Splash!

Well the summer vacation started only a couple days ago and the kids have already been swimming twice. They all love the water and are feeling a little more free. Logan and Miranda swim with just water wings. They jump off the diving board and even go down slides. Haylie and Hannah are doing well too. We have a little ride in tube and both can kick themselves where ever they want to go. When one is in the tube the other has her own set of water wings. With the wings they are starting to feel good about being in the waer but they are still a little nervous. This is all just info and not the reason why I chose to create this post. Here is the reason. On Wednesday Miranda's classmate invited her to a last day of school pool party. We were all able to go. On the way there I started hearing little crazy reprimands of why on earth I am taking 5 little kids to a pool. It is near impossible to watch all of them in such a dangerous situation. So I decided to very firmly go over pool rules. So I asked the kids, what is the number one rule when near a pool? I was aiming for no running. Logan said "Don't go in the pool without asking." I was very impressed and thought that is the very best pool rule. I clarified that they had to ask only me, I was the one who needed to know so I can watch them closely. Then I went on to rule number two, again no running. Miranda pipes in and says "No drowning, and if we drown you won't jump in to save us." Again floored by the answer I clarified that no drowning is a very good rule but be sure I will jump in to save you. So then I just gave up with the guessing and told them no running and no going down the slide head first.

Logan and Miranda did extremely well and were almost instantly best friends with the water. While Haylie and Hannah couldn't go in the big pool since I didn't have my suit and I didn't bring anything for them to float with. They happily sat on the edge of the shallow end. A couple times they venteured to the deep end but I was on that. The only scary thing was that they kept throwing this big beach ball in the pool and leaning over to grab it. They only had to hear once before they were barred from being near the big pool. It was very sucessful and we had a great time. Lots of people just adored Lauren and held her so I really only had to watch for the four older ones.