Blueberries and Pickles: Olympics

The kids all woke up early in the morning, and when I came downstairs with Nathaniel, Amelia and Noah were snuggled up on the couch reading a book, and Megan and Natalie were coloring together at the table. It was so cute how they were paired up and playing so nicely.

Once Mom and Dad were almost to the house, we went down to the nearby beach for aquatic events. Brian took his kayak, and taught my girls how to paddle. They learned pretty quickly and were able to paddle around the shallow part of the lake by themselves, including turning around without colliding with any of boats or buoys or docks.

As soon as Megan got in the kayak, she insisted that she knew how to paddle all by herself and didn't need any instruction. You could tell Uncle Brian is a teacher because he was very patient while insisting that she needed to learn basic paddling techniques.

Uncle Brian even took Nathaniel out in the kayak. He seemed okay with it, although Brian said he was a little squirmy and he had to work to keep the kayak balanced. I tried kayaking, too, and I loved it, but no one took a picture of me. (edited to add that Becky took some photos of me, but I haven't seen them yet because they are still on her camera.)

We moved on to swimming events, but Noah was pouting about something and Megan declined to participate even though the water was only about two feet deep, so we only had two competitors. They jumped in from the pier, no diving was allowed, obviously, since the water was so shallow and they don't know how to dive anyway. The first two races were the front crawl. Natalie won, but it was a closer race than I thought it would be. I love the photo of Amelia gasping for air, seeming like she's struggling even though she could easily stand up (and I think Natalie was standing there).

Then the girls tried the backstroke. Amelia was the winner of that event, although they both kicked furiously.

Finally it was time for diving. We did individual diving first. The girls love to look at the photos of Natalie doing crazy poses during her dives.

Then we moved on to synchronized diving, which was hilarious! The girls couldn't get the hang of counting and jumping at the same time, but they sure had a lot of fun!

Here they are posing before their dive:

Then Noah joined in and the kids did a synchronized swimming routine, which they practiced for about 15 minutes before their performance. Mom helped them figure out some fun moves to do. I missed the entire thing because that's when I took the kayak out; I didn't know they were going to perform then. (edited to add that Becky took photos of this, too, but they are still on her camera.) They probably could have stayed in the water for another couple hours, but the rest of us were getting tired of the beach (and I think it was lunch time) so we moved on to beach volleyball. Oh my goodness, the kids are terrible at volleyball! They could get the ball over the net once, but then the other team could never return the ball. So basically they just served over and over again.