Swim Team Awards Banquet

The YMCA Swim Team season is finished and tonight was the Awards Banquet. Yes, I had a birthday party the night before. Yes, I'm insane. I know it. But this year was a little easier than last year.


I'm always Team Mom. Do I WANT to be Team Mom? Not particularly. Do I have TIME to be Team Mom? Definitely not, especially this year. But no one else will do it, which irritates me and so I do it. My duties are myriad and varied. I do paperwork, buy concessions, organize team photos, order t-shirts and duffel bags, run an email information list to keep parents up to date, organize parent volunteers for working at the meets, enter times and score the meets, fill out award ribbons, just to name a few of my jobs. I'm good at finding helpers. I'm bossy. Perhaps this is why I secretly like this job. I can tell people what to do and they actually LIKE it. :^D


I'm also usually responsible for the food at the Awards Banquet. Last year, the coach thought it would be a super idea to have a luau. Ginger marinated chicken, made Hawaiian rice pilaf, green salad, and fruit salad for approximately 150 people. Ginger discovered when we went to start grilling the meat at the Y that they had loaned out their enormous trailer-sized grill to another Y. We had to cook all this meat on a REGULAR grill. Steve and one other mom were in charge of grilling. Everything was absolutely delicious (not because we did it - I dug up some awesome recipes online). But Steve and I were exhausted beyond belief.


This year Steve informed me early in the season that HE WOULD NOT BE COOKING!!! I concurred. We ordered Cajun jambalaya from a catering place. So when I woke up this morning, I collected four of the seven girls (one had been picked up early, Brooke and one other girl stayed home) and we went to pick up two ice chests full of jambalaya (pronounced, BTW, jum-buh-LIE-uh - NEVER jam-buh-lie-uh - that's a sure sign you're not from "around here"). Then it was onto Sam's Club for bags of salad and drinks. Drop off two girls, then come home to get ready for the banquet.


This was MUCH easier. And the jambalaya was delicious. Here are some shots of me and the girls with our coach. The coaches (there are two assistants) are always good to me and this year they gave me a gift certificate to my favorite restaurant. It's nice to be appreciated.

The team's parents all appreciate our coaches as well and are always generous when giving for the coaches' gifts. Morgan says Geoff is her favorite coach ever. I'm sure his bringing her beef jerky in the mornings has nothing to do with it. (Morgan is a sucker for beef jerky.)