AA Meet & Dead Sea Scrolls

12-16-07: What a busy weekend! We left Thur. night for the Dec. AA Winter Championships. In order to enter this meet, a swimmer has to obtain a minimum of a "AA" time which is just below Junior Olympic times. These are times (AA and JO) that swimmers work hard to improve to. If they get these times in certain events, they can then enter in those events at these types of meets.

She also swam on the 200 IM relay team (the butterfly leg, she's the girl at the right end), and they cut off some time of the RST team time.

Summer qualified for 6 or 7 of these events this weekend, but since some of the events fell on Saturday, she only swam in the events on Fri. and Sun.

On Saturday, we drove down from LA to San Diego to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit with the Sabangans. Chloe and her parents and Natalie and her mom also joined us from home.After going through a very tight security checkpoint, we couldn't take any pictures of the actually exhibits, so here are just a couple more shots we were able to take.Afterwards, we had to zip back up to LA so we could get the girls back in bed so they would be well-rested for their last day of racing.

Overall, it was a pretty good meet for Summer. She added some time, matched her PR, and set new PRs, but the biggest achievement was just getting here, so we were pretty happy for her.

For Summer, she loved it because she got to be with friends and eat out all weekend, two of her favorite things.

She also was able to have a "big sister" for the weekend. Marina, whose parents couldn't make it to this meet, was under our care (except when we left Sat., then she was watched by some others.) They are very much alike, and could really be sisters. She fit right into our family for the weekend and we enjoyed "adopting" her.One of the things Marina and Summer have in common is that they both love FOOD! (I asked Marian what she wanted for Xmas and she said, "FOOD!") Amazingly, for someone who loves food so much, she had never eaten at Souplantation, so we just had to take her there for lunch after their first day of swimming on Friday. Here we are with the Sabangan sisters, getting ready to replenish glycogen stores!Surrounded by delicious, healthy food, Marina thought she had died and gone to heaven!
Food is always tastes best when eaten with friends ;-)Here's what swimmers do when they're not racing--having fun in the water! The girls are enjoying the jacuzzi at the hotel where the team stayed at.The team enjoyed going out to eat in the evenings--this was an interesting place because it had peanuts all over the place, and you were encouraged to throw the shells on the floor! Unfortunately, Summer is allergic to peanuts, so we had to created a "peanut-free zone" around her, so the kids came to visit her in her "bubble". Congrats to all the AA Champ swimmers!