Backwards 2009

Tyaan's school's Backwards dance was last Saturday, February 28th. She went with Wade and these are a couple of the pictures they had taken. The theme of the dance was "Jungle Boogie".


It sounds like they had a good time. They doubled with another couple who they are friends with. I got to be the chauffeur of the evening and enjoyed getting to spend some time with them. They had dinner at In-N-Out, went to the dance, and then came back to our house for a couple hours and watched a movie.

My swimmer is back!!

Swim season begins next week. As you know Tyaan broke her collarbone in January which kept her out of the water for several weeks. She's been in the water for a couple weeks now doing her best to get back in shape and working on her technique. She's been very worried about how hard it was to complete her 100 butterfly (her most strenuous event) and how quickly she was getting tired when she swam.

The last couple of days the coach has been doing timed events to place swimmers in their various events for the first meet next Tuesday. There wasn't any worry about Tyaan losing her place in any of her events because she's coming off of an injury so shouldn't be at her best, plus she's the team captain, plus she swam so well last year that she's earned her place. But, she wanted to get an idea of where she was at so she knew how hard it was going to be to get her goal of CIF times this season.

Here are her times for each event. To give perspective on these numbers I'm including information from last season as well.

50 butterfly
1st meet last season - 0:34
best time last season - 0:32
Time now - 0:34

200 freestyle
1st meet last season - 2:29
best time last season - 2:25
Time now - 2:33

100 freestyle
1st meet last season - 1:08
best time last season - 1:04
Time now - 1:06

100 butterfly
1st meet last season - 1:23
best time last season - 1:13
Time now - 1:18

As you can see she did exceptionally well! She called me from the pool deck just after finishing her 100 fly and she was so excited. She swam it alone and said the pool was surrounded by her teammates cheering her on. After being out of the water completely for 8 weeks and only having 1 week of kicking and 1 week of workouts she is doing fabulous. I'm really excited for swim season to start and can't wait to see where she ends up by the end of the year. I think I may be making the drive to Long Beach for CIF in May!

You can read about her 100 fly from her perspective on her blog.

Phantom of the Opera

For Christmas my mom gave Tyaan and I a ticket to see Phantom of the Opera at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. I have always wanted to see it and have never had the opportunity so it was a great gift! We went on February 16th.

Here we are ready to head out.

It had been raining for a few days and I was worried about traffic on the way out there, but it stayed clear for the entire night and we didn't hit any traffic at all! We took my Phantom CD for the drive and were all ready to see the play after listening to it. Here is the theater all lit up before the show started.

A quick picture of the stage during intermission. You can see the chandelier, which becomes part of the show a couple of times. This is taken from our seats. We were in the 3rd row in the center balcony. They were perfect!


Here we are coming out of the theater. I loved it and was thrilled with how well the actors did. The guy who played the Phantom was fantastic, but they were all really really good.


I was so excited to finally get to see it and it met all of my expectations. I loved seeing how they did the show on stage and I'm always fascinated with how they keep the stage changing and show such a range of scenery and situations in a small area. Tyaan was laughing at me just before it started because I was so excited. She said I was like a little kid on Christmas morning.

I loved it! Thanks mom!!!

Don's Birthday

My father in law's birthday is on February 16th. We had dinner with them on Sunday evening and Scott and Melissa were out for the weekend also. Melissa made chocolate cupcakes in place of a birthday cake. They were yummy, and he got his 1 candle out with only 1 try! :-)

Valentines Day Cake

The Laurels got together this week to do cake decorating for Valentines Day. Tyaan decorated me a cake and it was adorable!



Isn't she a sweetheart?

Waterpolo Picture 2009

Tyaan took waterpolo pictures on Jan 26th. Her friend took this while the photographer was getting Ty's individual so this is about what it will look like.

This is another picture she took that I thought was cute.



Too bad she isn't playing. Since then she's quit going altogether. She decided that if she wants to do as well as she was planning during swim season she needed to concentrate on healing and getting her endurance level back up. She hasn't been in the water since before Christmas break which is, by far, the longest she's ever gone without getting a workout in just about every day. The good thing is she feels that running cross country this year really helped get her endurance level up and thinks that will help her a lot once she's back in the pool for swim.

Tyaan