Cason's swimming lessons

Cason has never had swim lessons before. I wanted to put him in when he was a toddler but I was pregnant with Bryce and thought it would be a waste if I couldn't continue with them. All the classes are parent and tot below 3 years old so I wouldn't have been able to swim with him when Bryce was a baby (no one to watch Bryce) so swim lessons weren't an option when he was 2. When he was 3, we knew from other experiences that he's slow to warm up to things like that and it would have been a waste of money to put him in because we were 99% sure he'd just sit and refuse to do anything. But now that he's almost 4, we decided it was time to at least introduce him to lessons. We decided to go for private lessons because given his personality, we knew he'd need 1 on 1 attention to succeed. I asked an acquaintance for the name and number of a swim instructor she highly recommended and set up 2 weeks of lessons for Cason.

Cason hates water on his face/head and last summer in the pool was content to get in no deeper than waist high. He never wanted to go in the deep end, even with me holding him. In the bathtub, he would freak out if a drop of water splashed on his face and ask for a towel. So we knew that his instructor would be in for a challenge.

He ended up doing good about half of the days. The other half of the days were filled with crying and refusal to do what Ms. Jean asked him to do. We decided to put him in for a few more days when the initial two weeks were up so that we could get him progressed a little farther and try to end the swim lessons on a positive note.

We are really proud of Cason. He came a long way in the last few weeks from where he started and really had to step outside of his comfort zone every swim day. He never really actually liked putting his face in but did it many times anyway. He is definitely more comfortable in the water now and hopefully next year he will do better in lessons. Here is a video of some of his last days and a few pictures for the book.

edited to say sorry for the crappy quality of the video -- an hd camera is definitely going to have to be on my Christmas wish list!



Not every kid gets swim lessons with a retriever.



Picking up dive sticks (or coins or rings, I'm not really sure).

Rycie Roo

I honestly dreaded potty training Bryce. He is pretty stubborn so I thought he'd be a lot harder than Cason. Kelly and I debated if we should do it early in summer after all our school year activities ended or wait until after vacation. The week before Memorial Day weekend we decided to just go for it. We were busy all that weekend so the day after the holiday, we had him throw away all his diapers (but not really, I have them hidden, anyone need size 5 Luvs?) and let him pick out what undies he wanted and haven't looked back. He was honestly SO much easier than I expected. By Saturday of that week we were able to take him to the gym with us. He only had two accidents in public and that was before he conquered his fear of public potties. Now he always tells us when he has to go and even stays dry for nap every day.



Rycie has also become a huge Daddy's boy. When Kelly's on a trip, he will settle for me but if Kelly's home he wants Daddy to do everything for him. I like that! It's nice not being the only one to wipe butts and read stories around here. Rycie also likes to say that he is a baby. We ask him if he's a big boy and he says "nooooo" and laughs. We ask him what he is and he says "baby!" We say "who's a baby?" and he points to himself and says "me!!!" and laughs some more.



He is also talking in full sentences now and I find him really easy to understand, maybe that's just because I'm around him all the time. He can count to 10 perfect every time but after 10 it's usually "14...16...18...20!" He also knows all his letters and letter sounds. I'm a little embarrassed to say that he just picked those up on his own from the LeapFrog videos that Cason loves. Rycie also loves to sing and do motions to songs. Usually when we sing something, he listens and says the last word of every line, which is pretty cute. He also started doing this at our prayer at dinner, saying the last word of every sentence.



Kelly took this picture one night last month and posted it on Facebook. It's only really funny with the quote he attached: ‎"In order to beat your enemy, you must first know your enemy." -Sun Tzu

Kelly commented under the picture "I walked into his room to read him a story before bed and this was what he had in his hand. He was pretending to read and just said random numbers..."two, five, eight, nine, ten, fourteen." Of course, I interrogated him ruthlessly but he proved to be surprisingly resistant for a 2 year old. I'll find out soon enough just how much parent knowledge has been compromised."

And just for fun, two short videos. The first is Rycie being super enthusiastic about playing a coloring game on Kelly's ipad. The second is him being wild on the couch tonight. Please ignore Cason's whining, he had a morning of swimming followed by no nap (and he really needed a nap).

Happy Father's Day

Here's something I've been working on for 2 years now and hope to continue until the boys move out. And watching it, I realize how much we need an HD video recorder. Happy Father's Day Kelly!

Nutrition 817

It's no secret that Kelly has been really into fitness and nutrition for about 5 years now. About 2 years ago, he started following Precision Nutrition, a program created for athletes. He achieved great results from it and studied nutrition quite a bit to the point where other people were constantly asking him nutrition questions. After we started working out at our CrossFit gym, others quickly realized he was very knowledgeable and started asking him questions and asked him to create meal plans for them.

Last fall Precision Nutrition (PN) had an online opportunity for people to become a certified PN coach. It was an investment for us but we decided that Kelly should go ahead and do it so he could legitimately be able to give sound nutrition advice and charge others for it. They sent him a thick text book and he did some online studying as well and by the end of December he was ready to take the test. He did great and passed and was ready for business by the end of 2010.

I thought of the name for his business, Nutrition 817. 817 is our area code so it's easy for people to remember. It also ties in with our gym, CrossFit 817. Kelly thought of the slogan, "Fuel the Machine". A common CrossFit saying is "we don't use machines, we make them" so it kind of ties into that. Our next step was to have a logo created. A friend from our church is a graphic designer so we asked him to help us out and he did a great job.



Once we had the logo we got around to getting some shirts to wear and sell at the gym. We also had a vinyl banner made to hang in the gym. It's 4 feet by 6 feet and only cost $32, shipped!



So Kelly has been writing meal plans for members of our gym since January and that has been going pretty well. A few months ago, Rob (the owner of our gym), told Kelly that a guy from California had been contacting him about buying a BodyMetrix ultrasound fat monitoring device. We blew it off for awhile because it is a rather expensive piece of gear and we just couldn't see the return on investment at the time. But more and more new members have been coming into the gym and pretty much all of them want nutritional advice. So we began to see what a great tool this would be and how it would make Nutrition 817 seem more legitimate. We had a conference call with the sales guy and I searched all around the internet and could not find one negative thing about the BodyMetrix. It was all very positive. So last month we became the proud owners of this ultrasound device that can track fat loss and muscle gain.



This weekend I created a basic website for Kelly. It's nothing fancy but it gets the information out there.

http://www.nutrition817.com/

Kelly also has a Facebook page for his business where he gives tips and tricks, answers questions, and posts food he eats as an example to his clients.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nutrition-817/176990032344288

Just wanted to post this to give family an idea of what we have been up to this year. And when I say "we", I mean mostly Kelly! I'm the brains behind some of the marketing and that's about it. I am so proud of all the hard work Kelly puts in at his THREE jobs!