all a flutter with the excitement of racing again. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face as we drove the 5 1/2 hours home after the meet. I am a mother/athlete now and student/athlete no more.  I'm a little bit fatter, a lot bit slower, but I'm equally as jazzed about swimming as I ever was. I even had a cheering section as the Lovinger's were kind enough to join us for the afternoon.  It was a 25 meter pool and my inaugural times were this:

50m free: 33:00 (29.57 scy)
100m back: 1:19.42 (1:11 scy)
200 IM: 3:04.06 (2:44.9 scy)

I have a bit of work to do but I love having a benchmark to work from and I feel pretty good about those times. Especially since some weeks I get three swims in and some weeks I get one. I think I beat every woman at the meet, except for one, and a large handful of the gentlemen folk as well.  I'm mostly hoping that Des will catch the swimming bug with all this exposure. Cross those fingers that our future will be filled with swim meets and not baseball games.

So Dad, here is a snippet of my 100 backstroke for you to analyze (I'm in the closest lane if you can't tell)To begin the critique, my start was horrendous, but I've still got it under water off the walls. My age group swimmer timers told me I was, "impressive". That's a high compliment from a teenage swimmer to an old timer.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Bad Holiday Photos

We know we've been away for a while and we'll give an update soon.  But tonight Rob and I found something so great we couldn't pass up the chance to blog about it: Bad Holiday Photos!  We couldn't stop laughing on a number of photos.  We hope you enjoy them as much as we did.  Thanks Ellen.

http://photos.ellen.warnerbros.com/galleries/bad_holiday_photos