Summer Swimming

This year we only had Rachie and Will take swim lessons. This is Will's third year and Rachie's first. Will has done so well. He's diving, swimming freestyle, backstroke and he loves stream lining under water.

I was also real encouraged by Rachie's progress this year. The first couple of days of swim lessons she would not put her face in the water and would cry every time someone splashed her. By the last swim lesson she was diving for pennies. She picked up three. The rest of her class picked up several more, but I was so proud of the steps she made.

Miss Rose (as we call her) is the owner of the pool and celebrated her 80th birthday a couple of weeks ago. She is Rachie's instructor. All of my kids have a great fondness for her. And..for her birthday, they brought a delicious cake and ice cream for all the kids who were at the pool that day.

Kael and Morgan were tentative the first week, too. But, now they love the water and I have to watch them closely because they like to go beyond their limits.

There are a few pictures in the slide show with Kael and Morgan crying. The story behind that is the bottle of ice water - when Kael had it, Morgan screamed and when Morgan had it, Kael screamed. The pictures are in this progression.

Today, I'm actually missing being at the pool. Being there every day for the last two weeks has made me extremely behind on house work and computer work. Even when we got home from the pool I wasn't able to do anything because we all took a two hour nap and then it was time to cook dinner. I did nothing else. But, I miss it because it feels like the summer is over. I think we'll be able to make a couple of trips this week and next. In a sense, it was good to be forced to just hang out by the pool and leave school work and house work behind. As long as I can walk (which is increasingly difficult) we'll try to hang on to the summer as long as possible.

I hope you all enjoy the pictures.