Swimming Like A Fish?

With the arrival of summer comes the season of swimming! After many years of lifeguarding and teaching swimming lessons, I thought this would be a great time for Olivia to start official swimming lessons. During this experience I was reminded of my time teaching level one swimming lessons. It seemed each class had a few kids with no fear and would just jump in and go for it, then a few more that were cautious, but you could be easily coaxed, and then there was always that one kid; the kid that screamed bloody murder and had their arms wrapped in a death wrap around thier mother's leg. Yup, you guessed it, I am now the mother of that screamer. Wow, how did this happen? I started reflecting and realized that Olivia really has had limited exposure to swimming pools. She has been in a lot of little blow up pools, and played at the beach's edge in Dubai, but never really a swimming pool that was this large. The good news is that everyday she got a little bravier and by the end of the 2 weeks, I sat on the side and watched her blow a few bubbles. Did she pass? No, but did we ever have many victories to celebrate!

Taking our Little Monkeys to the Zoo

We had a wonderful windy day at the zoo with our dear friends Jim, Megan, Ashlyn, and Aubrie. Between the two of us we have four kids, all of their birthdays being within four weeks of one another. So, we decided to do a birthday outing complete with a picnic and of course, birhtday cupcakes! Although, the wind put a bit of a dampener on our idea of blowing out candles, so we saved that for when we got home. Good thing too, because it turned out we needed to strip them down and throw them all into the tub. The kids had a wonderful birthday outing and LOVED the animals, especially the new grizzly bear exhibit. Soren, our animal lover, was an intense spectator all day.