Motivation

They always started out in a serious racing position but I think it
always pretty much ended with them falling in the pool.

 The kids did swim team this summer.  Hyrum could hardly swim at the beginning but it was good for him to practice a lot.  They were excited about it and enjoyed going to practice.  The kids didn't really understand what a meet was or really what it meant to compete at first.  About half way though they realized that they were getting last in all of the races, but got ribbons anyway.  When it was over the kids weren't particularly sad but Alan said that he didn't want to compete the next week.

Being the sensitive mom that I am I told him that they were going to compete anyway.  Of course I gave them the lecture that the only person they were competing against was themselves.  The next week I told them that if they
beat their time in all of the races we would go out to ice cream afterwards.

The first week Hyrum looked like this a lot. 

Every few feet Hyrum would stop and hold onto the lane line to catch his breath.  After the promise of ice cream the next week he looked more like this.

Hyrum would start heading over to the lane marker and we would all yell at him to not stop and keep going.  For the first time ever Hyrum made it across the pool with out stopping.  You should have seen the look on his face when we told him he knocked 40 seconds off of his time.  In the end both of the kids improved their time in every single race.  I was so proud of them.  And best of all they were so proud of themselves.

Here are the proud boys with their ribbons.  Now I want to now where my ribbon is
for sitting out in 95 degree temps watching them.