Our Summer in Review: The Pools

We love our pool. That is all I really need to say that would capture our summer in review enough for you to understand. Our family is a water family ~ the best days for us are days where we can spend a few minutes or hours lounging, swimming, splashing and sliding at our pools. As a kid, I loved the water... loved it so much I almost drown twice trying to get into it before I could swim (thank God Opa can run like lightning when I jumped into our pool without permission). KK and AJ have definately got that love of the water, without the desperate need for anyone to rush to their rescue (very important on a parent's nerves)! They have both been water babies since they were babies. KK went swimming at six months old and loved it. AJ was three months old when he started swimming... We feel that if we enjoy doing something, then they will love doing it with us. And boy, do they!

So we took our white selves out to the pools the moment they opened ~ here are some pictures of one of our first days out and about:



AJ testing out the waters at the beginning of the summer by some jumps into the pool. No fear!

KK loves jumping and diving into the water too!







KK and AJ's swimming skills were impressive after the summer was over. KK was a great swimmer last year. She was able to jump into the pool and swim back to the wall with no help from us. She could swim several feet, take a breath and then go a few more feet to get to us. After this summer, KK was swimming across every single pool we had without any help from us. She is a SWIMMER! Wow! We are so proud of her!!! Between swim classes last fall and playing so much this summer, our little guppie turned into a mermaid. She even started going down the slide by herself at the beginning of the summer. While my heart swells with happy pride, my mind wants to know if she could just remain my dependent baby a few more years... such is life I suppose. She loves to be in the deep end of the pool, fine tuning her skills and diving to the bottom. The waterfall pool is still a favorite. She always wants to go behind the falls and dive through the falling water in the deep.



AJ has gotten so big since last summer. And he is a wild little man at the pool these days. He loves when Daddy takes him down the slide ~ they go all the way under the water, and then pop up and AJ is all smiles and begging to go again. A majority of AJ's summer was spent in the resort pool between the 1 foot and 3 foot water. With his trusted "coc-co-dile" boogie board, little man would spend hours jumping to and fro on his board, dunking himself under the water again and again and laughing when he surfaced. The rest of his time was spent at the bucket pool, where he discovered he can go on the slides there all by himself like a big boy. Up the stairs, down the slide, giggles, then back up the stairs over and over again until he was worn out. The joy on his face when we are at the pool, it makes it even more fun!

Here are my little guppies waiting not so patiently to hit the pools! They are already smiling and jumping for joy and we aren't even in the water yet:



Another fun part of our summer at the pool: Movie Nights! We got to have family movie night at the pool twice. Our first night was "Tangled". As you can imagine, KK was in heaven as it is her favorite movie. With her newfound independence in the pool, she loved being allowed to go out a few feet and watching in the pool while we sat out. (It helps that she is tall like her Daddy so she can walk so much further out). Our second movie was "Gnomeo and Juliet". We packed our snacks and swam in the dark while watching the movies and looking at the stars ~ not many people can say they did that this summer!



A picture of the resort pool with the screen up and playing the movie.



KK and Daddy taking a snack break at the movie. Below: AJ and Mommy warming up (we tend to snuggle during the movie more than swim, and I love that about us).





Above: some silly pictures of us together for our last movie night of the summer. I think the smiles tell you how we feel about our evening.

Okay so aside from bragging endlessly about my kids impressive skills in the pool (I did hold back and not compare them to the next Michael Phelps once thus far), there isn't much less to share except for some additional pictures and of course some bragging videos to show their skills and their cuteness... Is this a blog or a brag? Hmmm... its late and who cares, its mine :-)





Ahh the dreaded bucket... while AJ loves the slides, he avoids the big splash. KK on the other hand runs to it and does a happy dance every time she gets caught underneath it.



Pictures from our almost last day at the pool. This one is AJ and Daddy after a splash on the slides.



Me and the kids as the sun goes down... as this is our last year (sniff sniff) to close down the pool the night before school starts. It was a tradition started a few years ago by accident. We couldn't understand why the pool emptied one Sunday night. We just enjoyed having all five pools by ourselves and staying until we could see the stars and when the lifeguard blew that final double whistle the signaled the pool was closing. We liked it so much, we made sure to do it again every year. This year was special, as it was our last. Next year we will have a Kindergartner (why I am tearing up at the thought of something a year away, this does not bode well for me, I need to practice saying it out loud and then laughing or something). Anyway - we took some pictures to capture it one more time.





It was a fun night. KK and Daddy did some diving in the dark while AJ and I sang little man's favorite song "You are my Sunshine" while watching our stars come out. We were the only people there by the time we heard that double whistle :-)

Now for some fun videos of our summer. If I were cool, I would know how to make them all into one video... but I'm not.

My little dinosaur at the pool:



KK swimming across one of the pools... she did take a break mid-swim to have a talk with Daddy while bobbing in the water... I'm not sure what that was about, but she was fine the whole time... just wanted to chat.

(Due to technical difficulties, I will publish a follow up post with her video sorry)!

And so our summer at the pool ends.... While KK understands it will be back next summer, AJ struggles a little bit with time. So we told him the pool was going to be locked forever. His parting words to the pool as we walked out on Labor day: "Bye pool. Bye lifeguard. Forever." Well it will feel like forever until next summer, but we have lots of fun memories to have until its time to go back and make more.