Swimming Carnival
Today was the 2008 St Josephs swimming carnival.
For the last two years Sian has participated but Rhiannon was too young. This year they were both able to go. The girls have been enrolled in swimming lessons for the last year and their swimming has improved a lot. They were both excited about entering.
A week ago Sian lost her confidence after a nasty incident on the beach where both herself and Gareth got dragged under the surf by a freak wave. They both had to be rescued by strangers who just managed to dive in faster than Byron and myself. Since then she has been saying she didn't want to enter the swimming carnival. We didn't want to push her but equally we didn't want this experience on the beach to leave her scared of the water. Luckily she came around to the idea and going to her usual swimming lessons on Monday seemed to help. All she wanted to do was one race and that was fine with us.
Rhiannon raced first and because of her age she found herself only competing with two other 7 year olds!
As the starting siren went in dived Rhiannon and raced her little heart out against her two friends Amber and Neve. 
Their faces all lit up at the finish line when they were told that they had won first, second and third!
Sians race was soon after and she swam really well against girls of the same age as hereslf although they were all head and shoulders taller than her. She swam brilliantly and came third so she was chuffed. 
With her confidence soaring she decided to enter the back stroke and came third again! At the end of the days races she was chosen to swim in a relay race for the Hunter team and this was the icing on the cake. 
She was beaming from ear to ear as the carnival came to an end. We were so glad we hadn't let her skip it.As the races finished we experienced the mother of all storms. Thunder and lightning shook the pool buildings and the roar of the rain on the roof was deafening. The kids all had to leave the water in a hurry due to the danger of lightning strike and we had to stand back from the windows and avoid touching any metal. The rain was too torrential to run for the car so we all huddled together waiting for the storm to pass. We heard a voice over the loudspeaker "Can the Baynham Family please return to your car immediatly as you have left your windows open" I raced through the lightning and rain and got soaked as I unlocked the car door and got the windows up. I wasn't half as soaked as the poor car seats!
I raced back into the building and waited until the rain eased before making a dash for the car again with the kids. We drove home through such a downpour that we could hardly see through the windscreen even with wipers at full speed.
When we got in the door looking like a pack of drowned rats the girls raced in to Byron and told him all about the days swimming. He was chuffed and declared bonus pocket money for everyone this weekend!
you forgot to tell us what byron thought of the newly washed car seats