Pool fun and more

Yesterday am we began the process of setting up our little soft sided pool. It's 10 ft x 30 inches. Just right for us with minimum maintanance. First, I had to mow where it was going. No, first I had to start the mower (which took the neighbor girl's assistance- she held the lever and I pulled the cord. Ooh to have about 6 more inches!) and mow a patch, find a level spot and blow up the inflatable ring. Hmmm, we only have the bicycle pump, but we'll make it work. We worked until it was time to have breakfast (we started about 7 am) and then went to swimming lessons. Katie left when we did and came back when we got home, had lunch with us and then we went back to work on the ring. Finally, we got it up and the filling process began! Boy, were they antsey to get in. By the end of the afternoon, we'd accumulated 3 extra children and all were well satisfied with their play. Bed time was pretty easy!

Katie was back before swimming lessons, but we didn't have time to play much. Samuel and Catherine both made tremendous strides, but Samuel needed to get a little stronger with breathing and some of his strokes. I asked him if he wanted to do it again and he did, so we'll be going during session 4. It's only about 1 hr. 40 mins. out of the day with travel for 2 weeks and they have such a good time. I was amazed to see Catherine jumping off the diving board on the 12 ft. end and swim over to the side of the pool with not a bit of fear or hesitation! She will be going again and will attempt level 3, but will drop back to level 2 if that proves to be too much. Caleb will have to repeat, but not until right before he's ready for level 1. When I dunked him today, he didn't even whimper! Very exciting considering he's so little.

Yesterday Caleb began to army crawl with a one legged push. He did manage to get one leg bent and under him once, but not when he was trying to go anywhere. Today, he progressed to alternating legs for pushing. He is making amazing strides! I wish I would have gotten it on video how he is all over the place. I did notice his knees and elbows are getting red, so I'll have to keep pants on him just to protect his legs. It's hot, but that will be better than rug burns.

Buddy took the kids +1 neighbor boy to pick out some fireworks. They were so excited to go and wolfed down their food. They didn't make dinner to hurry us up tonight because they were too busy being fish! It looks like it'll be a pretty rare occassion to just have the 2 of them in the pool or to be outside and it not end up being pool time. Maybe I'll get some more yard work done this summer and start getting a tan when it's actually summer! We're looking forward to being a house kids want to come to instead of having our kids running around and us not wondering what's going on in others' houses.

A new family moved in across the street and they have a boy a year older than Samuel (he went with them to pick out fireworks.) He has a pet snake and a hamster. There's a tree to climb in their back yard, too. I can see that Samuel will really enjoy having a boy to play with instead of just his sister and a neighbor girl.