Swimming!
"This chapter is going to be about the activiteis my kids did outside of school activities." Lisa explains that extra circular activities are fun for the kids and bring many adult friends to interact with. "A lot of them have some of the same kind of values that we did as far as family was important, our children’s education is important, and our children were all important, and making our community a better place was important, doing the right thing for the right reason was important."
" When Amy and Kristy were little, the first activity they were involved in was gymnastics over at Michael Anthony’s. They had a fun time just zipping around and doing cartwheels and doing somersaults and just exploring what their bodies could do. We got into that because of the Baird’s. Alex Baird was Amy’s good friend and Debbie the mom whose been my dear friend forever – about 24 years now – she had majored in PE at BYU and so sports were very important to her. She had grown up with sports and they had made a huge difference in her life and so she wanted her kids involved in sports. Alex was also doing it so Amy and Kristy involved for a little while and because Debbie had her kids doing swimming, we started at the Bishop Estates Swim Team.
"Amy was six when she started. She had fun, she enjoyed it. It did take up some time, but I liked the fact that it gave structure to the summer, it was really good exercise, Amy slept good at night, she enjoyed it, she was decent at it. I felt that living in California children really needed to know how to swim to be safe and to be comfortable with their friends because so many people swim, have pools, they have swim parties. I wanted to know that they were safe and that they knew how to swim.
"Amy always enjoyed physical activity. She’s always enjoyed sports, she’s always been good at them, not super great brilliant, but she’s always been coordinated and able to do it. We have very happy memories of going to the pool. We would start practises in April after school. And so after school I’d take Amy on over – and this is before we lived on the Wilson Lane house and we were still on Moretti Drive and so it was a little ways to go.
"I remember bringing hot chocolate because we would always hit a cold patch of time there - sometime in May when we would hit really cold weather. In fact one year I thought every day was freezing. I would bundle the other two kids up and we would come to the pool and they would play around while Amy was swimming and then they would drink hot chocolate afterward and head home.
"Then next year I had both Amy and Kristy swimming. Amy was seven at this point, so she was a seven-eight and Kristy was five and so she was a six and under. Kristy was a different story when it came to swimming. Amy would hop in the water it didn’t matter the temperature and she would take off and go. Kristy had a hard time getting into the pool. They had a really great coach, Coach Stacey who would encourage her, help her - but it was a more difficult thing for Kristy to do – to swim. But she learned how to swim, she has a beautiful stroke, a beautiful style, she’s never very fast.
"A couple of funny things that she would do is that she would – when she was doing her backstroke she'd go right up against the lane rope and would help use the lane rope to pull her along. She’d reach up with the stroke and grab the lane rope and pull herself down and she would be helping herself along and the coaches really had to encourage her to not do that.
"Another time I remember we went to this meet clear out in Brentwood I think it was. They had this really teeny pool and Kristy was doing backstroke and I swear it was just like a pinball going down the land. She’d go boink into one lane rope over-correct and boink into the other lane rope and over-correct and boink into the other one and so I swear she swam like three times the length of the pool as she was going down it because she was going in a zig-zag pattern all the way down. And it was really cute – everybody loved it.
"It was somewhere in this time in the first couple of years swimming that we also had Stacey’s brother-in-law Coach Jason came and swam one year as one of the coaches one year. Kristy would sit down on a chair and she wouldn’t want to get in so he would pick her up and toss her into the pool, or he’d pick up the plastic chair and go sit that down in the pool so she would get into the water. Once she got in it was OK, it was just that initial getting into the water when it was cold on those mornings.
"I think part of it is Kristy is just this little teeny thing. She didn’t hit 40 pounds. Back then the law for car seats was you had to be 4 years old or 40 pounds to get out of a car seat. Kristy had a horrible time in car seats, she did not like them – really, really did not like them. She figured out how to climb out of her car seat when she was just three years old and we went and bought her a new car seat because I could not have her out of her car seat it was the law she had to be in there.
She figured out how to get out of there when she was this little teeny thing. I always said she has this big spirit in a little body. It was extremely difficult for her, she wanted to sit up by me in the front seat. We had a Mercury Sable and so it had that bench seat across with three seat belts in front, three seat belts in back. And she was perfectly content to sit there by me in the front. She would put her right hand - she sucked the middle two fingers of her right hand – she would stick them in there and she would put her arm this sounds really bad – but she would stick her arm into my armpit and that was very comforting to her for some reason, I don’t know why. She loved that and she would sit perfectly still at this point but she was not in her car seat.
"When she was finally four years old she wasn’t yet 40 pounds but it was 4 or 40 pounds and so she got out of a car seat. Good thing because she didn’t get to 40 pounds until she was in the second grade. Like I said this itty bitty thing. She didn’t have a whole lot of fat on her and so when it came to swim it was, it was just challenging for her to get into the water. But she still did it every year.
" When Amy and Kristy were little, the first activity they were involved in was gymnastics over at Michael Anthony’s. They had a fun time just zipping around and doing cartwheels and doing somersaults and just exploring what their bodies could do. We got into that because of the Baird’s. Alex Baird was Amy’s good friend and Debbie the mom whose been my dear friend forever – about 24 years now – she had majored in PE at BYU and so sports were very important to her. She had grown up with sports and they had made a huge difference in her life and so she wanted her kids involved in sports. Alex was also doing it so Amy and Kristy involved for a little while and because Debbie had her kids doing swimming, we started at the Bishop Estates Swim Team.
"Amy was six when she started. She had fun, she enjoyed it. It did take up some time, but I liked the fact that it gave structure to the summer, it was really good exercise, Amy slept good at night, she enjoyed it, she was decent at it. I felt that living in California children really needed to know how to swim to be safe and to be comfortable with their friends because so many people swim, have pools, they have swim parties. I wanted to know that they were safe and that they knew how to swim.
"Amy always enjoyed physical activity. She’s always enjoyed sports, she’s always been good at them, not super great brilliant, but she’s always been coordinated and able to do it. We have very happy memories of going to the pool. We would start practises in April after school. And so after school I’d take Amy on over – and this is before we lived on the Wilson Lane house and we were still on Moretti Drive and so it was a little ways to go.
"I remember bringing hot chocolate because we would always hit a cold patch of time there - sometime in May when we would hit really cold weather. In fact one year I thought every day was freezing. I would bundle the other two kids up and we would come to the pool and they would play around while Amy was swimming and then they would drink hot chocolate afterward and head home.
"Then next year I had both Amy and Kristy swimming. Amy was seven at this point, so she was a seven-eight and Kristy was five and so she was a six and under. Kristy was a different story when it came to swimming. Amy would hop in the water it didn’t matter the temperature and she would take off and go. Kristy had a hard time getting into the pool. They had a really great coach, Coach Stacey who would encourage her, help her - but it was a more difficult thing for Kristy to do – to swim. But she learned how to swim, she has a beautiful stroke, a beautiful style, she’s never very fast.
"A couple of funny things that she would do is that she would – when she was doing her backstroke she'd go right up against the lane rope and would help use the lane rope to pull her along. She’d reach up with the stroke and grab the lane rope and pull herself down and she would be helping herself along and the coaches really had to encourage her to not do that.
"Another time I remember we went to this meet clear out in Brentwood I think it was. They had this really teeny pool and Kristy was doing backstroke and I swear it was just like a pinball going down the land. She’d go boink into one lane rope over-correct and boink into the other lane rope and over-correct and boink into the other one and so I swear she swam like three times the length of the pool as she was going down it because she was going in a zig-zag pattern all the way down. And it was really cute – everybody loved it.
"It was somewhere in this time in the first couple of years swimming that we also had Stacey’s brother-in-law Coach Jason came and swam one year as one of the coaches one year. Kristy would sit down on a chair and she wouldn’t want to get in so he would pick her up and toss her into the pool, or he’d pick up the plastic chair and go sit that down in the pool so she would get into the water. Once she got in it was OK, it was just that initial getting into the water when it was cold on those mornings.
"I think part of it is Kristy is just this little teeny thing. She didn’t hit 40 pounds. Back then the law for car seats was you had to be 4 years old or 40 pounds to get out of a car seat. Kristy had a horrible time in car seats, she did not like them – really, really did not like them. She figured out how to climb out of her car seat when she was just three years old and we went and bought her a new car seat because I could not have her out of her car seat it was the law she had to be in there.
She figured out how to get out of there when she was this little teeny thing. I always said she has this big spirit in a little body. It was extremely difficult for her, she wanted to sit up by me in the front seat. We had a Mercury Sable and so it had that bench seat across with three seat belts in front, three seat belts in back. And she was perfectly content to sit there by me in the front. She would put her right hand - she sucked the middle two fingers of her right hand – she would stick them in there and she would put her arm this sounds really bad – but she would stick her arm into my armpit and that was very comforting to her for some reason, I don’t know why. She loved that and she would sit perfectly still at this point but she was not in her car seat.
"When she was finally four years old she wasn’t yet 40 pounds but it was 4 or 40 pounds and so she got out of a car seat. Good thing because she didn’t get to 40 pounds until she was in the second grade. Like I said this itty bitty thing. She didn’t have a whole lot of fat on her and so when it came to swim it was, it was just challenging for her to get into the water. But she still did it every year.
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