Water Babies

We have a free 2-week trial pass for the local rec center, so the kids and I have been swimming five times in the last week.  The children adore the swimming pool.  Every day Ellen asks me, "Rec center?  Rec center?  Swimming suit?" and she screams with delighted recognition when she sees the actual building. 

The Bairn's favorite activity at the pool is walking through the water with aquafit dumbbells out in front of him in the manner of a geriatric power walker.  Ellen loves every single thing about being in the water.  She loves to play motorboat and kick her feet and on first seeing a pool noodle and having no name for it, yelled out, "Need a . . . uh, PIPE!"  She's also very impressed with her cherry bathing suit.

Getting ready for the pool this morning.

Because I know that our pool visits will run out with the pass (the regular price is prohibitively expensive for us), I sent Steve to the store in search of a little backyard pool.  Lots of them are on sale since it's late in the summer and I told him not to spend more than $10.  He came back triumphant with an inflatable $3 pool.  One day I pulled it out of it's packaging, explaining to the children that we didn't even need to go to the rec center that day.  We had our very own pool!  I'd blow it up and they could sit in it and it would be great!

It was not exactly as I had envisioned.

It's quite a bit smaller than anticipated.

More like a birdbath.

Enjoying a bargain pool.