Singing in the... Oh no, thats SWIMMING in the rain

As long as there's no lightning, there is still swim practice. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

Zoey Zebra

At Christmas, Sarah got a new swim cap with zebra stripes on it and started wearing it to practice. And, at some point she got the nickname Zoey Zebra from her coach, which she really liked. The Easter Bunny got her a zebra towel and she has some zebra flip flops, too. So, the whole idea for sewing bathing suits came from Sarah's wish to have a zebra bathing suit for swim practice, which I could not find anywhere. I finally stumbled upon some zebra fabric at Joann's and it was on clearance to boot! Woohoo! So, this was the first Zebra suit and my sweet girl in her zebra cap that started it all. 

The Sun Came Out

And finally, on day 13 of summer vacation, the sun was finally out. And, we had already planned to be on the beach, so that was a super bonus. The whole family volunteered to help with the PanAm Masters Open Water Championship swim on Siesta Key. This is the final event in a 10 day swimming competition, and there were people there from all over the world.

Siesta Key Beach was rated #1 beach, so it's very hard to see it deserted. That is, unless get there at 5:30 in the morning.

This is what it looked like a couple short hours later. Packed with People. Pete and I are on the right in the yellow.

 There weren't really many waves (Which was great for the swimmers!) so the Boogy board was more of just a floaty toy. Sarah had plenty of fun anyway.

 Pete had a late morning sightseeing tour, so he passed right by us and we waved at him from the beach as he drove by.

Now this is what summer vacation is about!

Sewing Sunday

So on Saturday, the kids were gone almost all day at 2 different birthday parties. It still rained, but they were able to have plenty of water fun.

Sunday I started and finished a few different sewing projects. Some of the moms at swim practice have these fabulous bags made from a tough polypropylene:

Tough Bags

And I noticed one day that our Chicken feed bags were made out of the same type fabric. It's tough like a tarp. So instead of throwing them out, when they were empty, I repurposed them into these fabulous tote bags that will hold up really well to the sandy, wet demands of summer! It was easy peasy.

I also wanted to try my hand at sewing swimsuits for Sarah. I took one of her favorite suits and traced it out to make a pattern.

We tweaked it a little, and his is what we ended up with.  I was only using what I had on hand, so I didn't line it and it could have used a little wider elastic, but overall, not too bad!

Now, we're going to try to find some Zebra striped Spandex to make a zebra suit to match her favorite swim cap. She wears it to practice so much, the coach calls her Zoey Zebra. She likes that.

I also finished up the boat seats for Pete since one of them was totally destroyed and he had a charter today. The one on the left doesn't have the foam inside it, but it's showing the backside with the zipper and the snaps. 

I felt very accomplished today!

Chalk Art

So, last summer we went to a chalk art festival (albeit, a very small one) and since we have this big bucket of chalk, I put this on the list of things to do. Sarah started making her picture yesterday, but then the sky opened up and the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down. And when we woke up this morning, it was no longer raining so she started again.

Owen joined in, and had his own creation called "Squiggly Blob". It reminded me of pictures I used to draw when I was a kid with no rhyme or reason, but just squiggles and color.

I tried to get super artistic (Which I so am NOT) and draw a picture of Sarah taken from a picture of Sarah. I discovered that it is pretty hard to copy a vividly colored picture with pastel chalks.

Here's the picture I started with

And here was my end result. 

Not bad for a first try, but clearly I have a ways to go! Sarah ended up drawing a few different things.

That's a chicken. One of Sarah's favorites named Beauty.

Since we are talking about chickens... they were out free ranging and came by to see what is going on. We love our chickens. 

 This is Sammy, our Black Ancona. She lays pretty white eggs.

 This is Curie, our Barred Rock. Her eggs are tan.

This is Puffy and Fluffy, our Easter Eggers (They lay green eggs) with Sammy. 

And this is Owen's final "Squiggly Blob."

All this before noon! I wonder what else we will do today!