Summer poolin

Ahhh, summer, how we loved thee. sigh. One of the best parts of our amazingly playful and fun summer was the pool. I would watch the clock until about 9:30 and then we would dash into our swim suits, gather the towels, add them to the back of the car where the toys were waiting, slather on our sunscreen, hop in the car, sit very still, and drive the 3 blocks to the pool. We were always super excited to be the first to arrive and after saying hello to Cathy and signing in, I would hear, "Can I get in now?" in the sweetest little voices I ever heard. I loved the first time we went this summer and H was so excited to get it that he forgot to take his flip flops off. Sometimes we would meet friends and sometimes we would go alone. I loved one day when it was just the 4 of us and Ek said how much she liked it that way, wow did that do my heart good. At the beginning of summer, L was very cautious. She wanted me to hold her 100% of the time, no matter who was with us, me hold her, only. One day along the way though, she discovered her wings. We tried vest, inner-tubes and wings and one day, the wings won. From that day on, she wanted to swim "by herself." She still wanted me to be in the water with her, but she would piddle around, kicking her little legs and leaning back to get her hair wet. Once she began doing that, we could venture into the deep end where the big 2 loved to play. Ek worked very diligently on touching the bottom and taught h diligently until they could both touch at 9 feet- first with their feet, then with their hands, first from the ladder and then from the diving board. They both worked on their dives and H even tried to help JP with is dives. H had the cutest, I mean, awesomest cannon ball you've ever seen, he'd keep his little, I mean awesome, legs all tucked in until he made his splash. I could watch him do cannon balls all day. He also loved to jump in silly, the duck was my favorite- tucking his little legs under, flapping his wings and quacking off the diving board. We also played a fun game of shark and boat, we would swap roles of chasing each other around the shallow end, I usually had H and L attached to me and Ek got pretty fast with those flippers on, the shark would usually go for big bites out of ribs to get good laughs. They also loved swimming under my legs at different levels without touching. I loved hanging out in the water with them. Toward the end of the summer, we started taking a tea set and would have all sort of tea and then have to gather tea cups from all over the pool. The water guns drove us crazy all summer as we would get slapped unexpectedly in the face with water from time to time, "not in the face, up in the air!!" They loved for Cathy to fix lunches of mini corn dogs, chicken finger, fries and fruit, oh and powerade and nothing is sweeter than ice cream at the pool. We went alot. One week I think the kids swam 5/6 days. We usually went in the morning for about 3 hours, ate lunch there, came home, showered and rested for several hours. It was so hot this summer that I just couldn't stand to be out much unless we were at the pool. I am so so thankful that we got to spend the summer there together, laughing, playing, seeing friends, seeing each other. It was so fun.

PS there are no pictures because I was in the pool! We did though take several underwater cameras that I will have developed soon!