Dave and Cathy's Family Blog

• Luke wraps up fencing
• Lilah completes 3-week junior lifeguards program
• We go to Kauai for our family vacation

Kids Wrap Up Summer Activities

I finally got a chance to see Luke fencing. I didn’t really know what to expect since I had never really seen him practice at home so I was pleasantly surprised to see how into it he was. Even though I couldn’t lift my arm too high I did the best I could to help him into his gear, which consisted of a padded protective vest, a thick canvas jacket and pants, gloves, and a wire mesh safety mask that reminded me of a bee keepers head gear. Once everything was on him I watched Luke and the rest of his class practice their moves. The instructor was teaching the students how to move their feet and how to attack with their sword (it’s actually called a foil or a sabre). I watched them practice for about 30 minutes and then it was time for the practice matches (called “bouts”). For the bouts you actually have to hook on an electrical device to your jacket. This electrical device comes with a very long cord and plug that you plug into a special scoring machine. Once the cord is properly attached the fencers can start their bout and the machine detects whenever a fencer’s foil touches the other fencer’s body. When this happens a light goes off and a point is awarded to the fencer for a successful touch. In official fencing, the participants bout for six minutes or until one fencer reaches 5 points. Luke did very well. He was matched up against bigger kids and each time he made it to a tie breaker (4-4) before losing the last point. It is a very fast sport and I can see why you need the electrical scoring machines to keep track of the points. Luke said he definitely wants to fence again. That may mean other sports could be out for a while especially since many of these fencing events seem to take place very far from where we live. Oh well, for now Luke is signed up for fall baseball and basketball. Once we’re done with that we’ll see about some more fencing.

After three weeks of hard work, Lilah completed her junior lifeguards program. Luckily, we were all able to hang out with her on the last day where all the kids swim around the Ventura pier. She was nervous about the swim all week especially since her buddy wasn’t going to show up to the swim — apparently she had something else planned but we think it was just because she was scared to do it. It was interesting to watch her the morning of the swim. I could tell she was nervous because she really wasn’t saying much and she kept going up to different kids from her group and telling them she was scared. However, in the end she found a group of kids to swim with and plunged into the water with them. I told her the swim was maybe a 1/4 to a 1/2 mile. I translated the distance into yards (400 – 750 yards) for her since she is familiar with swimming yardage in the pool. It turned out the swim was much longer than that (closer to 1100 yards), but she did just fine. Cathy, Luke and I followed her progress from the top of the pier along with other parents. Even though Lilah told us it was tiring, she seemed to have a great time with her group — I even observed her talking and smiling with them as they made their way around the pier and headed toward the shore. Once the swim was over, her demeanor changed dramatically. When she posed for her post-swim picture she had a real smile on her face instead of the nervous smile she had started with before entering the water. Obviously we were all proud of her. I really wish I could have swam with her around the pier, but in some ways I’m actually glad she did it on her own because now it’s an achievement she can be proud of, knowing she received no help from daddy.

Kauai Trip

Here is a link to the Kauai trip recap along with the pictures. In the meantime, I just want to let you all know that my healing is coming along nicely. I can do pretty much all the day to day stuff without any pain. I can even jog a little bit. I can’t really swim or bike yet, but the time for that will come I’m sure. In the meantime, I will be starting physical therapy so that hopefully I can regain all the range of motion I used to have in my shoulders.

Cathy also got some good news this month – she received her Body Pump certification and was also given a new class to teach – CX Works – which she will begin in another month or so.

More next month…